30 Apr 2024 Planet Fitness Grilled Over Locker Rooms and Company Priorities

At today’s Planet Fitness annual shareholder meeting, Free Enterprise Project (FEP) Deputy Director Stefan Padfield submitted two questions to leadership, and both questions were condensed and then answered.

Stefan Padfield

First Stefan asked:

According to at least some reports, Planet Fitness lost $400 million in stock value after forcing women to share their bathroom with men who identify as women, going so far as to revoke the membership of a woman who complained. Planet Fitness apparently even doubled-down on this policy after the market backlash. How did Planet Fitness conclude that this policy would maximize the company’s expected value for shareholders?

Planet Fitness General Counsel Justin Vartanian condensed Stefan’s question this way: “We have a question regarding our locker room policy, which will be addressed by McCall Gosselin, our chief corporate affairs officer.”

McCall responded:

Thanks, Justin. To address our nondiscrimination policy, I have a few points here.

First of all, I want to stress that the safety and privacy of all of our members is extremely important to us. It has always been, and we’re committed to creating a non-intimidating, welcoming environment where everyone feels like they belong and can enhance their lives through fitness. So that has been our priority and it will continue to be so going forward for all of our members.

Just to give everyone an overview of our policy: It states that members and guests can use the gym facilities that best align with their self-reported gender identity.

And in the case that’s mentioned here in the Q&A, I just wanna clarify one point: We did not revoke someone’s membership because they disagreed with our policy. We revoked that membership because they took a photo of another individual in the locker room without their consent. And given that the privacy and safety of all of our members is our number one priority, that is against our policy. So I just wanted to clarify that point.

Another point to mention here is that you may be aware that a number of our industry peers also maintain a similar policy. And at the end of the day, really our goal again, just to reiterate, is to make sure that we’re maintaining a safe environment for everyone and creating a place where everyone belongs, can have a community, where they can enhance their lives through fitness, and again really focusing on safety and privacy for everyone.

After the meeting, Stefan noted:

Planet Fitness claims it is forcibly inserting men who identify as women into women’s spaces like bathrooms in order to ensure the safety of its members. How utterly beholden to radical gender ideology does one have to be in order to say that with a straight face?

Stefan’s next question questioned the company’s priorities:

A search of the proxy statement revealed that the term “ESG” was used 19 times while the phrase “shareholder value” was not used once. Is the goal of management to maximize shareholder value or to advance other environmental, social, and governance goals?

Justin condensed the question this way: “Our next question is asking about our ESG efforts and our focus on shareholder value, and to answer this question, Tom Fitzgerald, our CFO.”

Tom responded succinctly:

Thanks, Justin. To be clear, management’s and the board’s focus and priority has been, and continues to be and will continue to be, increasing long-term shareholder value.

Stefan doubts the sincerity of Tom’s answer:

As of April 30th, Planet Fitness has apparently underperformed the S&P 500 by 35% over the past 12 months. Both in terms of the language in its proxy statement and its actual results, Planet Fitness seems far more committed to value-destroying ESG than to shareholder value.

For more on how Free Enterprise Project‘s shareholder activists are holding corporations accountable, visit https://www.freeenterpriseproject.org/. To learn how you as an investor can support their efforts, visit https://proxynavigator.com/.