Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy steps down, 15% of staff laid off

Peloton announced Thursday that CEO Barry McCarthy will be stepping down and the company will lay off 15% of its staff because it “simply had no other way to bring its spending in line with its revenue.”

McCarthy, a former Spotify and Netflix executive, will become a strategic advisor to Peloton through the end of the year while Karen Boone, the company’s chairperson, and director Chris Bruzzo will serve as interim co-CEOs. Boone most recently served as the CFO of Restoration Hardware while Bruzzo was a longtime executive at Electronic Arts. Peloton is seeking a permanent CEO.

The company also announced a broad restructuring plan that will see its global headcount cut by 15%, or about 400 employees. It plans to continue to close retail showrooms and make changes to its international sales plan.

The moves are designed to realign Peloton’s cost structure with the current size of its business, it said in a news release. It’s expected to reduce annual run-rate expenses by more than $200 million by the end of fiscal 2025. About half of those savings are going to come from payroll reductions, while the rest will come from lower marketing spending, a reduced retail store footprint, and reduced IT and software spending, said finance chief Liz Coddington.

The departments hit the hardest from the restructuring will be Peloton’s research and development, marketing and international teams, Coddington said.

“This restructuring will position Peloton for sustained, positive free cash flow, while enabling the company to continue to invest in software, hardware and content innovation, improvements to its member support experience, and optimizations to marketing efforts to scale the business,” the company said.

Peloton’s shares surged more than 12% in premarket trading but opened more than 6% lower after the company’s conference call with Wall Street analysts concluded.

McCarthy took the helm of Peloton in February 2022 from founder John Foley and has spent the last two years restructuring the business and working to get it back to growth.

As soon as he took over, he implemented mass layoffs to right size Peloton’s cost structure, closed some of the company’s splashy showrooms and enacted new strategies designed to grow membership. He overhauled Peloton’s executive team, oversaw its rebrand and created new revenue drivers like the company’s rental program.

The last round of cuts, affecting 500 employees, was announced in October 2022. McCarthy later said the company’s restructuring was “complete” and it was instead pivoting to “growth.” 

“We are done now,” McCarthy had said in November 2022 of the layoffs. “There are no more heads to be taken out of the business.”

Contrary to Peloton’s founder, McCarthy redirected Peloton’s attention to…