PureGym: “If we build it, they will come” says gym chain riding out cost hikes
Value fitness club PureGym appears to have muscled its way through the start of the cost of living crisis with revenues spiking almost a fifth.
During the quarter it steamed ahead with its expansion plans to open one new site per week, amounting to 20 new sites in the UK.
The business, which offers competitive fees of between £21 and £34 in London, also said that adjusted EBITDA rose 28 per cent to £63m and operating profit rose 43 per cent to £40m.
Revenues topped £272m.
However, the group said that its utility cost growth was “restricted” by reducing energy consumption and keeping its membership contracts at a cheaper price point.
It warned that inflation, and rising energy prices in particular, put significant pressure on its cost base.
However the firm said it had secured fixed prices on around 90 per cent of its energy bills through hedging and had seen only a small increase in the running cost of each gym thanks to tight cost control since 2019.
“Demand for our low cost, flexible gym memberships remains strong and I am particularly pleased with the join up rates at our new sites – we have opened 92 corporate-owned sites since the end of the last Covid lockdown period in April 2021,” Humphrey Cobbold, chief of PureGym Group, said in a statement to markets this morning.
“I believe the pattern of robust demand in new sites confirms the underlying strength of the proposition and the growing importance of health and wellbeing to consumers. Paraphrasing the old saying, our carefully calibrated site selection process and proposition proves that “if we build it – they will come.”
Some had expected the cost of living crisis to hit discretionary consumer spend, including gym membership.
However the firm’s internal presentation suggested gym membership remained a ‘must have’ with luxuries like eating out falling away instead.