975: Turning the Tide at Beachbody | Marc Suidan, CFO, The Beachbody Company

When PwC partner and relentless champion of shareholder value Marc Suidan stepped into the CFO office at The Beachbody Company in April 2022, intrigue was bound to follow. Certainly, a struggling fitness and health company may not be viewed by many as the optimal door-of-entry to the operations side of things. However, for Suidan—a 17-year PwC veteran—Beachbody was without a doubt an enticing challenge. As a seasoned advisor to management, Suidan had contributed shareholder insights to the turnarounds and restructurings of dozens of businesses. However, at Beachbody, he would be executing from inside the organization, where the levers for strategic as well as operational improvement would be within his reach. “Interestingly enough, half of Beachbody’s business is digital subscriptions, while the other half is the nutritional supplements that people who work out consume,” he reports. “People take energy drinks before working out and protein supplements afterward, so these are all part of part of the health supplements that we offer.” Suidan adds that the current turnaround effort has relied on three core pillars: dramatic cost-cutting, enhancing the digital experience around their top-tier content, and fixing the nutrition business. So far, Suidan tells us, two of the three pillars are already paying off. “We’re on track to have created over $200 million in savings in less than 2 years—I mean, it’s just crazy for a company of this size to find this much saving so fast,” comments Suidan, who notes that the company also revamped its digital platforms last March, a development that led CNN to name Beachbody’s consumer app the best in the fitness and workout app space this past December. During the coming 12 months, according to Suidan, energy drinks, protein supplements, and the diversification of Beachbody’s nutrition channels will be top-of-mind. “My two big pieces for the coming year are, number one, to finish that third pillar of the turnaround, and, number two, to get the message out—which is not easy, by the way, right?,” he concludes. “There are 4,000 public companies, but we need to talk about the two legs that we’ve already completed, so we should be able to get that message out.” –Jack Sweeney