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WW International, Inc. Common Stock Morgan Stanley 24th Annual Global Healthcare Conference

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Transcript

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Nathan FeatherAnalyst

Okay, great. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Nathan Feather. I am Morgan Stanley's Small & Mid-Cap Internet analyst. Just doing one presentation here at the healthcare conference. I am pleased to be joined today by Felicia DellaFortuna and Jon Volkmann, Weight Watchers, Office of the CEO. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Felicia DellaFortunaCFO

Well, thank you for having us.

Nathan FeatherAnalyst

Thank you. Before we begin, a few quick housekeeping items.

Nathan FeatherAnalyst

For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley research disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. With that, let us kick it off. I think a lot of investors are familiar with Weight Watchers as a brand, but not necessarily what the business looks like today.

Felicia DellaFortunaCFO

Can you give us an overview of where Weight Watchers is and how that has changed That infrastructure pretty materially.

Felicia DellaFortunaCFO

It went from about $1.6 billion down to approximately $465 million. As part of that, we were also able to half our interest expense, and we went from about $100 million to $50 million. Now this year, we do expect Weight Watchers to be free cash flow positive, which has allowed us to now start to reinvest in the business and really take shape in terms of this exciting GLP-1 stage. Just to give a bit of an overview on our products. We have two business lines, behavioral and clinical. Within our behavioral line, we have two products. For those of you that aren't familiar with Weight Watchers, we have a Core product and a Core+ product. Our Core product is access to our digital app and most importantly, our Points nutrition program.

Felicia DellaFortunaCFO

This is the most studied diet program across the world, and it does incorporate a lot of different factors into one easy Points number to allow for more seamless food tracking for members. This is a business that has been in decline, and that has been one of the things that has been most material and also an overhang to Weight Watchers. Post-bankruptcy, we did very much focus on our Core+ offering. Historically, people, when they think of Weight Watchers, they think of our Core+ offering, which is individuals going to meetings and getting advice from a coach that sits in a room. We had a hypothesis internally that there was still a need for community and support. It just needed to follow the new age. People were going to be less likely to drive to workshops, but they could maybe attend one virtually.

Felicia DellaFortunaCFO

We are very proud now that we have launched virtual experiences. Whether people are looking for emotional support, whether people are looking for more details on GLP-1, or they're looking for just utility, like how to cook for a family of 4. If you go on the app at any point in time, you will see that there's a virtual experience that you can attend. It's been a fantastic way of us curating community in this day and age. The other thing that we were also interested in is, are people still interested in structured behavioral programs for weight loss? What we were able to do is up-level our overall general Points program, and we launched a GLP-1 Success program as well as a menopause program in our Core+ SKU.

Felicia DellaFortunaCFO

On our GLP-1 Success program, whether you are on meds with or without Weight Watchers, and I'll get to that in a moment, you can engage with our GLP-1 Success program, and that has been a fantastic uptick across our members. We also have a menopause program that more specifically focuses on menopausal weight gain and fiber intake to also assist individuals. The one thing I will mention on Core+, because we have been a business in decline, our Core+ revenue line within our behavioral business has shown now three sequential quarters of growth in our subscriber count, which has happened only one other time in the last 15 years. We are definitely changing the way that our financial profile looks, and we are so proud of showing the growth in this Core+ SKU overall.

Felicia DellaFortunaCFO

It is very important because it is showing us that people do still want the accountability and the ease and the support that Weight Watchers has always provided. They just want it to be in this day and age, right? That is exciting. The last is that we also have a clinical business where we do prescribe GLP-1s. I will let Jon touch on that in just a moment. This has also been an area of business that has shown accelerated growth. In Q2 alone, we were able to grow our subscriber count by almost 56%. I think it was like 55.7, but very material growth.

Felicia DellaFortunaCFO

This is a business line that has gone from 10% of our revenue in 2024 to an anticipated 25%-30% of our revenue in 2026. We now have multiple product lines that stay true to Weight Watchers in that diversified support, but are also introducing GLP-1s. We are very excited about that. Jon can touch a bit more on our clinical offerings.

Jon VolkmannCOO

Sure. GLP-1s are obviously one of the most significant clinical breakthroughs of our lifetime, and we at Weight Watchers have embraced them, but we have aimed to do so in a way that feels true to our roots. We have a telehealth business today that we call Weight Watchers Med+, where we have hundreds of clinicians providing specialized obesity care to patients across the country. We really feel that it is important to go beyond the prescription and ensure that people are getting a high level of support and care in order to be successful while they are on that medication. Our members get unlimited access to their clinical team to help guide them through this process, which often can include things like side effects, dose titration.

Jon VolkmannCOO

We want to make sure that members and clinicians have a high level of touch and communication as they go through that process. We also do guide people through the insurance process. These medications have come down in price recently, which is great to see, but they still are very expensive if you are paying out of pocket. Through our EHR, we are able to file prior authorizations at scale on behalf of our members and help get them covered for medication, such that if they do have insurance coverage, they are paying the lowest possible price out of pocket. Then with all of that clinical care, we pair it with our Weight Watchers behavioral programs to make sure that people are getting the behavioral support they need to build healthy habits to help them be successful, potentially if they ever do transition off of medication.

Jon VolkmannCOO

They get access to our diet tracking app. They get access to the virtual workshops that Felicia DellaFortuna just mentioned. It is great to see people go through this, something like a new medical offering with the care and the support of other people who are going through the same journey as they are, and they are able to share that experience. We are very excited about GLP-1s, and we are very excited about our Med+ business, and we feel like it is going to be an important cornerstone for us to build around.

Nathan FeatherAnalyst

A lot in there I want to unpack. Maybe before we get into the Core business, you just hired a new CEO. Can you break down why it was the right fit and how it impacts your strategic direction from here?

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