管理層發言
Good morning, and thank you for joining today's Planet Fitness Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions). I would now like to hand the call over to Brendon Frey for opening remarks. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Speaking on today's call will be Planet Fitness Chief Executive Officer, Colleen Keating; and Chief Financial Officer and President, International, Sudhanshu Priyadarshi. Colleen and Sudhanshu will be available for questions during the Q&A session following the prepared remarks. Today's call is being webcast live and recorded for replay. Before I turn the call over to Colleen, I'd like to remind everyone that the language on forward-looking statements included in our earnings release also applies to our comments made during the call. Our release can be found on our investor website along with any reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures mentioned on the call with their corresponding GAAP measures. With that, I'll now turn it over to Colleen.
Thank you, Brendon, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for the Planet Fitness Second Quarter Earnings Call. We are pleased to welcome Sudhanshu Priyadarshi to Planet Fitness, a proven global leader with more than 25 years of experience driving enterprise value creation across consumer-facing businesses. His deep CFO expertise, vast international operating experience and disciplined approach to strategy, execution, margin expansion and capital allocation aligned closely with our strategic growth priorities. I look forward to partnering with him to deliver meaningful value for our members, franchisees, and shareholders. I also want to thank and recognize Tom Fitzgerald for pausing his retirement to shepherd our finance organization through our period of leadership transition. Tom provided a knowledgeable and steady hand as interim CFO, enabling us to complete a thorough search, and he will remain with us in an advisory capacity through early September. Given this, Tom is joining us on today's call and will be available to provide additional perspective during the Q&A. Now let me turn to our second quarter performance. During the quarter, we furthered the important work to reignite sustainable member growth, and we are confident that the actions we outlined on our first quarter call are the right ones to achieve this overarching goal. While we are encouraged by our initial progress, several of our key initiatives, particularly with marketing, will take time to fully implement and gain traction. We finished the quarter with 21.5 million members, up 3.6% to last year. System-wide same club sales increased by 1.7%, adjusted EBITDA increased 3.5% over Q2 2025, and we opened 23 new clubs. The fitness industry is supported by strong long-term tailwinds as more people recognize the critical role movement plays in physical and mental well-being, disease prevention and living longer, healthier lives. Against that backdrop, our focus remains clear: broaden our reach to the approximately 70% of the U.S. population not currently paying for a fitness membership, strengthen the relevance of our brand messaging with our core audience and reinforce why Planet Fitness is uniquely positioned to bring people into the category. We appeal to fitness beginners, more casual gym-goers or those progressing on their fitness journey who appreciate our strong value proposition and judgment-free environment. One of the reasons why people don't join a gym is intimidation and Planet Fitness is ideally and uniquely positioned for this population. We know proximity and convenience are also factors and with the Planet Fitness club within an approximate 12-minute drive of 170 million of the U.S. population, our reach and accessibility are unmatched. As we shared on our Q1 earnings call, we are concentrating our efforts this year on two priorities that are central to reigniting net member growth: driving acquisition and reinforcing affordability. I'll discuss our progress to date in key areas supporting these priorities, including our marketing evolution, net member growth trends, pricing architecture and in-club member experience enhancements. I'll also provide an update on global club expansion and franchisee engagement before turning the call over to Sudhanshu. Let me start with our marketing updates. As we continue to evolve our marketing strategy, our goal is to both target and speak more effectively to the roughly 70% of the U.S. population that doesn't have a gym membership, while reinforcing what makes Planet Fitness differentiated: our welcoming, non-intimidating environment. We are approaching this work in phases with our newly engaged creative agency. To date, we made intentional refinements to our existing creative so it feels a bit more approachable and supportive, depicting more variety of fitness levels, dialing down sweat levels and brightening the imagery. We will launch interim new creative that takes this a few steps further, featuring a more light-hearted tone aligned to our brand DNA with an intentional emphasis on our unique value proposition and brand differentiation within the HVLP landscape. You will see this new interim creative in market this quarter. At the same time, we will begin testing creative for an entirely new marketing campaign for our critical Q1 acquisition period, giving us time to read results and make adjustments before the campaign goes live in late December. We are continuing to advance our media optimization efforts. As we refine our creative and optimize our media mix, our goal is to better reach our target audience across social platforms and multiple media channels. To support that work, our Dynamic Creative Optimization engine remains on track for a rolling launch beginning in September. This will allow us to better tailor creative and our messaging over time as we reach prospective members with greater relevance. Also in September, we will launch a redesigned Planet Fitness app with updates to make the member experience more personalized, engaging and easier to navigate. This will include a dynamic home screen tailored to in-club workouts, enhanced activity tracking including weight, reps and sets, a redesigned fitness profile with progress metrics and improved crowd meter accuracy. Additional updates are planned for the balance of the year and into 2027, underscoring our commitment to continually enhancing member experience and supporting retention. Finally, on the marketing front, we kicked off our High School Summer Pass program in June, which continues to be an important way for us to introduce younger consumers to our brand and reinforce our commitment to making fitness accessible. We're continuing to build momentum with High School Summer Pass with more than 12 million workouts completed to date. This program remains especially valuable as it builds awareness and brand affinity with the next generation of potential members, including Gen Alpha, as they become old enough to join. Now let me turn to our second quarter net member growth. As I noted earlier, we ended with 21.5 million members, up 3.6% to last year and flat to Q1. For Q2, our average monthly attrition rate was 3.5%, the midpoint of our historical range of 3% to 4%. While we expect it to remain within that range going forward, there will be some fluctuation in future quarters due to seasonality. In an effort to improve this metric, we are deepening our member retention efforts with our predictive AI churn model integrated in our CRM platform, which is designed to identify early churn indicators. The model is currently in an alpha phase and continues to learn from member behavior. The next capability will be a next-best-action engine to serve up retention offers. Also related to our retention efforts, we will kick off components of our first 100-day program with franchisees at our September conference. This will strengthen engagement, both inside and outside our clubs during the critical early period of a member's journey, as most members join online. An opportunity to engage with them shortly after joining can encourage a club visit. During the visit, our teams can proactively engage, understand the member's goals and connect them with the most relevant areas of the club to provide support and meet their needs. We also recently implemented a mystery shop program to support consistent brand standards, enhanced member satisfaction and operational excellence across our clubs in the U.S. and Canada. The program supplements last year's system-wide NPS rollout to enhance member experience and service delivery in our clubs. Now moving to our pricing architecture. We have launched several regional and local price tests to better understand consumer responses across different markets. As part of our continued focus on reinforcing affordability and driving member acquisition, we will also test a $10 Classic Card promotion nationally later this quarter. Offering the Classic Card at $10 for a limited time promotion nationally will help us better understand regional impacts. We are not running this test to inform a rollback of the Classic Card price. We want to understand its impact for use in limited promo windows, as well as read the impacts by region. Turning to member experience. We know from industry data and member feedback that recovery is an important part of fitness. To this end, we expanded our test of new Black Card Spa modalities to 100 clubs across multiple DMAs and began marketing the upgraded features this summer. The broader test is designed to help us understand how these offerings influence total joins, join mix, upgrades and retention. Additionally, based on strong member preference and franchisee enthusiasm, we offered the opportunity to our franchisees to order the Red Light Sauna and the LED red light booth early. We're excited for the test results for the other modalities as we endeavor to make recovery more accessible just as we democratized fitness access more than 30 years ago. Lastly, turning to development and franchisee engagement. During the second quarter, we opened 23 clubs, five of which were international and included 21 franchise locations and two corporate-owned clubs. We announced this morning that we welcomed a new franchisee to Planet Fitness: seasoned hospitality developer Ian McClure, CEO of Gulf Coast Hotel Management, acquired growth territory on the West Coast of Florida. Ian brings extensive experience in multiunit real estate development, operations and asset management. This is an important milestone and a clear signal of the momentum we are building behind disciplined, long-term system growth. It reflects the strength of our model and the confidence experienced franchisees and operators see in the Planet Fitness brand and our opportunity to capitalize on population shifts in the U.S. by continuing to grow our footprint in markets where our accessible high-value offering can reach more consumers. Turning to International. In July, we completed the sale of our ownership stake in our Australia franchise. The strong progress we've seen in Australia demonstrates we can deploy capital in a disciplined, focused manner to accelerate Planet Fitness' international expansion. The sale of our stake to Franchise Equity Partners validates this approach, and we appreciate FEP's ambition to scale the Planet Fitness brand and accelerate growth across Australia. We remain steadfastly focused on unit economics and to that end, continued our active engagement with our franchisees during the quarter, including holding several small group luncheons and dinners to hear directly from them. We look forward to furthering this engagement at our franchisee conference in September. Before I turn it over to Sudhanshu, I want to again thank Tom for stepping in as our Interim CFO and graciously extending his time with us to support a smooth transition. His experience, leadership and partnership have been invaluable. We're grateful for his contributions and wish him the very best as he returns to the Everyday's a Saturday Club. Now I'll turn it over to Sudhanshu.
Thanks, Colleen, and good morning, everyone. It's a privilege to be with you today for my first earnings call as CFO of Planet Fitness. Before I walk through our second quarter results, I want to take a moment to share why I was drawn to this role. Over the course of my career, I have had the opportunity to work across a number of great consumer businesses. What drew me to Planet Fitness was its size and reach: over $5 billion in total system-wide sales, nearly 3,000 clubs and 21.5 million members, as well as a combination of factors I don't often see in one company: a brand with real emotional resonance in the judgment-free zone, a highly franchised and capital-efficient operating model and a long runway for growth in the U.S. and internationally. I have spent my career focused on turning strategy into disciplined execution, driving margin expansion, capital efficiency and shareholder value and I see tremendous opportunity to do exactly that here working alongside Colleen and this leadership team while also helping lead our international expansion. I also want to take a moment to thank Tom. Tom stepped back in at a critical moment for this company and did an excellent job stabilizing the finance organization all while helping set me up for a smooth start. Tom, thank you for your partnership and I'm glad you will remain available to us as an adviser while we complete this transition. Now to our second quarter results. All of my comments regarding our second quarter performance will be comparing Q2 2026 to Q2 of last year, unless otherwise noted. We opened 23 new clubs in Q2 this year, consistent with the number of openings in the year-ago period. We delivered systemwide same club sales growth of 1.7% in the second quarter with franchisee and corporate same club sales both up 1.7%. Our Q2 comp increase was entirely driven by rate growth. Black Card penetration was approximately 68% at the end of the quarter, an increase of 210 basis points from the prior year. For the second quarter, total revenue was $365 million compared to $341 million, an increase of 7%. The increase was driven by revenue growth across all three segments. A 13% increase in the franchisee segment revenue was primarily due to an increase in national ad fund, or NAF, higher royalty revenue from increased same club sales as well as new clubs and franchisee and other fees. The increase in NAF revenue was primarily due to a 1 percentage point increase in NAF contributions from 2% to 3% for 2026. For the second quarter, the average royalty rate was 6.7%, which is flat compared to prior year. The 4% increase in revenue in the corporate owned club segment was driven by the sales from new clubs as well as increased same club sales. As a reminder, we opened 19 new corporate clubs since the end of Q2 last year, 11 of which occurred in the fourth quarter of 2025. Equipment segment revenue increased 4%. The increase was driven by higher revenue from new franchisee-owned club placement sales and higher revenue from replacement equipment sales. We completed 21 new club placements this quarter compared to 19 last year. For the quarter, replacement equipment accounted for 85% of total equipment revenue compared to 87% last year. Our cost of revenue, which primarily relates to the cost of equipment sales to franchisees on clubs, amounted to $64 million compared to $59 million. Club operations expense, which relates to our corporate-owned club segment, increased 6% to $82 million compared to $77 million. This increase was primarily due to operating expense from 19 new clubs opened since the end of Q2 last year, partially offset by the sale of eight clubs in California. SG&A decreased 3% to $34 million compared to $36 million, while adjusted SG&A was $33 million, a decrease of 2%. The National advertising fund expense was $33 million compared to $23 million, primarily due to the 1-point increase this year in marketing from the local fund to the National Fund. Net income was $67 million, adjusted net income was $68 million and adjusted net income per diluted share was $0.88. Our adjusted net income per share is based on an adjusted weighted diluted average share count of 77.5 million shares compared with 80.1 million in the first quarter of 2026. The decrease in our share count reflects the open market repurchases made during the second quarter, which I will cover in detail shortly. Adjusted EBITDA was $153 million, an increase of 3.5% year-over-year, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 41.8% compared to $148 million with adjusted EBITDA margin of 43.3%. By segment, franchisee adjusted EBITDA was $92 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin decreased from 72.3% to 67.6%, with the change in margin primarily due to the increase in the NAF contribution rate. Excluding NAF, franchisee adjusted EBITDA margins were consistent year-over-year. Corporate club adjusted EBITDA was $57 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin decreased from 40.7% to 40%. Equipment adjusted EBITDA was $24 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin decreased from 32.1% to 28.4%. The change in equipment adjusted EBITDA margins was due to the timing of replacement equipment discounts. For the first half of 2026, equipment adjusted EBITDA margins were 29.6%, in line with our expectations. Now turning to the balance sheet. In Q2 2026, utilizing cash on hand and a $75 million drawdown on one of our variable funding notes, we repurchased approximately 4 million shares at an average price of $50.44 for a total of $200 million. This brought our year-to-date repurchases to $250 million leaving $250 million remaining under the $500 million repurchase program authorized by the Board late last year. As of June 30, 2026, we had total cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of $544 million compared to $607 million on December 31, 2025, which included $73 million and $66 million of restricted cash, respectively, in each period. We plan to utilize a portion of our available cash to repay the $75 million VFN by year-end. Moving on to our 2026 outlook. Based on our second quarter share repurchase activity, we are raising our view for adjusted net income per diluted share, which is now projected to grow approximately 6%, up from our prior outlook of approximately 4%. This is based on adjusted diluted weighted average shares outstanding of approximately 77 million, down from our prior expectations of approximately 79 million. The benefit of lower share count is being partially offset by higher interest expense following the drawdown of our $75 million VFN. Interest expense for the year is now expected to be approximately $115 million, up $4 million from our prior guidance, which is requiring us to adjust our adjusted net income guidance slightly to down 3% versus down 2%. The rest of our outlook remains unchanged. We still expect system-wide same club sales growth to be approximately 1% and revenue to grow approximately 7% and adjusted EBITDA to grow approximately 6%. As we discussed on our Q1 call, we anticipate quarterly same club sales growth to moderate sequentially as we move through the year. This is still the expectation. However, our forecast does not assume that same club sales are negative in either third or fourth quarters. Moving to unit growth, we still expect to open between 180 and 190 new clubs system-wide with 150 to 160 equipment placements and anticipate that the cadence of the remaining openings and placements will be weighted to the fourth quarter. We expect that replacement equipment sales will make up approximately 70% of total equipment segment revenue for the full year. We expect second-half replacement equipment revenue to be slightly lower than the first half with a higher mix in quarter 3. We also expect full-year equipment margin rate of approximately 30%. Lastly, we continue to expect capital expenditures to be up 10% to 15% and depreciation and amortization to be up approximately 10%. In closing, having now had the chance to get closer to the business over the past 40 days, I am even more convinced of what drew me to Planet Fitness in the first place. This is a highly franchised capital-efficient model, built around a brand that continues to resonate broadly with consumers. And it has tremendous growth prospects domestically and more so internationally, where the TAM is even greater given the lower fitness participation rates outside of the U.S. As we look to the back half of the year and beyond, we remain focused on disciplined execution of the strategic priorities Colleen outlined, aimed at driving sustainable growth and generating increased value for our members, franchisees and shareholders. I will now turn the call back to the operator to open it up for Q&A.
分析師問答
(Operator Instructions). Your first question comes from the line of Arpine Kocharyan with UBS.
Sudhanshu, welcome to the call. Look forward to working with you. You talked about having completed different pricing tests — would you be able to share at all some of those initial findings and learnings and what that could mean for your broader pricing structure, specifically how you're thinking about maybe introducing a third tier of pricing? Does that even make sense at this point? And also, is it fair to assume that any update to that lower-end pricing or maybe Classic Card pricing or whatever it could be, wouldn't come without a kind of a review of Black Card pricing at this point?
Arpine, thanks for the question. As I indicated, we've got a number of price tests, both regionally and locally to really understand consumer response across a number of different pricing architectures in different markets. Many of the tests are still in flight, and we are still reading the results, as you know, due to the subscription nature of our business and our seasonality. We tend to run tests for a fairly long period of time. We'll evaluate those tests on really reinforcing affordability, driving member acquisition and sustained member growth — and to your question, we've tested tiers. We've tested different price points in different regions as well.
Great. And part of the reason for the latter part of my question is churn is actually coming in pretty steady, right, even when we think about what it was in the prior quarter. It seems like churn is pretty steady. Does that make you sort of rethink the Black Card pricing strategy a little bit? Or would you say that it's going to be viewed holistically more aligned with what you're doing with the rest of the pricing structure?
Yes. Again, we're leaning hard into sustainable net member growth. So as we evaluate any pricing decisions in our architecture, whether they're tiers, regional nuance or something with Black Card, we're going to evaluate the price elasticity in conjunction with join mix as well as total sustainable net member growth and impact on churn.
Your next question comes from the line of Randy Konik with Jefferies.
Great. Just curious, on churn, again, as mentioned, that's stable on the last question there. Is there any kind of difference you're seeing between churn statistics of Black Card versus the Classic Card at the moment? Just curious on what you're seeing there.
Good morning, Randy, and thanks for the question. With regards to churn, specifically, you're right, it's within the range that we've typically set: an average monthly churn rate between 3% and 4%, and it was solidly in the middle there. We haven't seen a significant difference between Classic and Black Card member churn. As we've talked about before, we do see some variance across generational cohorts, but not a marked difference between Classic and Black Card.
Got it. And I guess just following up here on the $10 Classic Card test — can you just expand upon that a little bit more in terms of the scope? How long it will be in place if you offer a $10 limited time offer, what does that mean? And then when you kind of think about that and you put that forth, you said you had some engagement with franchisees, with dinners and stuff like that before the September meeting, any initial impressions from these meetings you've held thus far with franchisees on communicating to them or different pricing architectures, different pricing objectives and what their feedback is and what they've been asking for or what they're kind of focused on right now?
Sure. So specific to the $10 Classic Card promo, it is a promo window. For competitive reasons, we won't indicate the exact dates we're going to run it or exactly how long it will run. But it will be a limited time promotion and we do intend to run it during this quarter. We have communicated with our franchisees about our intent to test that as a promo. Again, a limited time promo nationally, and one of the reasons it's important to test it nationally is to read the regional nuances and really understand price elasticity and demand indicators around price points in different markets around the country. From a franchisee sentiment standpoint, we've been very communicative with them around our strategic pivots and again around this promo. As in any franchise organization, we'll have some franchisees that are completely on board and others that might be a little more reticent. But certainly, they understand the outputs that we're seeking to evaluate by running this test nationally.
Your next question comes from the line of Simeon Siegel with Guggenheim Securities.
Looking forward to working with you. Colleen, maybe just a follow-up on that. So if someone buys the $10 Classic test, do they get it temporarily? Or does that become their go-forward rate? It just feels like that's a pretty compelling offer now. And so I'm curious how you plan to use that to strategically trigger new ads and also how you ensure it doesn't drive any negative response from anyone who joined at $15 or maybe would have joined at $15 in the future? And then just curious how you're thinking about the potential impact to franchisee unit economics, do you have offsets to the lower revenue? Do you think it drives incremental members to offset? Just curious how you're thinking about that full picture.
Simeon, thanks for the question. So from a standpoint of pricing, it's a limited time offer, but it's not a temporary rate. When someone joins at a Classic Card price point, as we've done historically, that's a legacy-protected rate. So as long as they remain a member of Planet Fitness, they continue to enjoy the rate at which they joined, and that is intended to be the case with this limited $10 promo. From a standpoint of unit economics, we do know that the lift of the Classic Card price from $10 to $15 across the system holistically has been accretive to the AUVs of our franchisees' clubs. There are some franchisees in certain markets who have encouraged us to test the $10 promo pricing. We did it in a very concentrated regional test earlier this summer, and we want to read and better understand the regional nuances and regional price elasticity by running the test nationally. And as I indicated, we're not running the test because we're contemplating a rollback of $15 to $10.
Okay. And then just separately, I wanted to ask how we should view capital allocation in light of the pretty significant buyback completed during the quarter? And maybe more broadly, as your business has become more capital intensive over the past several years. Just any broader thoughts on evaluating the current structure, the current ownership rate of your unit base, especially with the new franchise interest you mentioned? Just any broader thoughts there would be helpful.
So Simeon, first, capital allocation will remain what we have today. We are a cash flow generative business. We use cash to generate value, whether opening clubs, recycling capital in markets like Australia, or buying back shares when we see the value. At the same time, we will continue to look at international growth opportunities, such as the Australia model where we see growth. Regarding corporate clubs versus franchisees, we want to run an asset-light model; that's what we have. We have less than 10% corporate-owned clubs. We want to continue to run that model — that model is working for us. Overall, we will look at all options available to management and the board to create shareholder value. That's what we are here for and we consider all of those options regularly. Driving member growth is our priority, and we are focused on it.
I'll just add that we sold our California clubs last year to an existing franchisee who had infrastructure on the West Coast and could operate them more efficiently than we could because we didn't have a large portfolio on the West Coast. Exiting our position in Australia is another example. We'll use our balance sheet to help fuel and accelerate growth in a healthy way. At the same time, if we have an opportunity to exit a position and recycle that capital we will do that as well. To date, we've kept roughly a 90-10 split between franchise and corporate-owned. We see our corporate portfolio as a great lab for testing and learning, and we want to invest in R&D. We continue to evaluate opportunities for capital recycling, and that could include other portfolio transactions of our current corporate stores if the right opportunity presented itself. As we did with Australia and California, we've also considered our position in Spain and at some juncture intend that we'll either sell the Spain territory or bring a franchisee into that market as well.
Your next question comes from the line of Jonathan Komp with Baird.
Colleen, I want to follow up on the marketing pivot that you highlighted. Would you characterize this more as a shift back to the historical Planet playbook? And are you contemplating within the test ways to drive incremental value to members that you could find new ways to monetize? I know there's a lot of discussion about testing different price points. But what about alternative offerings or new ways to add value that you might be able to capture more dues or price from members over time?
Thanks for the questions. To your first question about the marketing playbook — what you'll see in the campaign we are developing is a lighter approach. We want to convey approachability and ensure that our messaging resonates with the 70% that is our target audience: more casual gym-goers and beginners. What this brand has historically done very successfully is bring people into the category, so we want to ensure that we're reaching people with messaging that underscores approachability, the judgment-free and welcoming environment that makes Planet Fitness unique and special. As it relates to continuing to enhance the value proposition for our members, we've done a lot over the last few periods to enhance value. We're seeing it resonate in the increases in our Net Promoter Scores — our NPS is up 9 percentage points year-on-year as of the end of Q2. Feedback about format optimization and investments we've made in equipment on the club floor are telling us that members see enhanced value in their relationship with Planet Fitness. More than two-thirds of our members today are Black Card members, and we're making significant enhancements to our recovery offering in the Black Card Spa. We tested new modalities in 13 clubs earlier this year and this summer expanded to a 100-club test with five new Black Card Spa modalities. We're focused on continuing to add value for our members at both the Classic and Black Card tiers.
Okay. And then just separately, I wanted to ask how we should view capital allocation in light of the pretty significant buyback completed during the quarter? And maybe more broadly, as your business has become more capital intensive over the past several years. Just any broader thoughts on evaluating the current structure, the current ownership rate of your unit base, especially with the new franchise interest you mentioned? Just any broader thoughts there would be helpful.
Jonathan, capital allocation will remain disciplined. We are a cash flow-generative business and will deploy cash to generate value whether that's opening clubs, recycling capital in markets like Australia, buying back stock when we see attractive value, or investing in international growth opportunities. We favor an asset-light, franchised model. We regularly evaluate all options to create shareholder value, and member growth remains our priority.
I'll just add that our corporate portfolio is useful as a test lab and we will continue to manage the mix thoughtfully. We remain focused on disciplined, long-term system growth and capital recycling when appropriate.
Your next question comes from the line of Rahul Krotthapalli with JPMorgan.
Colleen, does it make sense to test weekly membership plans in the system, say like a lower $4.99 or $5.99 Classic Card or like a $6.99 and $7.99 Black Card, given mature club capacity still remains? I know you guys do this in Australia and probably in some other markets. Are you testing these? Or what do you think the impact could be? And I have a follow-up.
Nice to hear from you. You're right, we do have other billing cycles in other geographies because that's what the consumer expects in those markets. Here domestically, in the U.S., monthly billing is the most typical billing structure. So to clearly answer your question, we have not tested and are not currently contemplating a weekly billing test in the U.S.
And then you shared some details on the upcoming app announcements. Is there an opportunity to provide something along the lines of nutrition or dietary recommendations or partnerships with meal networks out there, to your point on democratizing wellness beyond recovery? Any thoughts there?
We've done some of that to date. We have a partnership with Factor Meals, which provides balanced, prepackaged meal plan options and has had fairly good utilization among our members. We have also had a partnership with Ro, which provides nutrition and wellness counseling, including GLP-1 access and access to physician support, which launched in late Q4 of last year. It's been one of our most successful and utilized Perks programs to date. We're always exploring additional opportunities for Perks and partnerships and see an opportunity to utilize the app to offer more holistic access to other wellness partners through the member relationship with Planet Fitness.
Your next question comes from the line of Maksim Rakhlenko with TD Cowen.
So first, Colleen, can you remind us historically the mix of joins that would come during promotion versus non-promotion periods? There are some concerns that this price you're testing on the Classic Card could eventually become almost a shadow price decrease. And then separately, how do you prevent $15 Classic Card members from downgrading and rejoining at $10?
So we have historically not deconstructed publicly the promo versus non-promo joins in detail. What I will say is we intend to test this national $10 promo to read how it performs across different regions and geographies. It is not contemplated to be the new Classic Card pricing at all. As it relates to trade down, we ran a localized $10 Classic Card promo a couple of months ago, earlier in the summer, and one of the things we measured from that test was trade down, and we did not see significant trade down from $15 to $10.
Max, it's Tom. I'd add one thing, too. Back when we were testing moving from $10 to $15, we had numerous test cells back in 2024. One of the test cells was at $15 all the time and we would promote to $10 and across multiple promotions on plastic card, we didn't see really anybody — you could count them on one hand — who bought a $15 membership and then came back in when we went to $10 to downgrade. Essentially, it didn't materialize.
And I think the importance is that it will be a very limited time offer so that it doesn't become, to use your vernacular, shadow pricing.
Got it. That's super helpful. And then in the 150 to 160 franchise placements for this year, what's your expectation for the number of boxes that may open ahead of the ADAs? And then separately, can you just update us on usage levels of club cure periods today versus prior periods as we assess any potential risk around openings slowing next year?
Yes. Max, it's Tom. We don't really disclose how many are ahead of ADAs. Historically, pre-COVID a number of folks were ahead of their ADAs, but we currently don't disclose that. Broadly speaking, most folks are tracking to their ADAs, a couple might be slightly ahead. In terms of cure periods — the time to get a club open if it's delayed for reasons beyond our control like permitting — we also don't really disclose specific cure period metrics. But I would say it's not disproportionately higher or lower than it's been in recent years.
And maybe as a quick follow-up, given that it doesn't seem like you think that there is going to be much of a sell in openings next year, is that it?
We're not guiding next year at this point. We will do that in due course. But we're confident in where we guided openings for this year and, of course, came off a very strong opening year last year. We're feeling good about the unit opening momentum. Our franchisees want to open clubs and are typically weighted to Q4 openings because they want to open clubs in time for the Q1 acquisition period. At the end of the day, leaning into the flywheel and the strong economics of our focus on sustained member growth are the things that will be most accretive to unit economics and bring people into the system, like the new franchisee we just announced this morning.
Your next question comes from the line of Joseph Altobello with Raymond James.
So I understand the plan is not to roll back Classic to $10. But if the test does prove successful in certain areas, could you have different pricing across regions, for example for Classic? And then to follow up on that, is the plan still to go to $30 nationally on Black Card at some point?
One of the things we want to read from the national Classic Card promo at $10 is the regional nuance. We're not going to talk forward-looking about what our intentions are from a pricing architecture because we still have a lot in test. We consider this $10 national promo a test. As we read the test and make decisions, we'll communicate. You're right to infer that we're reading regional nuance with this. As for Black Card pricing to $30, we made an appropriate decision to pause the nationwide rollout of the Black Card price while we lean into net member growth this year, because that's the most accretive to the economic flywheel for our franchisees. At the same time, we're putting new modalities into the Black Card Spa, continuing to add value and looking at regional nuance. At some juncture there will be an opportunity to move on Black Card pricing; exactly where, how much and whether it will be static nationwide are things we're continuing to evaluate.
Got it. Helpful. And just a follow-up on that: what sort of changes have you made to the creative development process to ensure that it resonates with your target customer? Because it seems like you kind of lost your way a little bit during the past holiday period.
What I would say is the last campaign did a lot of what we asked it to do in conveying that you could get strong at Planet Fitness and that we have top-quality equipment. At the same time, some of our customers felt like we weren't talking to them about the things that make us most unique and special, which is our approachability and judgment-free environment. In the new creative and campaign you'll see us dialing up a bit more lightheartedness and a bit of humor, more approachability so that we broaden the reach and ensure we are marketing to the full 70% that is our target audience. As I mentioned in my remarks, you will see interim new creative later this quarter that conveys humor and lightheartedness while also conveying that you can get a great workout at Planet Fitness. The full new campaign for the Q1 join period will be tested throughout the next few months.
Your next question comes from the line of Sharon Zackfia with William Blair.
Colleen, maybe following up on that last question. Can you talk about any changes in the way you're testing the creative relative to last year? Because I know you felt good about the test last year and then when the launch happened, it didn't really meet expectations?
For the creative we were running in 2025, we tested it fairly extensively before we launched it, and it was driving increases in join volume. As you know, we had a 10% lift in member growth in 2025 versus 2024 despite headwinds from click-to-cancel rollout and the Classic Card price increase. As we saw traction with that campaign, we dialed it up and probably over-torqued in some areas: increased sweat levels, increased muscle size and brought in talent that represented more of the fit-getting-fitter segment versus the 70% that is our target. The change in the next creative and campaign will feature messaging and talent that conveys approachability. We will continue to test extensively with consumers and likely even more than we've tested in the past. That's one reason we're running interim creative starting this quarter — how we read that will help inform the full new campaign for Q1.
Your next question comes from the line of Xian Siew Hew Sam with BNP Paribas.
It sounds like Summer Pass is going well. Maybe could you compare it a little bit to last year? And I know it's important to attract the next generation of gym-goers, but could you talk about balancing younger consumers who may be more gym-serious versus more casual consumers? Is the marketing shift to less 'sweat' and less 'getting better' impacting acquisition of younger consumers at all?
High School Summer Pass last year had a significant increase in participation: more than 30% increase in participation in 2025 versus 2024, and we saw an increase in conversion at the end of the program last year. This year, while we're still mid-program, we're tracking pretty close to last year's numbers and maintaining that significant increase. We currently have over 12 million workouts and outstanding participation. We'll measure conversion after the program ends and market for conversion in the fall. Regarding younger consumers, Gen Z is the fastest-growing proportion of our membership and the largest proportion of our joins. Our brand is resonating with Gen Z. The Dynamic Creative Optimization engine launching in September will enable us to tailor marketing messaging to different target audiences. We've also seen effective use of influencers across social channels that resonate with younger consumers. The DCO engine and optimized media mix will help us reach all target consumers.
And then for maybe the second half same-store sales, you mentioned some moderation but staying positive. Could you give us a little more color on how to think about the mix of rate versus member growth in the second half?
In Q2, the comp increase was driven entirely by rate. That reflects the slowdown in net new joins. It reinforces our focus on prioritizing member growth across the system. Sustainable long-term growth is driven by expanding the member base, complemented by rate growth rather than the other way around. We're focused on driving membership growth.
I'll add two things: we are not projecting a negative same-club sales quarter in Q3 or Q4 in our guidance. But to Sudhanshu's point, the comps will be driven primarily by rate in the near term. We're also seeing continued increases in Black Card penetration, which contributed to the rate lift. We're focused on executing our strategy to reignite sustainable member growth.
We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Colleen Keating, CEO, for closing remarks.
Thank you. In closing, I'd first like to thank our team members for the progress on our priorities to really reignite sustainable member growth and also our franchisees for their support of these endeavors. We're proud of our leadership position in the fitness industry and our highly profitable business model with durable cash flows. Throughout our history, we've demonstrated our ability to adapt to changing market conditions while remaining focused on long-term growth. We've differentiated ourselves through an accessible high-value offering that has broadened the appeal of fitness to millions of consumers. That same disciplined approach continues to drive our strategy today, and I am confident it will fuel the growth that this brand can deliver. Thank you.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.