It’s been a year of news ranging from bad to worse for Peloton founder John Foley.
Just weeks after stepping down as CEO, he’s reportedly listing his sprawling $55 million East Hampton home, just months after shelling out for it, the New York Post’s Jennifer Gould reported.
While it’s not clear how much the home is quietly being shopped for, Gould reported, it would be a loss for Foley and his wife just months after they closed on the mansion.
The four-acre oceanfront home was one of the biggest sales of the year in the ultrawealthy neighborhood of Long Island, N.Y.’s east end. Foley and his wife offered $2.5 million over the initial asking price in December.
Peloton, the at-home exercise equipment company Foley founded in 2012, was one of the biggest casualties of the stock correction this January that edged into bear market territory. It turns out people are going back to gyms, and Peloton’s stock is down almost 80% from its December 2020 peak.
Last month, Foley, 51, officially stepped down as CEO of the company and moved into a new role as executive chairman, passing on the CEO title to former Spotify and Netflix CFO Barry McCarthy.
Foley stepped down after months of bad press—including a recall of Peloton treadmills, layoffs for 20% of its workforce, and a failed celebrity partnership with Chris Noth, the Sex and the City actor who was accused of sexual assault by multiple women. The Noth ad was itself an attempt to counter a brutal depiction of his character suffering a fatal accident while working out from home on a Peloton in a recent episode on HBO Max.
It all has contributed to Peloton’s consistent post-lockdown financial woes. In its most recent quarter, the company reported a $439 million loss and abandoned plans to build its own manufacturing plant in Ohio.
Earlier this week, it was revealed in regulatory filings that Foley had sold almost 2 million shares in Peloton, worth roughly $50 million, to billionaire Michael Dell’s firm, MSD Partners, according to a regulatory filing.
“This decision to exercise some stock options and sell those underlying shares in a private sale to MSD Partners was John’s decision, based on his own financial planning,” Peloton said in a statement yesterday.
Reports last month suggest Peloton is attracting interest from several high-profile potential buyers, including Amazon and Nike, though any talk of acquisition is purely speculative at this point.
Neither Foley nor Peloton immediately responded to Fortune’s request for comment.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/peloton-founder-could-loss-55-171849972.html