2/28/2024

speaker
Eric
Interim CFO

And our adjusted EBITDA margin of 24.6% increased 200 basis points as compared to the fourth quarter 2022. Our strong financial performance continues to drive growth in cash flow and a reduction of our net debt leverage. Net cash provided by operating activities increased 74.7% to $132.1 million as compared to the fourth quarter 2022. We reduced our net debt to adjusted EBITDA leverage to 3.6 times in the fourth quarter versus 6.5 times in the prior year period. For the full year, total revenue increased 21.6% to $2.217 billion, driven by a 24.4% increase in membership dues and enrollment fees and a 15.3% increase in incentive revenue. Net income for 2023 was $76.1 million, versus a $1.8 million net loss in 2022. Adjusted net income was $129.7 million, which increased by $171.3 million versus a net loss in the prior year. Adjusted diluted earnings per share was 64 cents compared to a loss of 21 cents per share for the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA increased 90.6% to $536.8 million, and our adjusted EBITDA margin of 24.2% increased 8.8 percentage points compared to the full year in 2022. We are extremely pleased with the company's financial performance in 2023. With momentum on our side, we are very excited about the opportunities in front of us in 2024. I will now turn the call over to Brahm.

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

Thank you, Eric, for your commitment to the company for the past 20 years and for excelling at your new role as interim CFO. Let me begin by expressing my gratitude to our 37,000 plus team members at Lifetime. Our continued progress and success would not be possible without their passionate and relentless commitment to elevating our brand and delivering the finest member experiences in the leisure industry. We accomplished this through our innovative programming and services designed to delight our 1.5 million members across North America. I'm extraordinarily proud of our accomplishment this past year. 2023 was a great year of outstanding progress for Lifetime. We achieved every one of our operating and strategic objectives while exceeding our financial goals, and our progress is continuing this year and has set us up very nicely for 2024. Early 2024 has been among the strongest starts we have ever seen in terms of member engagement, member visits, and member retention. In terms of financial goals during 2023, we increased our revenue by over 20%. Even more impressively, our adjusted EBITDA almost doubled compared to the prior year. In addition, a primary financial objective has been to lower our net debt to adjusted EBITDA. We are making progress here, and we expect this ratio to be under three times by the end of 2024. As it relates to our operating and strategic progress, we continue to elevate our brand, our programming, and our member experiences are the finest in the high-end leisure industry. The enhancements we have developed in the areas such as a small group training, pickleball, and Aurora offering have increased the desirability of our brand and the engagement of our members. As a measure of remarkable progress we achieved during 2023, by the back half of the year, member visits in our same store clubs had essentially caught up to the very high levels of 2019. The clubs look and feel healthy and energized, a trend that we're seeing into the 2024. With the increased demand for our membership, we have now more than 20 clubs with wait lists and we expect to have additional clubs on the waitlist by the April-May timetable. While establishing waitlists for our busiest club is designed to maintain our extraordinary member experience, it also improves our member retention. We are experiencing record visits per membership as a result of the strategic initiatives we developed and implemented over the last several years. Increased visits per membership translates into higher retention rates and enhanced member satisfaction. We expect to realize the highest retention rates in the history of the lifetime for 2024. Like most high-end leisure brands, we're not seeing any weaknesses in our demands or traffic so far in 2024. Right now, we see no reason to suggest that positive trends we're experiencing today should change going forward. Importantly, we're not seeing any negative impact on our business from the new weight loss drugs we're all hearing so much about. For individuals on such programs, Exercise and strength training is absolutely vital for avoiding the loss of lean muscle mass and for maintaining healthy weight long term. We are confident that this mega trend will be particularly positive for lifetime. I will be glad to expand on this with more details during Q&A. Our key financial objectives for 2024 are, first, to deliver double-digit growth for revenue and adjusted EBITDA, as stated in our earnings release this morning. We're guiding to a revenue of 2.46 billion to 2.5 billion, an adjusted EBITDA of 595 million, to 610 million for 2024. And secondly, to be cash flow positive after all capital expenditure for the year. At this point, we're still expecting to turn positive during the second quarter of this year. Again, we'll be glad to expand on this during Q&A. Now that lifetime recovery is very much behind us, going forward, Our intention is to issue guidance on an annual basis consistent with our high-end leisure industry peers, such as Vail Resorts. We plan to visit this annual guidance quarterly and update as needed throughout the year. To help with this transition, we're providing first quarter revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance. and this will be our last quarterly guidance. With that, we're guiding to the revenue of $585 million to $595 million and adjusted EBITDA of $142 million to $146 million for the first quarter. Over the last 30 years, Lifetime has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to respond to major challenges and emerge better and stronger every time. We have become a highly coveted high-end leisure brand, and as such, our growth opportunities have continued to expand as our business has evolved. As a highly evolved subscription business, our priority is to be the most desirable brand in the leisure industry by providing the finest destinations, the strongest programming, and the best customer experiences. To track our success, we constantly measure member engagement, which has never been higher, as illustrated by visits per membership and our improving retention rates. In sum, for 2024, we look forward to continue to build upon the progress and the successes that we delivered in 2023 and the momentum we're enjoying so far this year. Thank you. We're happy to take your questions now.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. One moment, please, while we pull for questions. And our first question comes from the line of Megan Alexander with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
Megan Alexander
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Hi, good morning. Thanks very much. Brahm, I wanted to ask about membership a bit. You know, you talked about early 24 being amongst the strongest start in terms of engagements, visits, retention. I guess looking at the fourth quarter, where you ended from a membership perspective, it does look to be a bit below what historical seasonality would suggest. you know, maybe can you just walk us through how 4Q played out relative to your expectations, both from what you're seeing in terms of churn and new joins, and then what you're seeing so far in 2024?

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

It's a great question, Megan. Good morning. So the fourth quarter was just slightly above our expectation in the net memberships. Our expectations are basically, as we've stated over and over, is focused on really trying to get the right balance of the membership so we can deliver the right experience in the clubs. Fourth quarter of this year, everything was as expected or slightly better, as I mentioned. However, we had more, and I'd like this versus like 2019, we had way more club openings in that fourth quarter that offsetted some of the memberships that they drop, the seasonal drops that comes from September to December. But everything is completely in line and, again, within our expectation except better. And then the same thing beginning of the year. Our beginning of the year is slightly above our expectation in terms of the net membership gain. And that is truly the name of the game in our business. It's really the net membership is how many memberships are dropping out, how many coming in, and finding the right balance there to make sure you don't overcrowd the clubs, you don't pinch the experiences. So, you know, we constantly manage that as diligently as we can do across all the different centers.

speaker
Megan Alexander
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Really helpful. Thank you. And maybe as a follow-up, can you just talk about the openings for the year? I think you said 9 to 10. Maybe help us with how many of those are asset light versus some of the more big suburban heavy build-outs. And then just related to that, I think on the last quarter call you said You may need more clubs if we're doing more asset light to get to a similar revenue number. I think this 9 to 10 is a bit below what you've been doing, so maybe just help us understand what the offset is there.

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

Yeah, it's just a little timing on getting the projects through the construction phase, approval phase. We actually have a pretty front loaded this year. We have about half a dozen clubs that we open early. We have a total of about nine, ten clubs. And I think the one thing that we tell you is that when you guys, this is the challenge that we've talked about with our business, is that, you know, it's like just asset-light doesn't mean they're smaller. Like, as an example, we're opening two clubs this year, Harbor Island and Droid in Atlanta, these are full-sized clubs. They're 90,000 indoor, outdoor, tennis, pickleball, you know, 90,000, 100,000 square feet total assets, you know, indoor plus the external. But they were asset-light. You know, we got these back from the landlord. They took it away from a different – they gave us nice TIs, and then we're spending maybe another 10 or 15 million bucks for each one out of our pocket. But they're not small clubs. And then there are some clubs at like 40,000 to 60,000 square feet facilities. And there's a half a dozen clubs, four or five clubs that they're opening right now early this year. And these are big clubs. These are big traditional facilities. that we had started building last year and they're just opening. As we go through the balancing of the CapEx, you will see a bunch of the CapEx last year was for getting these clubs launched. The bulk of the money was spent. Now they're just going to open. Then we have a club like Arden in Sacramento, California, And that facility, again, is a large facility, but it, again, will show up as an asset light. So asset light doesn't mean necessarily they're smaller. It just means that we got into it with less than $60, $65 million of our capital up front before the sell is back.

speaker
Eric
Interim CFO

Yeah, can I, if I could just add to that, just if from a square footage standpoint, just to add to that, you know, last year we opened up 800,000 square feet and we intend to do the same or more this year. So just to add to that point.

speaker
Megan Alexander
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Makes sense. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Carroll with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
Chris Carroll
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Hi, thanks. Good morning. So, Bram, maybe can you talk about some of the trends that you're seeing in your newer markets versus your legacy markets? You know, if you could touch on what you're seeing from the perspectives of revenue per center member or visits in those different markets, that would be helpful.

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

Yeah. So let's talk about, you know, let's separate clubs from markets. Newer clubs opening up. They're opening up with a faster ramp, the fastest ramps we ever have had in the history of the company. They're opening up and we're pretty much cash flow positive at the center level and contribution margin at the center level, like within 60 days, 90 days. This is much faster than they used to be on a contribution margin basis. The best results. Their revenue... per square foot however you want to look at it for the asset the average membership price all of those are higher than the traditional clubs where we have the legacy large amount of legacy membership where we have told you guys repeatedly while we are raising legacy prices we don't do it all at once and we are very thoughtful of the customer reaction to how we treat them in this matter. So the new clubs are breaking records one after another in terms of how they are getting opened up. We just opened Red Bank New Jersey yesterday with brand new records in everything. So we are really, really thrilled about the way the business is working. The older clubs We spent significant amounts of time, money, and energy over the last two years in remodernizing, updating those clubs so they can deliver same experience and the same programmings as we're doing in our brand-new clubs. We spent the bulk of that money over the last 24 months, and the result of that is that they're all having their best same stores, and generally speaking, those older clubs are doing better than they ever have as well, and they're continuing to accelerate in their ramping. And some of them, you know, some of the older clubs are like the Westchester, Syassa, Garden City, these type of clubs are way above where they used to be, and they are doing numbers as good as all the record-breaking clubs that we are opening. And so, really, across the board, we're not seeing any sort of a trend. Our last performing clubs of the past, and when we're digging in on those, and we spend very methodical energy on identifying the top 25, what we do right there, the bottom 25, what we're not doing great there, and we break it down. That's where we have the opportunity in just our own execution. It's not the market. It's not outside forces. It's just our own lack of precision in execution in some of those markets, which is then we work really, really hard to sort of try to figure out how we problem solve. But the new business model, this is the most important thing, the most important takeaway for all of you. The new business model, the positioning of Lifetime as a higher-end leisure company, having the most engaged customers that we have ever had, having the most visits per memberships that we have ever had. The new model is far superior to anything we had ever executed over the last 30 years.

speaker
Chris Carroll
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Got it. Thanks for all that. And then on the center operations expense, can you provide maybe a little bit more detail on what drove that lower as a percentage of center revenue in the 4Q? I mean, even lapping some of the costs coming out in the 4Q22, you were still able to see some good leverage on that line. So, you know, hoping you could expand a little bit more on that CenterOps leverage and to what extent you expect this to continue into 24.

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

Thanks. So, we expect to have our EBITDA margin hovering between 23.5% and 24.5%. Now, that doesn't seem like a big margin, but it is quite a bit when you actually look at the numbers, that 1% up or down. And that's the difference in like, okay, the timing of the clubs, you open a bunch of clubs at the same time, you have to pre-hire everybody, you're taking all that expense, you open the clubs. So then, really, we're buying a little bit of buffer for that. As we... get the clubs more caught up in re-ramp. So this is another super important takeaway for all of you. We were misunderstood beginning of last year. As I brought up to you guys and repeatedly explained, we weren't re-ramped in our clubs and most clubs were in a re-ramp stage. Today, that re-ramping of the clubs is probably 90% done. but they're not 100% done. So you're gonna see throughout the year the impact of that catching up. So this levels of EBITDA margin, this 24% give or take, half a percent, is where I would recommend someone to target in their modeling. I wouldn't go much higher because sometimes we do deliberately decide to make additional investments to make sure the experience will stay top-notch. And so that's really what I can tell you. So I don't see a particular shift in anything we did. It's just naturally the business caught up. You know, more dues coming in as the clubs are re-ramping and producing. Now, we're spending more money, as I've mentioned to you guys, and we will continue to spend more money on programing. on pickleball pros, pickleball leagues, small group classes. We're adding, we're paying more to the top end stars that would people love to follow. So we're going to continue to invest to deliver the highest experiences. And then the opposite of that, of course, when you're delivering that, you end up clubs on a wait list. You have the ability to charge exactly what you need to charge. to make sure you can get the right experience in there and the margin will come right through.

speaker
Chris Carroll
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Great. Thanks so much.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Perry with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
Alex Perry
Analyst, Bank of America

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on a strong quarter and finish to the year. I guess just first, can you talk about your pricing outlook, especially in light of, you know, a large amount of clubs being on wait lists? What is your expectation on where pricing could go versus the $183 of average monthly dues you ended in 2023?

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

So I'm going to start. I'm going to give it to Eric and Danny to chat about this. You know, they run the forecast and updates all day long. So you should kind of think about it in two major categories. We have done the bulk of repositioning for our company over the last couple of years. And that means we needed to move the clubs out of the middle level price point, get them to the high end, and make sure the experiences matches. and to make sure Lifetime homogeneously is a higher-end leisure brand in an athletic country club space. Most of that is done. The next piece is we feel a little pressure on the club utilization. And at that point, all right, do we add another $10 a month or $15, $20 a month to the rack rates? we're almost forced sometimes to add that price to make sure the club doesn't get overcrowded. And then, you know, the way we're managing it now is we basically quickly put the club on a wait list and then we can manage the wait list, manage the sign up, and then we can say, okay, now maybe we need to go from $249 to $259 or $259 to $269. So that's really, I would say the bulk of it is done. the new changes to the rack rates, new rack rates would be modest changes going forward, necessary by over demand, right? But it will be modest. And then you should expect, because of what we have told you, when we told you guys middle of last year, we have about $17 million difference between the customers who are not paying the RAC rate, if all of them paid the RAC rate, that's 17 million a month. We're never gonna take that all at once. We're gonna just bleed that in so ever slowly. So again, the customer experience is not like we're gouging them or we're taking advantage of the situation. So that's gonna come in but some of it with the churn, when somebody drops in at 182, the next person comes in at 220, 230, that's going to continue to kind of lift a little bit. And then the other piece of it is there were small legacy price increases. So I expect we see more like, you know, typical year, not 2024, We will have still, because of this tail end of the re-ramp, we will have a bigger same store. But going into 25, 26, 27, I expect a 3% to 4% same store growth opportunity just as this pricing thing just work its way through the pipeline, if that helps you at all.

speaker
Alex Perry
Analyst, Bank of America

Yeah, that's incredibly helpful. And then my follow-up is I just wanted to ask about the strategic initiatives. Are there any new strategic initiatives we should be thinking about to increase member engagement beyond what you've already talked about? You've talked about pickleball, small format group training. You started to talk about a new food offering or Miura, just any new strategic offerings that we should be thinking about that should help drive 2024. Thanks.

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

Yeah. So I don't – so everything you're thinking about 2024. So we are doing sort of a revolutionary change like we did with DPT with our food. Our food was really playing – we were, as I mentioned to you guys, we played offense coming out of COVID – but we didn't play offense in our food. The food was playing defense. It was unimpressive. I was, for the most part, and I don't want to say this is across all the systems, but generally speaking, very uninspiring, very boring, just kind of defensive actions, and that was the 2024 initiative. We just launched beginning of this year, so the freedom and creativity were allowing the clubs to kind of test, provide suggestions and offers. We're having a really, really enthusiastic launch with this. It's going to take months and months and months before you're going to see meaningful material numbers, but I expect we're doing 10, 15, 20% better on our F&B by the back half of the year than we're doing right now. We're seeing the lift start, but it's going to be kind of slow and gradual. Miura is a huge opportunity for particularly lifetime. We have exactly the right customer base in our clubs. And one of the mentions that I mentioned that I wanted to expand on was the weight loss drugs. This is not, this is going to remain a mega trend. It's going to stay. It's not for, and it's particularly not, only it's not a negative for exercise because you absolutely need to combine the proper weight training and nutrition with these drugs if you want it to work. They will work. They are, they will stay. But just like everything else, it's a tool. People can use the tool the wrong way. People can use the tool the right way. If they use the tool the right way, the exercise business is going to get a win out of it. However, lifetime is particularly in the right spot because our customer is paying $200 to $300 a month for their membership. The weight loss customer is spending $500,000, $600,000 a month on this drug. They are going to want the right professional facilities and professional personal trainers and nutritionists to help them with the augmentation of the big investment they're making in that. Some of these people would feel uncomfortable going to clubs initially. Now that they get a little head start, they lose 15, 20, 30 pounds, they get more comfortable coming in, and not only that, they also start seeing, hey, shoot, I am losing weight, but I'm also becoming skinny fat, to put it mildly. And then they really have all the elements needed to go to a right place. And then Lifetime is uniquely positioned, again, because we have many locations. In every market, we have facilities where we can launch MIRA clinics for longevity, for addressing this weight loss problem, trends, the peptides, all of that. There's also regulations against that. A lot of people are trying to do this online across states. The expectation is that clearly you're going to have to visit the doctor in your states. And again, we are so perfectly suited With the facilities we have, the clinics that they're already embedded in almost every market, we have at least one or two facilities that have built-in clinics in them. So we look at this as nothing but upside.

speaker
Alex Perry
Analyst, Bank of America

Perfect. That's very helpful. Best of luck going forward.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Nagel with Oppenheimer & Company. Please proceed with your question. Hey, good morning.

speaker
Brian Nagel
Analyst, Oppenheimer & Company

Good morning. Nice to be here.

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

Thank you so much.

speaker
Brian Nagel
Analyst, Oppenheimer & Company

Eric and Danny, welcome to the call.

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

Thank you.

speaker
Brian Nagel
Analyst, Oppenheimer & Company

So I've got a couple questions. I guess more quantitative in nature, but Baran, we talk a lot about, and you mentioned again the call today, the plan to get to free cash flow positive for the year starting in the second quarter. Can you just go through, and I know this may be a bit of a follow-up to one of the prior questions, but just the building blocks of that, particularly with Lifetime still here in 2024, still pursuing a relatively aggressive expansion plan. How should we think about the building blocks to get to that free cash flow positive in Q2 and beyond?

speaker
Eric
Interim CFO

Yeah, Brian, this is Eric. I can take that. So, I mean, as we kind of mentioned, our adjusted EBITDA, call it 600, right? We expect probably about another 130 for debt service, and then you account for our non-cash rent. That's going to get us to about $500 million of cash before CapEx. So, that's going to give us $500 million of capital to deploy. And in our pipeline that we have planned that shows us, that gets us to that free cash flow, that pipeline is going to deliver that double digit top and bottom line that we talked about. So it is math, and the math works, and we've got it planned out.

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

So the $500 million he's mentioning, you know, we'll probably spend roughly $150-ish, give or take $10 million, $15 million of that in modernization of our facilities and capex for technology, et cetera, right? And that leaves, call it 320, 330, that can be purely applied to future growth capital. And when you start thinking that, you know, some of these assets are, you know, kind of upfront leases where we're getting some, you know, TIs, and then we put some of our capital in, you know, for those type of clubs, I would put 10, 15 million in on average. If we take a club, if we build the ground up for 65 million, take it back to sell these back at 50, now we still have 15 million. It's just upfront loaded. This is really important for all of you guys to sort of understand the beauty of our position right now. When we have the clubs that are committed to, on an asset-like basis to a landlord. They have a certain expectation of when they're opening. They're providing their TI. We're putting the money in. We're pretty much locked in. But the good news is the investment is small. When you look at the ones that we're doing ground up, which is $60 million, $65 million of upfront spend, and then going to sell these back, now the 100% of control of that is in our hands. We own the land. We own the construction company. We're the GC. We can decide exactly when we want to start that. So our commitment to you guys is, hey, we're going to deliver double-digit top line and bottom line, and we're going to manage this amazing cash flow. And then, again, I mean, next year we're going to generate more cash. than 320, 330 million that allows us to deploy more capital for growth. So we feel really solid about what we're telling you here. Is that helpful?

speaker
Brian Nagel
Analyst, Oppenheimer & Company

No, it's very helpful, Baram and Eric. So let me, that's helpful. Let me ask another question, or I guess it's a follow-up to that. But, you know, so first, we've been watching the business sort of, say, develop, evolve, you know, out of the COVID crisis. You know, we talked, you mentioned this, I think, in your prepared comments, Baram, about the what I call referred to as a slap, you know, the ongoing rewrap, so to say, in these clubs. But as you look at the centers now, and forgetting or putting aside for a second the new centers you'll be opening in 24 and beyond, what's still the incremental EBITDA? So again, and I'm asking this from a perspective, you've been, for all intents and purposes, blowing away your EBITDA expectations for the last several quarters now. But as we look at the base of centers now, what do you view as the incremental EBITDA that could come as a result who come just from the centers you have now?

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

Yeah, you know, Ryan, this is probably one of the most astute questions that any investor should ask and then get the full detail and really model this out. But really the way we look at it, and when we went private with how the private equity shops looked at this, okay, how many clubs do you have? If you don't, if you complete what you have under construction and don't build anything new, what would be the EBITDA. You can sort of rough and tough backup envelope, except about 100 to $150 million of incremental EBITDA that will come if you ever stop development and let everything that is left completely mature out. That's the kind of a missing link in here in people calculating rate of return. And the way that Eric, Danny, and I are thinking about this as we go forward is to provide you guys, hey, here we have X amount of dollars deployed at the end of 2023. We expect that at maturity, give it two more years on all of that investment. We expect this level of revenue and EBITDA on that bucket. We're going to spend $400 million. I'm just giving this as an example, $350 million, $400 million of new net capital this year and this much including leverage, whether if it's capitalized rent or whatever, and then you can expect such and such revenue and return on that over the next three years. So that's the way we need to kind of translate our business in the future and so that this piece is not misunderstood. But roughly $100 to $150 million of incremental EBITDA would be if we just, you know, the clubs were opening, let's say, by the first half of the year. Let all of these clubs mature. You can add that number. It can be $700 to $750 million of EBITDA.

speaker
Brian Nagel
Analyst, Oppenheimer & Company

Yeah, very helpful. Congratulations. Good luck here. Thank you. Thank you so much.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Einbacher with Guggenheim Partners. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
John Einbacher
Analyst, Guggenheim Partners

Hey, Buram, I wanted to start with, can you talk a little bit about the pipeline? I know you look at the battleships, the takeovers, urban residential, and suburban mall. You think about those four. what is the pipeline of projects that you're looking at look like, right? And each of those four, and is the idea going forward that you sort of want to do 50% capital light and maybe not so much projects, but well, I guess projects, 50% capital light and 50% not capital light. Is that the idea so that you spend 500 million or so in total CapEx?

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

Yeah, it's a great, great question. So look, here's what I believe. I'm I'm right now currently in discussions for Sully SPAC with certain entities. And there is a couple different ways to answer your question. I want to be full detail on this. So we have at least 10 sites that are under contract, land paid for, permits are in process. So we can start the ground-up facilities. And I want to start changing the term from battleship because what happens is people think that if we take over 120,000 square feet club and an asset-light basis, it's no longer a battleship. So let's just talk about ground-up versus non-ground-up. So when we look at the ground-up assets, there is currently and in the past how we've done those. is we have bought the land, we've built them out, we've spent 60, 65, today's dollars, 70 million bucks to build them out, and then we take out 45, 50, 55 million of that and sell these back after the club is open. We also have had situations where our landlord has said, okay, we will buy that 60 days after you're open, they have a binding LOI, They'll take it from us when we are able to pay off all the bills and get them clean lien waivers on that. The other way to get them done is to actually just do like we put up $10 million, they put up $50 million, we put up the last $10 million, and we have a structure that is sort of some mixture of a lease up front and go forward. We're working on all these different options, but we have in a pipeline basis, John, we have enough deals in the pipeline that we can start as many as those that we want and we need to accomplish our goal. We just literally have 100% flexibility there. On the other side, it's a little more opportunistic. I am going to be, after today, after all these calls, meetings, et cetera, going to be on the plane flying out for a couple of days. I'm looking at assets. Two or three of them are things that we can take over. We can spend some money, remodel, and launch. So there, and then there are, you know, we're discussing, you know, people, office building is another market where people, It's another huge growth opportunity. You have a new office building. You have to revitalize this thing. You need a game-changing. You can't have your own little fitness center in there that nobody goes to. You need a branded experience inside of that, like people need the branded experience in the high-rise apartment buildings. And there are just enough deals in discussion and pipeline, John, that I do not see a scenario where we cannot deliver 10 clubs a year and 800,000 to a million square feet per year. That's the way I see it. Now, the makeup of that, I don't want to tell you it's going to be this makeup or that makeup because then it looks like we said something, we did something different. I think you can expect about 800,000 to a million square feet of new assets coming online per year. And the return on them is all pretty much the same. We target high 30s IRR on our net dollar invested. So if we, after sell-lease back, get to the same number, and if this lease up front rests with target, we're looking at a 35% plus IRR on the dollars we invest.

speaker
John Einbacher
Analyst, Guggenheim Partners

That's great. One other question or opportunity, I think. So you look at in-center revenue, right? You think about wallet share, right, with your premium households. I mean, how do you think about growing that? Because there's a big opportunity to do that. There's some holes. But I also think you have it marketed aggressively, I don't think so, to those existing households. So how do you attack that and when?

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

Yeah. Listen, if you have something worth purchasing or service worth taking, our customer will do it. So it's our own business. lack of execution when the customer isn't buying from us. So to just illustrate that to you, as I'm taking through the top 25, bottom 25 clubs in execution, I'll give you an example, a cafe. Some clubs are selling $30 a customer, some clubs are selling six. So if we're selling $6 a month per customer, what we're doing is we're just making sure the customer doesn't walk into that cafe. we are turning them off. The service is slow. The food isn't exciting. It's not thrilling. But then we have examples like Miami Falls or West Palm Beach where we are delivering the right experience and the numbers are just dramatically different, right? But the only thing I can tell you is that you can sit back and I'm proud of my team. I want you guys to understand. We We got hit by a tsunami, a hurricane, and a tornado all at the same time at 2020. It's been a sequential and methodical progress. First, we had to get the traffic and dues in. Then we had to work the next most important thing, reinvent our personal training. We had, in January, we had 2,500 applicants for our personal training department versus... 11 to 1,200 the year before. Lifetime, it takes time to build a brand for the customer to come. So we fixed PT. PT is on a great progress. We're having record weeks right now as we're going forward. Now we're working on Cafe. The Cafe will take, as I told you, from beginning to end of the year. Miura. And then the other area we have not done a adult, even a thoughtful job in the past, is our shop, is what we actually package, experience, we provide for people buying Lifetime branded clothings, LTH nutritional products, etc. All of that now has been bundled up under one superb executive of the company named Kimo and his team. We are working on that. Again, I wouldn't go change the numbers, John, for the next quarter or quarter after, but I expect us to deliver sort of an incremental revenue opportunities through our shops, through Miura, through Cafe, through Spa. We have enough tailwind this year to deliver the numbers we delivered, we just gave you. What we gave you and guidance for the year and for the quarter, that's just the tailwind of the things we have done. It does not require the implementation of the things I just mentioned to you to get those numbers. But we want to get those things rolling so we have enough momentum into them by the fourth quarter this year So then we have set ourselves up properly for 25 and going forward. That's really the way. We have tons of opportunities yet left in our own execution. I emphasize, you know, we do a lot of things great, and we have a lot of opportunity to improve our execution, John.

speaker
John Einbacher
Analyst, Guggenheim Partners

Thank you. Thanks.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Baumgartner with Mizuho Securities. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
John Baumgartner
Analyst, Mizuho Securities

Good morning. Thanks for the question. Maybe, Ram, I wanted to ask about the digital strategy. You know, the digital on a whole has really bottomed out in 2023, it seems. And I'm curious how you're thinking about digital as you're gaining visibility into the post-COVID world, post-COVID activities. How are you thinking about digital engagement at this point? Are there tweaks to the strategy going forward? Is there a need to invest or manage differently? in regards to digital? Thank you.

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

That's a great question. We are execution there. The goal is if you look at the digital companies that everybody thought they're the messiahs of the world or the game changer, you have to take a look and see where they're at today. And the reality is I don't think that's a sustainable business. However, providing digital option to all of our customers is a must. And so therefore, we are 100% committed. There is massive initiatives in line. If you look at our app today, it basically provides everything from podcasts, the best content, the best information, It has best on-demand sort of exercises and a very, very robust streaming and everything else you would ever need. So what we haven't done yet is we haven't decided to kind of robustly market that and create the kind of, I would say, the two options of the one that they pay a certain amount a month, $3 a month, or the freemium option. For lifetime, this is the byproduct of what we have to do for our access customer. So we have every option. So if we choose to take this thing to where we have millions and millions of incremental subscribers, that they're not paying anything, but they have access to our brand and some of the content, and then they can do other things. They can shop online with us, et cetera. That's within our decision bandwidth. And I'm not going to expand more on it. All I can tell you is, obviously, you should expect we're thinking through all these things, and at the right time, we deploy the right strategy.

speaker
John Baumgartner
Analyst, Mizuho Securities

Thanks, Rob.

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. And our last question comes from the line of Simeon Siegel with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question. Thanks.

speaker
Simeon Siegel
Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Morning, guys. Nice job. I hope you're all doing well.

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

Thank you, Simeon.

speaker
Simeon Siegel
Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

From really great CD increase engagement stats and the retention was fantastic. Could you quantify that at all? Where are we now for retention versus pre-pandemic, to your point? And then how does that play into general membership expectations for the coming year? Maybe what are you expecting for membership growth embedded in that full-year revenue guidance?

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

Thank you. Yeah. Those are two, again, very astute questions, Simeon. The biggest indicator of the desirability we offer is that we, our customer wants to stay, right? So I have been, I had been surprised in the persistence of a higher attrition rates than 2019. In 2023, early half the year, that was just the, you know, 2020 was way higher. despite the fact we don't have sales, we don't have promotions, the customer joins on their own merit. But then we saw that number just consistently come down. This is the attrition rate. And now from here going forward, we want to refer to this as retention, which is basically the inverse of that number. So in the fourth quarter, in the back half of 2023, we start seeing you know, kind of beating 2019, very nicely beating 2022. But now we are projecting potentially in the 90% range of 2019 and 80% of, 80-ish percent of 2022, 2023, So when we go this year, we can have attrition rates that could be almost 20% better than last year. So these trends are right now. Again, attrition rate, Simeon, is a couple months ahead. So right now, if you came in today and put your notice to drop your membership, you're effectively an April attrition, right? So we can see that number forward, and the trends are very, very solid. I expect us to, the big number for me, the big BHAG is we'll end up the year with 29 something attrition rate, which would be the historically best attrition rate in the history of the company ever.

speaker
Simeon Siegel
Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Great.

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

And what was your other question?

speaker
Simeon Siegel
Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Membership? How are you thinking about, yeah, exactly.

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

So just within the- So I think the reshuffling of the business You know, I think we are within the last, honestly, last 10% of the re-ramp. And therefore, I think from here going forward, I don't expect the membership, you know, I don't expect to give up memberships to get the dues, if you know what I'm saying to you. So we expect to see a modest membership gain on a regular basis going forward for the year.

speaker
Simeon Siegel
Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

That's great. Thanks, Ram. Best of luck for the rest of the year.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you so much, my friend. Thank you. And we have reached the end of the question and answer session. I'll now turn the call back over to CEO Rob McCrowdy for a closing remark.

speaker
Brahm Akradi
Chairman & CEO

All right. I just want to thank all of you guys for your very, very, you know, diligent Q&A and care that you have for the company. I am grateful to all of our team, as I mentioned early in the call, for their passion and their commitment. And we're looking forward for a great year. So hopefully we're looking forward to having you guys in just about 60 days again and continue our progress forward. Thank you so much.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

And this concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Disclaimer

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