I'm not sure why this is being framed as an Ozempic story, when if anything it seems like it's more of a cautionary tale on not taking on $1.5 billion dollars of debt to buy back shares near all-time highs and crippling your company for over a decade before ultimately forcing it to file for bk.
Its stock tumbled ever since those highs and likely wouldn't have ever recovered had Oprah not bought and pumped it. To this day they still carry over a billion dollars in debt.
In fairness to the WW board of the last couple of years, they did make a of reasonable pivot to try to rectify the ship (like buying a telehealth service which prescribed Ozempic), but ultimately it seems like this buyback from 13 years ago created a burden that just made them unable to weather the storm gracefully.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/weight-watchers-ann...
Its stock tumbled ever since those highs and likely wouldn't have ever recovered had Oprah not bought and pumped it. To this day they still carry over a billion dollars in debt.
In fairness to the WW board of the last couple of years, they did make a of reasonable pivot to try to rectify the ship (like buying a telehealth service which prescribed Ozempic), but ultimately it seems like this buyback from 13 years ago created a burden that just made them unable to weather the storm gracefully.