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Wall Street panicked in late 2023 that GLP-1 drugs would empty gyms. Planet Fitness added 1.1M net new members in 2025, grew revenue 12.1% to $1.3B, and signed a Perks partnership with Ro (Serena Williams's GLP-1 prescriber). Life Time grew revenue 14.3% to $2.995B and tripled its in-club Miora clinics, which prescribe GLP-1s themselves. Doesn't read like substitution. About half of GLP-1 users consider a gym membership. The interesting wrinkle is that Planet Fitness stock is still down appr 40% YTD 2026, for reasons that have nothing to do with GLP-1s.
It started in October 2023. Walmart's US CEO mentioned to Bloomberg that customers picking up Ozempic at his pharmacies were buying a bit less food. Mild data point, said in passing.
Wall Street did not treat it as mild. The GLP-1 selloff hit food stocks first, then snacks, then restaurants, then somehow gym stocks. Planet Fitness fell 30%+ over the next few months. Piper Sandler told CNBC the gym category was "getting looped into the group of sectors that could get hurt by GLP-1s." The thinking was simple. Thin people don't go to the gym, and people who can lose weight on a drug won't either.
So I read through the Q4 2025 calls for Planet Fitness and Life Time. The short version: that thinking hasn't aged well.
**Three years later**
Planet Fitness FY 2025:
* Revenue $1.3B (+12.1%)
* 1.1M net new members (net adds up 10% YoY)
* 20.8M total members across appr 2,900 clubs
* Adjusted EBITDA $551.6M (vs $487.7M prior year)
* Same club sales +6.7%
On the Q4 call, CEO Colleen Keating cited a franchisee survey: roughly 50% of GLP-1 users consider a gym membership. So GLP-1 patients aren't skipping the gym. About half are looking at one.
Life Time (LTH) FY 2025:
* Revenue $2.995B (+14.3%)
* Net income +139.2% to $373.7M
* Q4 net income +230.6%
* $500M share repurchase announced
* Miora clinics: from 2 locations a year ago to 7 or 8 today
Miora prescribes GLP-1s, peptides, and HRT inside Life Time facilities for $149 to $249 per month. CEO Akradi said future Life Time club designs will include Miora space by default.
Equinox built a "GLP-1 Protocol" personal training program in early 2024, raised $1.8B, announced 25+ new gyms. Xponential Fitness (Club Pilates, Pure Barre) bought Lindora, a chain of 31 GLP-1 prescription clinics, in December 2023.
**And then there's Ro**
In 2025, Planet Fitness signed a Perks partnership with Ro, the DTC telehealth company that prescribes GLP-1s. Ro's celebrity ambassadors are Serena Williams and Charles Barkley. Serena's husband Alexis Ohanian sits on Ro's board.
Planet's 20.8M members get discounts on Ro services. Ro gets referral access to those members. Keating called it "our most successful Perks program yet" on the Q4 call.
Three years ago, this gym chain was on the GLP-1 short list. Now it's a downstream channel for the company that prescribes the drug. Hard to read that as anything but a category-redefining move.
**The Wall Street thesis assumed gyms sell weight loss**
They don't. Gyms sell muscle.
An NEJM trial of semaglutide (68 weeks, 140 participants) found average loss of roughly 15 lbs of lean muscle alongside 23 lbs of fat. That muscle loss is the actual medical problem inside the GLP-1 success story. Every endocrinologist tells these patients the same thing: lift weights, eat protein, get to a gym.
A Morgan Stanley survey of \~300 GLP-1 users in February 2024 found 50% were gym members. 70% of those joined within the same 12-month window in which they started the drug. Weekly workout rate went from 35% pre-drug to 77% post.
Hard to read those numbers as substitution. People are joining gyms after starting the drug, not instead of one.
**But the stock is still down**
Here's where it gets weirder. Planet Fitness is down appr 40% YTD 2026, near a 52-week low of $63.88. TD Cowen cut its price target from $100 to $90 on April 29. RBC Capital flagged "elevated uncertainty" ahead of Q1 2026 earnings on May 7.
The 2026 selloff has nothing to do with GLP-1s. It's about same club sales decelerating to a guided 4 to 5% in 2026 (down from 6.7% in 2025), competition from Crunch Fitness and EoS Fitness in the high-value low-price segment, and the mechanical revenue drag from selling 8 California corporate clubs to franchisees.
So the 2023 panic was a misdirection. The 2026 panic is real but unrelated.
Perhaps even more interesting is this. The operators who quietly built clinical infrastructure during the 2023 panic, Life Time's Miora, Xponential's Lindora, Planet's Ro deal, look like the ones with the most defensible moat against the new competition. Crunch and EoS don't have any of that.
**Where this might be wrong**
Four honest challenges to the thesis, because none of this is unfalsifiable.
1. Miora is unproven at scale. 7 or 8 locations against 180+ Life Time clubs. The next 50 are where execution risk lives. Akradi flagged "knick-knack" permitting issues on the Q4 call.
2. Stock and operations can stay disconnected for a long time. Good filings don't fix a multiple. PLNT could keep grinding lower on competition fears regardless of how the Ro deal performs.
3. As insurance covers GLP-1s and oral formulations like orforglipron arrive at lower prices, the surrounding services (Miora's $149 to $249, Equinox's $160 PT sessions) have to justify themselves on standalone value, not as the affordable part of an expensive bundle.
4. Cultural narrative could shift. If "I'm on Ozempic" replaces "I work out" as the status marker, marginal gym customers might just skip the gym.
Curious what others think, particularly anyone who's read the LTH 10-K closely. Miora unit economics feel like the most important undisclosed number in the entire fitness sector right now.