Ozempic and other drugs like it have been threatening the established diet industry since they premiered — and it appears that Weight Watchers is now getting the hatchet.
In a note to investors, the long-running weight loss company is taking the "strategic action" of filing for bankruptcy in hopes of consolidating its immense $1.15 billion dollars' worth of debt.
The move comes nearly eighteen months after Oprah Winfrey, a Weight Watchers investor who served as the celebrity face and body of the diet company, admitted that she had started taking weight loss drugs like Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Wegovy.
Just a few months after that, Winfrey announced that she was exiting WW's board of directors and questioned the company's purpose alongside the advent of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist drugs, the class of medications to which Ozempic and other popular weight loss injectables belong. The drugs are believed to work by mimicking the stomach's feeling of fullness, lowering blood sugar in diabetics and preventing overeating in non-diabetic overweight people.
Though WW mentioned neither Ozempic nor the class of drugs it belongs to in its bankruptcy statement, its specter haunted the announcement — especially because the company is apparently looking to expand its telehealth services.
Back in October, WW announced that it would be offering compounded versions of semaglutide, the GLP-1 behind Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Wegovy. That branded compounding market, however, is both clogged with companies looking to cash in on the GLP-1 craze and, more importantly, rife with safety and quality control concerns.
Considering that workout meetings were once considered the company's main value proposition — one that had already been existentially threatened by the rise of fitness apps years before the GLP-1 revolution — it's not exactly surprising that WW's compounded GLP-1 gambit hasn't taken off as the company may have liked.
Confirmation of WW's filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which will not cease its operations but rather help it reorganize its structure and consolidate its debt, follows leaks to the Wall Street Journal last month that it was preparing for the filing.
In a WSJ interview following the confirmation of the bankruptcy news, artist and veteran WW member Naomi Nemtzow expressed her frustration at the company's pivot to telehealth and weight loss meds. As the New York Times documented back in 2023, the company abruptly ended its meeting in her Brooklyn neighborhood, leaving a void that she and her fellow former Weight Watchers had to fill themselves.
"Basically they gave up on the kind of work they had been doing and went on to selling Ozempic. They jumped on that bandwagon," the 75-year-old artist told the newspaper. "It’s become a quick fix, a fashion thing."
Critical impressions aside, Nemtzow's irked opinion does seem to indicate that WW is now suffering for its attempts to stay apace of the latest weight loss trend instead of doubling down on its bread and butter.
Then again, Weight Watchers was also a huge part of the fad diet craze in the 1990s and 2000s — so maybe, this is nature taking its course.
More on weight loss drugs: Human Experiments on GLP-1 Pill Looking Extremely Promising
The post Weight Watchers Goes Bankrupt After Rise of Ozempic-Like Drugs appeared first on Futurism.
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Weight Watchers Goes Bankrupt After Rise of Ozempic-Like Drugs
