Peloton Looks To Sublease 100K SF Of Its Manhattan HQ
As Peloton tries to dig itself out of a deep financial hole, it is putting a large chunk of its pricey Manhattan headquarters on the sublease market.
The interactive fitness company has listed 100K SF for sublease at Hudson Commons, according to a marketing brochure for the space obtained by Bisnow.
Peloton signed a 312K SF anchor lease at the trophy office building at 441 Ninth Ave. in 2018, occupying nearly half of the 700K SF tower on Manhattan's Far West Side. It leases 298K SF across all of the fourth through 10th floors, as well as 13K SF on the building's lower level.
The fourth and fifth floors, each spanning roughly 50K SF, were recently made available for sublease. They are connected by an internal staircase and would be delivered to a subtenant "fully furnished and wired," according to the brochure from Newmark, which represented Peloton in the initial lease and is listing the 100K SF space.
In December, Hudson Commons developers Cove Property Group and Baupost Group sold the building for more than $1B to CommonWealth Partners and pension fund CalPERS. Cove and Baupost said at the time the building was 73% leased. There is currently 213K SF of office space available for lease at the property, according to the building's website.
Pelton is paying $94.82 per SF in a lease that runs through 2035, The Real Deal reported, citing documents related to CommonWealth and CalPERS' CMBS loan. Peloton and Lyft — the ride-sharing app that serves as the building’s other anchor tenant — reportedly accounted for 87% of the building’s rent revenues when the CMBS loan closed in January.
Peloton went public in September 2019, and was one of the early standout stocks of the pandemic, when Americans were stuck at home and overwhelmed the fitness company with demand for its connected equipment. It was also one of the pandemic’s early victims of supply chain snarls, as customers had to wait months to have their orders fulfilled.
Its stock price soared to nearly $160 per share in early 2021, but after a slew of missteps — from having to recall thousands of malfunctioning exercise bikes and treadmills to canceling plans for a $400M U.S. factory — most investor value has been erased. It closed Wednesday trading below $10 per share.
Activist investors have also tried to shake up the company over the past year, resulting in John Foley’s resignation as CEO, layoffs for 2,800 staff and most recently replacing its chief financial officer earlier this month.
Peloton is far from alone among companies looking to recoup some of their real estate costs by listing offices on the sublease market. At the end of 2021, more than 18.5M SF of Manhattan offices were on the sublease market, according to Colliers. Peloton subleased its previous office, a 65K SF spread in Chelsea, to Cockroach Labs last summer.
Representatives for Peloton and CommonWealth Partners didn't reply to requests for comment. Brokers for Newmark, which is listing the space, and CBRE, which leases the building for the landlord, declined to comment.
Jarred Schenke contributed reporting to this story.
