Life Time (LTH) Q1 2026 Earnings Transcript

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DATE

Tuesday, May 5, 2026 at 10 a.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

- Chief Executive Officer — Bahram Akradi

- Chief Financial Officer — Erik Weaver

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Full Conference Call Transcript

Erik Weaver: Thank you, Connor, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for our Q1 business and financial update. Please note that this morning, we posted an earnings supplement on our Investor Relations website which includes additional detail on our membership mix and comparable center revenue. Starting with our first quarter revenue. Total revenue increased 11.7% to $789 million driven by continued strength and performance across our portfolio, including higher dues revenue and strong utilization of our in-center businesses. Comparable center revenue grew 8.6%, slightly above our expectations. As outlined in the earnings supplement, components of our comparable center revenue were as follows: improved membership mix, which contributed 3.5% growth.

This includes changes in membership types, the replacement of lower dues memberships with higher dues memberships, which we refer to as churn and continued expansion of clubs into more affluent, higher use markets. Price contributed 3% growth. This includes legacy membership dues increases and changes to the new join price of clubs within the previous 12-month period. And in center businesses contributed 2.3% growth due to continued strength in utilization of our in-center businesses, particularly dynamic personal training. Volume contributed a negative 0.2% to comparable center growth. This was driven by a reduction in qualified medical memberships, which I'll discuss shortly. As expected, comparable center revenue growth continues to move towards our long-term target of 6% to 8%.

Average monthly dues were $230, up approximately 10.5% year-over-year, and average revenue per center membership was $930, up 10.2% year-over-year. Growth in average dues was driven primarily by positive membership mix trends and execution of our pricing strategy, as I just described. We ended the quarter with nearly 838,000 center memberships, which reflects 1.4% growth. As we've discussed on past calls, we have been managing our membership mix. Part of our strategy has been to limit certain qualified memberships, specifically those administered by third-party medical insurance providers. We refer to these as qualified medical memberships. These memberships have significantly lower average dues. In Q1 2026, qualified medical memberships represented only 3.4% of our total dues revenue.

We expect this to be approximately 3% by the end of the year and continue to represent a smaller proportion of our dues revenue over time. In the first quarter, qualified medical membership declined by approximately 15,000, down 14.9% year-over-year, while all other memberships grew by approximately $27,000, up 3.7% year-over-year in total, resulting in 11.9% growth in total dues revenue. Due to further year-over-year reductions in qualified medical memberships, we expect total center membership growth of 0.5% to 1% in the second quarter, 1% to 1.5% in the third quarter and 2% to 3% in the fourth quarter.

However, we expect membership growth, excluding qualified medical memberships of 3.5% to 3.8% in the second quarter and 4% to 5% in both the third and fourth quarter. With this strategy, we expect to deliver revenue growth of 10% to 12% for each quarter and the full year. Moving on to net income. For the quarter, net income was $88 million, an increase of 15.8% year-over-year. First quarter net income included approximately $8 million of net tax affected items excluded from adjusted net income, primarily consisting of share-based compensation.

Net income in the prior year benefited from approximately $1 million of net tax affected items, driven primarily by $12.6 million of income tax benefits resulting from a significant exercise of stock options by our Chief Executive Officer, ahead of their 2025 expiration, partially offset by share-based compensation. Adjusted net income, which excludes the tax-affected impact of these items was $96 million, up 27.4% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA was $227 million, an increase of 18.3% over the prior year quarter, and our adjusted EBITDA margin improved by 160 basis points to 28.7%. The primary factors for our margin expansion included greater leverage on our center operating costs and corporate G&A, an overperformance of dues revenue and timing of sale leasebacks.

Of the 160 basis point margin expansion, approximately 30 basis points relates to employer payroll taxes associated with the CEO's option exercises incurred in Q1 2025. As noted in our earnings release, we updated the midpoint of our full year adjusted EBITDA margin guidance to 28%. This guide includes the impact from a majority of our clubs that are opening in the second half of 2026. And the associated preopening expenses and early operating ramp impact on margin. Net cash provided by operating activities increased to $199 million, approximately 8% higher compared to the prior year quarter.

Total capital expenditures were $260 million, up 82% from the prior year, reflecting construction activity in support of our new club openings for 2026 as well as the start of construction on clubs planned for 2027. As of today, we have opened 5 of the 14 clubs scheduled for opening this year. The remaining 9 clubs and the number of the clubs scheduled for 2027 opening are under construction. In April, we closed on sale-leaseback transactions that generated approximately $200 million of sale-leaseback proceeds and expect to complete approximately $400 million for the full year, supporting our ongoing focus on generating annual positive free cash flow. With that, I will now pass the call to Bahram. Bahram?

Bahram Akradi: Thanks, Erik. Good morning, everyone, and thank you to our teams across the company for their outstanding work this quarter. As Erik mentioned, we continue to see strong performance across all aspects of our business. We're not seeing any impact from the broader macro environment at this time. Demand has been particularly strong for our new clubs, including 4 clubs we just opened in the last 30 days. They're all performing extremely well. Our real estate pipeline continues to be robust. And we expect to continue growing both revenue and adjusted EBITDA in the low double-digit range. I'm going to keep my prepared remarks very brief as the results of our business speak for itself.

But I would like to focus and provide clarity on our positive free cash flow outlook. Last week, we announced the close of $200 million of sale leaseback and raised our full year sale leaseback target to $400 million, delivering positive free cash flow in 2026. We expect to deliver growing positive free cash flow each year going forward, while selling only a portion of our fee-owned real estate assets built in any given year, resulting in an increase to the value of real estate portfolio that could be used at any time as additional liquidity.

All of this puts us in a very strong position with very low leverage, robust and growing operating cash flow and a significant portfolio of real estate assets. We will continue to invest in our existing clubs, take advantage of our white space by opening new clubs and thoughtfully return capital to our shareholders. With that, we will open the call for questions.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of John Heinbockel with Guggenheim Partners.

John Heinbockel: When we look at what we know about right, it looks like another year of suburban ground-ups very significantly. How do you think about beyond '27? Do you think '28, '29 look like '26 and '27 in very much? And then what's your thought on takeovers. You had done a bunch -- you haven't done many in a while. I don't know if you like that use of capital. What's your thought on that type of project.

Bahram Akradi: Great question, John. Great to hear from you. The market is incredibly exciting ahead. We have some amazing club openings, nonsuburban an incredibly amazing urban markets. We've been dying to get into these with significant-sized clubs. Interestingly, right now, our urban clubs are performing with incredible return on invested capital as we go into those into leases and we put some leasehold improvements, the returns are incredible. They ramp exceptionally well. And the suburban clubs have never been better. Like what we are opening right now anywhere suburban, semi suburban is the best results I have ever seen in for the years. So we're just excited.

We're excited about all the sites in the pipeline, whether they're in a super, super hot urban markets where we are going to be part of larger developments, and we've been negotiating on some of these things for 5 years, 6 years, 7 years, I mean they just -- they take longer. So they're closer to the other side. And then we have a -- we still have a growing number of suburban prototype opportunities as the demographic shifting into markets like we just on Monday opened the club in Akatio. It's a second location in Gilbert, Arizona, not only that one, all 4 clubs, incredible results. But there are -- that market 5 years ago, there was nothing there.

And right now, it's one of the hottest market. So we have continued to explain, we are not having a concern about an outlook where we're going to run out of opportunities to build urban semi-urban or suburban clubs. I don't -- that is the last thing on our list of concerns here, just amazing opportunities, and they're all performing exceptionally well. The most important thing that I think is just misunderstood about this business is the return on -- the cash-on-cash return doesn't matter which way we do it. When we go into these clubs, into a lease with our leasehold improvement dollars in, we are always north of 30% in aggregate.

And when we are doing our clubs and take them to sell leaseback we do that or better. So I just don't -- it doesn't really matter to me. If it doesn't matter to me at all. if it's more suburban or urban or what markets right now, they're all doing exceptionally well. Hopefully, that answers you and others in regards to that.

John Heinbockel: Maybe as a follow-up to that, has that changed your -- that success to maybe lack of competition in some respects, has that changed your view on what the whitespace opportunity is whether it's -- I think at points you've said 600 maybe or more than that. In your mind, has that increased? And if so, by how much do you think.

Bahram Akradi: Fortunately or unfortunately, I think, is going to be way past your time and my time, John. I don't think we are concerned about running even -- we do 14 clubs a year. I don't see when we're going to get to the point where we have a hard time. And we have been looking at so much opportunity in the United States that, that always makes us ponder taking the time to engage in all the requests to go 10 hours, 20 hours, 30 hours away on an airplane to get to the international demand that there is for our brand. So that's because the amount of opportunity here in North America is enormous.

So there is really no concern. I think that we've always said 450, 500, I don't think we see any -- I don't think we see any window that is going to be smaller than that probably is going to continue to grow.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Brian Nagel with Oppenheimer.

Brian Nagel: Congratulations on a very nice quarter. And also very much appreciate the press disclosure on numbers, -- so -- thank you. So the question I have -- the first question, we've talked about this before, but in the release again today, you talked about within the inset of offering a dynamic personal trading has been a driver there.

So the question I want to ask is how do you look at the current penetration of DPT -- where is kind of the slack there -- and then with regard to membership and the disclosure we gave today, as you continue to sort of say, upgrade these memberships in these clubs, does that, in a way, give you more opportunity in DPT assuming that these nonqualified members are more likely to uptake that.

Bahram Akradi: Let me just first give credits to our entire DPG team from every DPT themselves all the way to our Senior Vice President who runs that. They do an amazing job that the brand of dynamic personal training has been understood. The quality of our trainers are exceptional -- we are continually seeing an increase to the number of productive dynamic resonate trainers. And the execution is exceptional. And we continue to see more opportunities. And you're correct, as we are executing our new brand positioning, which we have been in progress for the last 3, 4 years, positioning Lifetime as an acolyte country club with the exceptional desirability where the price is really not a factor.

The kind of customers who are coming to us they're not talking about the price. We're not promoting. We're not advertising. We're not giving a 3 month for them to join. They're just coming in and wanting to be part of the lifetime brand and experience. when those members also engage in-center businesses way easier than the ones that you pull in of trying to give them a 3 month or 2 months or something like that to get them signed up. Lifetime has never been in a better position, brand.

We have never been in a better position, and it's entirely because of the change in the positioning of our company and our brand over the last 4 or 5 years.

Erik Weaver: Yes. And if I can just add to that, Brian, Bahram talked about a number of trainers as we look to serve the demand. As we look across the portfolio, they're up -- trainers are up low double digits and new business is actually up even more. So again, that just speaks to the increased demand that Ron is talking about.

Brian Nagel: That's very helpful. And then my follow-up question, different topic. But thanks for the commentary on the cash flow dynamics here at '26. But as we look at that CapEx number, either what was closed from Q1 or guidance for '26. I mean, how should we think about that relative to the clubs that you're opening in '26. In other words, me, how much of that growth CapEx that you earmarked, so to say, is actually associated with clubs beyond the current year.

Bahram Akradi: Yes. So that's a great question. But we kind of Erik has covered this multiple times. It's roughly half and half, about half of the capital that we are -- we launched this year as a new club growth CapEx, half of it was the clubs are opening in 2026 and half are the clubs that they're starting -- we have already started construction. We bought the land for -- mostly for '27 and some of the '28 even.

That's going to be a