WeightWatchers CEO Sima Sistani is leaving the company

WeightWatchers CEO Sima Sistani is leaving the company after two and a half years. During that time, the company has radically altered its business model to stay competitive in the Ozempic era.

Board member Tara Comonte will step in as interim CEO. Comonte previously served as the president and CFO of burger chain Shake Shack and TMRW Life Sciences, a biotechnology company helping women through the process of getting in-vitro fertilization.

“The courageous transformation of WeightWatchers from a retail weight loss company to a digital weight health company has been the proudest achievement of my career,” Sistani wrote on Instagram.

Sistani, who previously worked at Tumblr and cofounded social media app Houseparty, joined the company in 2022 when it was wrestling with how to create robust digital communities in a Zoom-driven world and compete with digitally native upstarts like Noom.

But the same month she joined, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declared the first shortage of a drug that it had approved just a year prior: Wegovy, the semaglutide GLP-1 weight-loss medication made by Novo Nordisk. By the end of 2023, Novo Nordisk achieved more than $18 billion in annual sales of Ozempic and Wegovy, while sales of Eli Lilly’s rival GLP-1 drug, Mounjaro, surpassed $5 billion. GLP-1 sales are expected to hit $133 billion worldwide by 2030, according to MarketWatch.

Declining revenue and a telehealth pivot

Later that year, Sistani oversaw the acquisition of telehealth company Sequence, which prescribes weight loss drugs, including GLP-1s, for $132 million. Sequence was integrated in the company as a new offering, WeightWatchers Clinic, which cost $99 a month. Clinic patients would also have to pay for the cost of their medication, which is often not covered by insurance and can cost as much as $1,000 a month.

It remains to be seen whether WeightWatchers’ telehealth offerings will change the course of the company, but the past few years have ben difficult. The company ended 2023 with annual revenue of $890 million, down 50% from its 2018 peak.

On its most recent earnings call, WeightWatchers lowered its 2024 revenue outlook to at least $770 million, and said it could end the year with 3.1 million subscribers—which would be an 18% year-over-year drop. It has also trimmed costs and conducted layoffs, including executing a 40% reduction in employees at the VP level and above.

WeightWatchers stock, which traded at more than $100 six years ago, is less than $1 a share and was down another 3% on news of Sistani’s departure. In May, Oprah Winfrey, once a prominent spokesperson for the company, left the board and divested from the company. Early this year she announced that she had started taking GLP-1s.