How much money you’d have lost if you invested at Peloton’s IPO

From a CEO change to announcing staff layoffs, it’s been a bumpy couple of days for Peloton.

On Thursday, Peloton announced it is laying off 15% of its global staff, which will affect around 400 employees. The company also plans to continue to close retail showrooms in an effort to “align the company’s cost structure with the current size of its business,” according to the May 2 announcement.

That same day, the fitness company announced that Barry McCarthy would step down as CEO, president and board director just two years after taking on the position from founder John Foley. He’ll become a strategic advisor through the end of the year, according to the May 2 statement.

As the company searches for a new CEO, Peloton Chairperson Karen Boone and Peloton Director Chris Bruzzo will serve as interim co-CEOs.

Peloton has come a long way from when the company was founded in 2012.

The buzzy startup quickly gained a cult-like following by delivering stationary exercise bikes that came with built-in virtual classes. It made its market debut on Sept. 26, 2019, with an opening trade price of $27 per share. In the midst of the Covid-fueled shutdowns of gyms and fitness centers, the share price surged to an all-time intraday high of $171.09 per share on Jan. 14, 2021.

However, a little over three years later, the decline has been steep. As of market close on May 2, Peloton stocks were trading at a price of $3.13 per share.

If you had invested $1,000 in Peloton in 2019, 2021 or 2023, here’s how much it would be worth now. CNBC’s calculations are based on the company’s May 2 closing share price of $3.13.

• If you had invested $1,000 in Peloton one year ago in 2023, your investment would have declined by nearly 64% and be worth around $364 as of May 2.
• If you had invested $1,000 in Peloton in 2021, your investment would have sunk by about 98% and be worth a little over $18 as of May 2.
• And if you had invested $1,000 in Peloton in 2019 when it first went public, your investment would have decreased by about 89% and be worth about $108 as of May 2.

Remember, you shouldn’t use a company’s current stock market performance to attempt to predict how it may perform in the future. Often, unpredictable factors can cause a company’s stock price to experience unexpected surges or drops in value.

That’s why financial experts typically advise against selecting individual stocks to invest in on your own. A more passive investing approach tends to make sense for most people.

Instead, you might buy exchange-traded funds or mutual funds. These types of funds aim to mirror a market index such as the S&P 500, which tracks the stock performance of about 500 large U.S. companies. With this strategy, your investment is actually distributed across a vast array of top performing companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia, rather than just one.

As of May 2, the S&P 500 is up by nearly 23% compared with 12 months ago, per CNBC’s calculations. Since 2021 it has grown by about 33% and soared by nearly 70% since 2019.

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