Life Time Group Hldgs (NYSE:LTH) reported third-quarter financial results on Thursday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.
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Summary
Life Time Group Hldgs reported a 14.2% increase in total revenue for Q3 2026, reaching $893.5 million, driven by higher dues revenue and strong in-center business performance.
The company raised its full-year comparable center revenue guidance to 8.5% to 8.7%, up from 7.9% to 8.3%, due to strong membership acquisition and in-center business growth.
Net income for the quarter was $106.5 million, up 4% year over year, while adjusted net income increased 24.6% to $115.9 million.
Strategic growth is focused on opening new clubs, with plans to open 14 new clubs in 2026 and 2027, supported by strong visibility into the development pipeline.
Management highlighted significant growth opportunities in Dynamic Personal Training and LifeSpa, contributing to double-digit growth in in-center business revenue.
The company completed a sale-leaseback transaction generating $62 million, with plans for additional transactions in Q4 to support positive free cash flow.
Life Time Group Hldgs maintains a strong financial position with a net debt leverage ratio of 1.3 times and over $900 million in liquidity.
The company remains confident in its outlook, expecting continued strong performance despite macroeconomic uncertainties, leveraging its premium business model.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Greetings and welcome to the Life Time Group Hldgs third quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press Star-0 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Connor Wiener, Senior Vice President of Treasury and Investor Relations.
Thank you. You may begin.
Connor Wiener (Senior Vice President, Treasury and Investor Relations)
Good morning. Thank you for joining us for the third quarter 2026 Life Time Group Hldgs earnings conference call. With me today are Bahram Akradi, founder, chairman and CEO, and Eric Weaver, executive vice president and CFO. During the call we will make forward-looking statements which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements made today. There is a comprehensive discussion of risk factors in the Company’s SEC filings which you are encouraged to review.
The Company will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures including adjusted net income, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted diluted EPS, net debt to adjusted EBITDA, or what we refer to as net debt leverage ratio, and free cash flow. This information along with the reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included, when applicable, in the Company’s earnings release and earnings supplement issued this morning, our 8-K filed with the SEC, and on the Investor Relations section of our website.
With that, I’ll turn the call over to Eric.
Eric Weaver (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Thank you, Connor, and good morning everyone. We appreciate you joining us for our Q3 business and financial update this morning. In addition to our earnings release, we posted an earnings supplement to our Investor Relations website with additional detail on membership mix and comparable center revenue. Starting with our third quarter revenue, total revenue increased 14.2% to $893.5 million driven by continued strength in performance across our clubs including higher dues revenue and strong utilization of our in-center businesses. Comparable center revenue grew 8.7%. This was above our expectations and driven by an outperformance in our membership acquisition and in-center business performance. As outlined in our earnings supplement, comparable center revenue growth consisted of 2.4% from improved membership mix, 3.0% from price, 3.0% from our in-center businesses, and 0.3% from volume.
In-center business growth was driven largely by double-digit growth in Dynamic Personal Training and LifeSpa. As a result of our Q3 performance, we have raised our full-year comparable center revenue guidance to 8.5% to 8.7%, up from 7.9% to 8.3%. Average monthly dues were $244, up approximately 11.9% year over year, and average revenue per center membership was $1,016, up 12% year over year. Year-over-year growth in average dues was driven primarily by positive membership mix trends and execution of our pricing strategy. We ended the quarter with approximately 859,000 center memberships which reflects 2.2% year-over-year growth. As we’ve discussed on prior calls, we continue to actively manage our membership mix, including limiting certain memberships administered through third-party medical insurance providers which we refer to as qualified medical memberships.
Qualified medical memberships declined by approximately 21,500, or 19.6% year over year. All other memberships increased by approximately 39,600, or 5.4%. This strategy is working, as reflected in the 13.7% increase in total dues revenue. In the fourth quarter, we expect total center membership growth of 2.4% to 3.1%. Excluding qualified medical memberships, we expect center membership growth of 4.8% to 5.2%. Moving on to net income for the quarter, net income was $106.5 million, an increase of 4% year over year. Adjusted net income was $115.9 million, up 24.6% year over year. Net income in the prior year included tax-affected net cash proceeds of $16.2 million received from employee retention credits under the CARES Act and a tax-affected net gain of $5.7 million on a sale-leaseback transaction. Adjusted EBITDA was $256.3 million, an increase of 16.5% over the prior-year quarter, and our adjusted EBITDA margin improved by 60 basis points to 28.7%.
As noted in our earnings release, we increased our full-year 2026 revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance. We also increased the midpoint of our full-year adjusted EBITDA margin guidance to 28.4%. Our updated guidance includes the impact of seven clubs opening in the fourth quarter and the associated pre-opening expenses and early operating ramp impact on margin. Net cash provided by operating activities increased to $262.1 million, approximately 4.4% higher compared to the prior-year quarter. The prior-year quarter included certain non-recurring items, primarily the same $16.2 million received from employee retention credits under the CARES Act that impacted net income. Total capital expenditures were $288.7 million, up 29.8% from the prior year, reflecting construction activity in support of our new club openings for 2026 as well as the construction of clubs planned for 2027 and beyond.
In September, we closed on a sale-leaseback transaction that generated approximately $62 million of proceeds. We expect to complete approximately $135 million of additional sale-leaseback transactions in the fourth quarter. Our full-year target remains unchanged at $400 million, supporting our ongoing focus on generating annual positive free cash flow. With that, I will pass the call to Bahram.
Bahram Akradi (Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you, Eric. Good morning everyone, and thank you to our team members for their incredible work and dedication. Our third quarter results were above our expectations across the business including dues, memberships, and our in-center businesses. We are seeing very good results from our new initiatives like CTR Hybrid, XT, LT Games, and LT Social. Our members are engaging with our clubs more than ever as average monthly visits per membership reached 13 times in Q3, up 4% year over year.
Opening new clubs remains our most significant growth opportunity. We’re on track to open 14 new clubs this year, the high end of our initial range. We also expect to open 14 new clubs in 2027, nearly all of which are already under construction, and we have great visibility into our pipeline. Beyond that, the quantity and the quality of the development opportunities in front of us have never been better. Our outlook remains strong. We closely monitor visits, joins, retention, and in-center spending, and we continue to feel very good about what we are seeing across the business. While we remain mindful of the macroeconomic environment, we believe we’re in a very good position to perform in various economic conditions given the strength of our premium business and our balance sheet. Our net debt leverage ratio is 1.3 times, we have more than $900 million of liquidity, and we expect to deliver another year of positive free cash flow.
The financial strength allows us to continue investing in our clubs, pursue attractive growth opportunities, and deliver strong revenue and adjusted EBITDA performance. We look forward to your questions.
OPERATOR
Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star-1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press Star-2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions.
Our first question comes from Randy Koenig with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.
Randy Koenig (Analyst at Jefferies)
Thanks so much for allowing me to ask some questions here. So I guess, Eric, for you, what I noticed what was interesting in the quarter is that when you take out the qualified medical memberships, membership growth is up 5.4% in the quarter and that accelerated from 4.2% in the second quarter and then also which also accelerated from 3.7% growth in the first quarter. And then you just guided, I think, 5% growth for membership at the midpoint for the fourth quarter.
So can you kind of unpack that a little bit because it seems you’re getting some acceleration there. And would you think about that mid-single-digit membership growth being somewhat sustainable over the medium term? And are there items of lower churn impacting that number? Are you seeing, you know, higher members per membership impacting that number? Be really helpful to unpack that because you’re seeing that acceleration from a low single digit to a mid-single-digit type of growth rate.
Eric Weaver (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Yep, yep, you’re welcome. Yeah, exactly. You know, you mentioned membership mix. We continue to obviously see that improve. But, you know, we got a couple of things happening in our memberships. You know, as you know, this year, the number of clubs that we’re opening and the size, you know, they’re larger. And so as we open more clubs in Q4—we’ve got seven in Q4—so a growth rate that is getting closer above five is long-term sustainable and that’s going to continue to hold next year as we plan to do 12 to 14 clubs as well.
So that’s exactly right. You’re seeing kind of that acceleration as we look at that, absent the impact of those qualified medical—
Randy Koenig (Analyst at Jefferies)
Super helpful. And then maybe just one other here. If you go back to the guidance you gave a couple quarters ago where you said, you put that line in the sand and said, hey listen, we’re going to be big enough when we have these units open to generate $400 million of free cash flow by 2030. Yet the quarterly revenue and EBITDA performance seems to be coming in better than expected, at least what we’re modeling, and very balanced. So do you think about that timeline kind of accelerating a little bit versus 2030?
How do we think about that? And then when you think about deploying those cash, those free cash flows maybe remind us of what you’re thinking about in terms of builds or other options, dividends or share buybacks or stuff like that that we should be thinking about in the business.
Eric Weaver (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, I would still point you to 2030. I mean that is our kind of current forecast. Again, we’ve got flexibility in how we get there. As you know, we’re doing 12 to 14 clubs. We’ve got the opportunity for ground-ups and, you know, some of those more urban builds. But, you know, at this point, our trajectory, we’re still pointing to that 2030. Now, it doesn’t mean that, you know, along the way we may have opportunities to accelerate that. But in the event that we do, obviously we will update that.
But I would continue to point you to 2030, I think as we look through the next several years. But the strength of the cash flow generated from the business itself, together with our very, very low leverage that we have right now, continued growth in the asset value that we still own, the fees for the buildings, I think the options are going to be significant. And we will look at, obviously, two things. We look at the cost of the capital and then what the return on investments are. And we basically choose the lowest cost of capital to grow our business.
We’ll maintain that flexibility and then we’ll make the decision according to what’s best at any given time.
Randy Koenig (Analyst at Jefferies)
Understood. Thanks, guys.
OPERATOR
Our next question comes from John Heinbockl with Guggenheim Partners. Please proceed with your question.
Jake Nebosch (Analyst)
Hey guys, good morning. This is Jake Nebosch on for John here. Two for me. The first one, the average in-center revenue per member has been sequentially accelerating pretty meaningfully since the start of the year. And just curious, you know, what is driving those gains? You know, any seasonality factors to consider here, you know, such as anything with pool relating to the pools or, you know, is it largely still related to personal training?
Eric Weaver (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, I can take that. Yeah, exactly right. When you look at our comp, you know, last quarter we had a great comp. This quarter, you know, same thing. And a large part of that continues to be the success that we’re seeing in our in-center businesses. Right. So you know, we put out that supplement that kind of broke down that comp and in-center was, you know, 3%. So that’s exactly right. We’re seeing, you know, you know, great, you know, in-center business penetration there and average dues and acquisition retention.
So exactly.
Jake Nebosch (Analyst)
Perfect. And then just a follow up for me here, and you kind of alluded to it before, but with the 27 Club pipeline, you know, almost complete and you know, rolling through 28 now, you know, just curious if you could talk to us about your current thoughts on the size of the opportunity and the components from ground up to urban developments. I know you know, briefly mentioned that a little bit before, but just curious if you can elaborate on that.
Thank you guys.
Bahram Akradi (Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
I’ll take that. This is Bahram. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, the quantity and the quality of opportunities in development for us in the pipeline really has never been better. I don’t really want to pigeonhole the company in exactly how many of what type of clubs we’re going to deliver on a given year. And the only reason I don’t do that is the size of the clubs that we are doing are significantly large buildings. Whether if we go into an existing project, into the brand-new building that is being built and we’re included in that project, or we’re doing ground up, the timing of these things can move around significantly based on acquisition approvals, site work, et cetera.
So we are very confident right now that we can deliver the higher end of the 12 to 14 for the foreseeable future. And with that, we’re super excited with the opportunities that we’re seeing. And we’re also having a lot of incoming requests for international growth as well. On top of what we are addressing to you right now, just in US, and those significant additional opportunities are ahead of us when we have the opportunity, the time to invest in going into those markets and start exploring what we can do there.
But right now, the last concern I have is lack of growth opportunities. It’s just we’ve never seen anything better.
Jake Nebosch (Analyst)
Perfect. Thank you very much, guys.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from Arpinia Khatrian with UBS. Please proceed with your question.
Arpinia Khatrian (Analyst at UBS)
Thank you. I appreciate it. Good morning. So, you know, my question is, you know, overall consumer picture has gotten maybe a little bit weaker or at least perception of it is that it has softened a little bit. But your results today show acceleration. More importantly, if you look at average revenue per center member is accelerating as well, nicely. And this is before larger clubs really get into the same store comp. Before we think about acceleration from here, could you maybe talk about the sustainability of this revenue per center member growth, particularly as it relates kind of these newer clubs coming online.
And specifically, if you could talk a little bit about other places you see room for improvement for in-center spend and how you execute on it. Thank you.
Bahram Akradi (Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
All right, that’s a great question. We have significant variance between the execution level of our in-center businesses within our roughly 200 locations that we have right now. So without concerning ourselves too much about the outside macroeconomics, we have significant opportunity to focus on improving those particular locations where they have significant opportunity in front of them. So I really like to focus the investor and our team members on taking the opportunity when the opportunity is right in front of you.
Hiding behind macroeconomics isn’t something we’re going to do now or we’re going to do later, but we’re really not seeing any impact from the macroeconomics. We are watching it, as I mentioned in my remarks, we’re not ignorant to it. We are paying attention as closely as we can, picking up as much information as we can from all sources we trust. And with an eye on that, we’re working on what are the things we can do better inside of our control. And there’s quite a bit of opportunity still there. Many of our clubs are executing exceptionally well not only in creating that desirability for the customer experience for the facility that brings them the subscription and the dues, they do an exceptional job in in-centers, whether if it’s personal training, cafe, spa, kids, and some are mediocre.
And we have the opportunity to go within and sort it through. And we do it every single week, every single month and figure out where we can go and improve our performance. And I still feel very comfortable that we have significant opportunity within our capabilities and our execution.
Arpinia Khatrian (Analyst at UBS)
Thank you, that’s very helpful. And my follow up is related to the leaseback market, you know, in general the transaction environment given rising rates and maybe just if you could talk to the depth of the market right now and whether some of these kind of core factors like rates affecting you much,
Eric Weaver (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
I can take that. Yeah. I mean the cap rates don’t move one for one like with the ten-year as an example. And so we’re still getting attractive rates as it relates to sale-leasebacks. And so yeah, the availability is obviously still there. So we’re still able to get those at rates that are attractive.
Bahram Akradi (Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
Rates are very similar to what they have been historically. And the difference in the few percentage points in the, like a 20-basis-point, 15-basis-point on the cap rate absolutely is insignificant in our total numbers that we will deliver. It’s just, it’s not significant at all. It won’t play a factor in our numbers.
Arpinia Khatrian (Analyst at UBS)
Thank you. This is very helpful, thanks.
OPERATOR
Our next question comes from Brant Montour with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.
Elizabeth (Analyst at Barclays)
Hey, good morning everyone. This is Elizabeth on for Brant. Thanks for taking our question. So I wanted to ask, I know part of your strategy has been this ongoing membership optimization and the continued reduction in qualified medical members. I’m wondering how much more runway do you see here both in terms of where you think that membership base ultimately settles out and over what time period and then maybe as a follow up to that as well. As you think about, like, the general contributors to membership mix in your comp set growth, how do you think about the relative contribution from each of those individual buckets, whether it’s expanding into more affluent markets, members for membership, legacy churn, et cetera?
Bahram Akradi (Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
All right, I’m going to take this on and give you an answer that I can best formulate for you. I start with the end. It’s really once again not going to play a significant factor. It has never been a huge part of our dues revenue. It is a member sector that we would love to serve in a reasonable fashion. Over the last four or five years, you know, some of our partners, insurance companies, have been extremely good partners and they have been also very realistic on what our particular situation is and what we can do and what we can’t do.
We have been in negotiations with most everybody. We’re in a very, very good place and getting as much flexibility for our side to handle this type of population at the time in our clubs that it does not create capacity issues for the other members. So it is a delicate situation. It’s not significant in numbers. It’s delicate in terms of how we want to treat all folks as they want to come in and enjoy the Life Time facilities. And we want to try to serve the best way we can without impeding on other types of memberships. So it’s a delicate management. We are extremely focused at making sure we’re doing the right thing by all constituencies and yet buying as much flexibility in how we handle this.
Ultimately, as a percentage of our total membership numbers, these numbers will continue to decline, but very, very slowly from here going forward based on our negotiations. As far as the relative dues as a percentage of our total dues, it’s also going to continue to be reduced to almost diminishable number. It’s just not something we have a concern. Again, it’s all about making sure we take care of our customers the best way we can.
Eric Weaver (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah. And to your comp, the second part of that question, the way you’re going to see that materialize in the comp is, right, some of that, you’re still going to see a mixed component of that being part of the comp. But you’re going to start to see volume increase as you start to see the 12 to 14 and some of the larger format clubs. So that’s the way it’s going to play out in the comp set.
Elizabeth (Analyst at Barclays)
Great. Thank you.
OPERATOR
Our next question comes from Brian Nagel with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question.
Brian Nagel (Analyst at Oppenheimer)
Hey guys, good morning. Nice quarter. Congratulations again. So the first question I want to ask, or top I guess is pickleball. You know, so clearly, you know, we’ve talked for a while about, you know, pickleball being a significant effort and driver for a Life Time. There’s been some news out there lately or recently of maybe some failures within the broader pickleball market. So I guess the question I want to ask is maybe twofold. One is an update on what you’re seeing with your pickleball and your centers, member engagement, such.
And then secondarily, as you have these potential financial dislocations out there, does that create or help to create more of a market share opportunity for Life Time given you’re managing the business much better.
Bahram Akradi (Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
Hi Brian, this is Bahram. I’ll take this one. Look, the failure of some of these pickleball-only facilities, franchise based, it’s not a surprise. It was clearly my expectation from the get-go. Developing a racket sports business that is strictly based on that particular racket sport—strictly squash clubs, strictly racquetball clubs, just entirely tennis clubs, or pickleball facilities—there’s no difference. They are difficult economically to work.
Life Time concept has always been creating an environment that basically gives you all things under one roof. So I don’t—we haven’t been too concerned about those people coming and we’re not too concerned about them going. Many of the locations they have are not the type of real estate we would put a pickleball court in because they’re inadequate spaces, they are not enough the right spacing, and it’s not something that we’re going to jump in and try to go take over to run them. So we have an incredible success with the way we are executing our pickleball. Our customer appreciates the entire facility, everything else they get with pickleball, the quality and the attention to detail that we provide for every aspect of our business.
So, and actually the business is performing very, very strong still for us. So I don’t think these entities coming and going is a function of this—anything wrong with the sport. It’s really a function of people coming into it half-cocked without enough information, without enough due diligence, and they just roll out a bunch of franchise facilities and of course a lot of them will run into trouble. There’s nothing more to read into it. I’ll take it again with this one. Look, it’s all about execution. If you go back and sort of check back the past remarks over the several years, you know, we came back out of COVID with a strategy to focus on our swipes, getting the subscription built, building our dues, working on our efficiency or wiring of the company to create the margins. And then the next important priority was DPT, our Dynamic Personal Training, ran by our superpower here, Ryan Sonnenberg, that basically has really transformed the personal training and that has been really working and building and building and building sequentially.
The next two areas of focus were then spa and the cafe. The cafe is the strategy to go in and basically streamline, simplify execution so we can execute everything that we do much better. That has helped us with the margin improvement this year because we are streamlining, with expectation that we will grow the revenue in the cafes next year. The spa, the team has done a phenomenal job of increasing engagement and bringing additional talent, recruiting the best spa talent into locations.
And we’re seeing nice growth. So we are basically sequentially picking the areas that we need to improve. And spa has been one of those that has been showing up in revenue growth very nicely. And we still have much more runway to go with the spa, and we have significant runway to go with the cafe. And so those are both areas of focus right now, with some early work paying proper dividends, and there’s plenty more work to do in both areas. Thank you.
OPERATOR
Our next question comes from Eric Dillar with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please proceed with your question.
Eric Dillar (Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group)
Great, thanks. Taking my questions. Congrats on another strong quarter here. First one for me, just a bit of a follow-up on the incentive revenue. So obviously some nice progress improving the mix of qualified medical memberships. And I know that the sort of difference in revenue generation mostly comes up in the dues for qualified medical memberships, but wondering if there’s any material or significant difference on incentive revenue spend from those members to call out as we kind of think about that mix continuing to decrease.
Eric Weaver (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
No, I mean, nothing there. And quite honestly a lot of those qualified medical memberships, they tend to swipe less and they’re obviously maybe even a little less engaged in the incentive businesses. So, you know, it’s actually a net positive for us in that regard.
Eric Dillar (Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group)
Okay, that’s helpful. And then last one for me, just a bit more of like a kind of macro qualitative question. So, you know, obviously, you know, consumer sort of focus on fitness has increased a lot over the past handful of years as you guys continue opening clubs in new markets and kind of increasing your depth in existing markets. Just curious what you’re seeing from an overall market share perspective. Like how much do you kind of view this membership growth as, you know, kind of the growing pie overall versus members switching to Life Time from other clubs.
Just kind of wondering how you’re sort of viewing that more longer-term kind of market share opportunity for you guys. Thank you.
Eric Weaver (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
I don’t know, Ram, if you have a different perspective here, but a lot of our consumers that we have in our clubs don’t obviously overlap with some of the high volume, low price. But what we see as we’re going into more high-end markets, our members are willing to spend more wallet share on health and wellness. And so we obviously expect that to continue, the trend in the industry to continue. And we expect to see that play out in all the markets we’re going to.
Bahram Akradi (Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
The only thing I can just emphasize is that deliberately, since coming back from COVID 2021, 2022, we have consistently focused on placing the company at the top end of the K-shaped band for the consumer. We have consistently felt that we were not seeing any impact from the consumer getting the macroeconomic pressures. And the customer who is coming to Life Time is coming to Life Time fully because of the desirability of what we deliver to them. And that particular customer is not, you know, I don’t think they’re shying away from buying things still.
So we’re not seeing any impact.
Eric Dillar (Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group)
Very helpful and encouraging. Thanks for taking my questions.
Eric Weaver (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Thank you.
OPERATOR
Our next question comes from John Kipor with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.
John Kipor (Analyst at Goldman Sachs)
Great. Thank you, guys. Good morning. I appreciate the question. So I just wanted to talk about incentive revenue a little bit more. Obviously in the comp, we’ve seen an acceleration in the last three quarters. I’m just wondering if you guys expect for that to continue in 4Q or, you know, it’s a seasonally smaller quarter. I’m not sure if you’re expecting a drawdown. And then if you can point to maybe the drivers of that sequential improvement, it sounds like it’s DPT and spa, but just any more color on like DPT attachment, is that going up?
Is it higher frequency, is it pricing? Just exactly what’s driving that.
Bahram Akradi (Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you, you’re very clever. As I’ve said, we try not to make mid-quarter comments, but I’ll refer you back to what I said earlier. We are not seeing any impact from anything. So our results are still following the same trends that we’ve had in the past. Again, there is seasonality into the summer months with the pool beach clubs. But taking that seasonality out, everything is still exactly the same.
Eric Weaver (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, and we’ve kind of said this, it’s kind of been the same kind of thing quarter over quarter. You know, as it relates to DPT, we’re adding more trainers. Their efficiency is going up. You know, it’s another quarter. We don’t give penetration, but, you know, we did have an increase in penetration. I mean you could take this across the incentive business. As you look at the number of swimmers we have, you know, that was up double digits. So, you know, when we talk about the overall execution and the experience, when we do that, it obviously heightens the level of incentive business engagement, and that’s what we’re seeing continue to see.
John Kipor (Analyst at Goldman Sachs)
And are you seeing the same kind of trajectory both in the comp centers as well as new centers, that DPT attachment and revenue generation?
Eric Weaver (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
We are, yeah. So it’s not just the new clubs. We’re also seeing that in comp clubs across the portfolio.
John Kipor (Analyst at Goldman Sachs)
Perfect. Sounds great, guys. Thank you very much.
Eric Weaver (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Thank you.
OPERATOR
Our next question comes from Chris Waronka with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.
Chris Waronka (Analyst at Deutsche Bank)
Hey, good morning, guys. Congratulations on another great quarter. So obviously, again, really impressive results on the comp growth with both dues and in-center. You’ve talked a lot about it. The question would be, when you look at the bucket of folks who are not spending as much as the top end on in-center things, is there any thought to giving them bundling options to draw out that spend? Just curious. I’m not really talking about the medical qualified memberships, but there’s probably a bucket of folks who on a relative basis are underspending versus the higher end.
Is there any initiatives you guys are working on to increase spend among that group? And again, it’s a good problem to have because you’re having very good results. But you’re always looking for more, right?
Eric Weaver (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Well, I would say we’re always looking for ways to obviously add value to the membership. But when you talk about things like bundling and promotions, as you know, we’re not a promotional company. Our focus continues to be on delivering the highest experience in all of our programming and all of our services. And at the end of the day, that’s the draw, what brings people in to engage in those services. So I would say, you know, from bundling, promotion, it’s just not.
It’s just not how we position our products and services.
Bahram Akradi (Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
And I will echo that deliberately. The strategy of the company is not to focus on promotional packaging, bundling, whatever you want to call it. Once you start going in that direction, you stop focusing on what can I do better to improve the actual product or experience that customers have. We are very deliberate to not engage in those things to try to make sure our results are a function of the product that we deliver to the customer.
Chris Waronka (Analyst at Deutsche Bank)
Okay, understood. Thanks, guys. And just as a follow-up, and certainly understanding and respecting Bahram’s comment earlier that some of these standalone bracket sport centers don’t really work. But do you guys have, when you comb across the whole state of 200 locations, do you have any opportunities where you could add—again, it’s an addition, it’s not a standalone—where you could potentially add some standalone, whether it’s pickleball or tennis or basketball or something else there as you’re, you know, going through the sale-leaseback strategies?
Are there any areas in the owned portfolio where there’s going to be some stuff that’s additive on the kind of outdoor sports side?
Bahram Akradi (Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
I mean, look, if the opportunity is there and the market’s there, we are making those types of adjustments all the time. I think we have taken the bulk of, but not all, the facilities in the country. We have transformed our spaces from one use to the other to increase utilization of that space. That’s work in progress. It always is. We measure the efficiency of every particular space that we have in any club. And if that utilization isn’t at a reasonable level, then we put something else in it.
So there are always some adjustments, but the bulk of these movements were taken place. We are, you know, building a lot of new clubs. They have additional pickleball—indoor, outdoor, covered—whatever, that they’re part of. So continue. We’re almost closing the year just under a thousand pickleball courts. And within the first few months of next year, we’ll have over 1,000 pickleball courts in operations, which is really a number that, with goal, we set up a few years back. And I’m really, really proud of my team for executing with such level of excellence both on building the places, managing it, programming it, and delivering the experience to the customer.
What we see that I really love is members who are traveling around the country for their work, for their business, for vacation, and they are literally going from Life Time location to Life Time location, sending us pictures. They love the experiences they get in different parts of the country. As we build more incredible, extraordinary facilities around the country, that will strengthen the relationship between us and our customer because they can touch Life Time even when they’re away from home, which has been something I’ve been looking forward to for years and years.
And finally seeing it in action is really cool.
Chris Waronka (Analyst at Deutsche Bank)
Okay, very good. Appreciate all that color. Thanks, guys.
OPERATOR
Our next question comes from Owen Rickard with Northland Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Owen Rickard (Analyst at Northland Capital Markets)
Hey, Bahram. Hey, Eric. Congrats on another unreal quarter. First for me, LT Social sounds like it’s been an absolute hit so far. I know it’s still early, but do you view LT Social as primarily a retention or loyalty tool, or is there a path to this becoming a real incremental revenue driver?
Bahram Akradi (Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
Both. That’s the answer. Next question. You asked a very nice question and I gave you a very great answer.
Owen Rickard (Analyst at Northland Capital Markets)
Both that you did. I can’t argue with that. And then I guess secondly for me, kind of building off that, you know, G&A was up in the quarter just on incentive, benefit and marketing costs. Is the step up in marketing spend tied specifically to LT Social and brand elevation and should we expect that to persist at the higher run rate percentage of revenue going forward?
Eric Weaver (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
No, there was very little cost associated with LT Social. And you know, there was a little. You mentioned the incentive, but we’re still scaling G&A as a percent of revenue. So that just wasn’t a big driver.
Bahram Akradi (Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
We don’t plan to spend any more percent. We don’t really don’t see a need for spending more money on marketing as a percentage of our revenue. The question is that small percentage that we are spending, you know, as we grow the revenue, that dollar—there’s actually at the same percentage we have more incremental dollars to spend—is how do we deploy that. LT Social event in New York, the premiere, was unique. But the other LT Social events, they’re not really there for a huge revenue or profit business, but they will generate revenue and margins as we execute those.
The main function of the LT Social right now is to deliver that other dimension of health and well-being, which is a social health, a social connection, feeling happier, being in an environment with the people that you want to be with, you associate with. And there’s plenty of opportunities along the way how we can add additional monetization to it. But initially it will help retention and customer experience.
Eric Weaver (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
And just back to the—kind of a little more tactically—you mentioned in nominal dollars, G&A, but as a percent of revenue, it was actually 20 basis points better than last quarter and last year. So just want to point that out.
Owen Rickard (Analyst at Northland Capital Markets)
Awesome. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from Anthony Bonillo with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.
Anthony Bonillo (Analyst at Wells Fargo)
Yeah, hey guys, thanks for taking our questions. I just wanted to ask about the Q4 margin guidance. For starters, I think this implies a slight step down versus what you would typically see seasonally. I know you’ve got some cost ramp associated with new clubs coming on and you guys tend to plan conservatively. But just anything else to flag there in terms of puts and takes as we model that out?
Eric Weaver (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
You mentioned one of the bigger ones. So you’ve got three things going on there. One, we’re going to have some pre-sale costs associated with clubs that will open late in the quarter. You got the new clubs coming online, which obviously as they’re early in their ramp there, there’s a little bit of margin compression there as well. And then as a reminder, proportionally when you look at our revenue, you know, we’re seeing an outsized growth in our in-center versus dues.
We’ve seen that, you know, this year and last year, et cetera. And so as you know, in-center has a lower margin. So it’s really just a function of those three things.
Anthony Bonillo (Analyst at Wells Fargo)
Got it. That’s helpful. And then just on Muse and AI agents in general, I think we heard some concerns through the quarter from investors in terms of people using these to maybe cancel and negotiate subscriptions. It seems like you didn’t really see an impact based on what you just reported. But can you maybe talk about what you saw there as the consumer started using those?
Bahram Akradi (Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
We’ve seen zero. We have had zero impact from this. Again, I emphasize the reason why some of the things that will end up being done to help the consumer is because many businesses don’t build their business from a customer point of view to begin with, and they find ways to just sort of make it more difficult for a customer to get out of a contract or something. We built the company based on the customer point of view having no contracts. We eliminated any sort of promotional sales process, focused our company on maximum desirability as our only weapon, as I mentioned earlier, for people to join and then we have the easiest—we have had the easiest—cancellation policy to begin with. Somebody—we have no contracts, we’re month to month—and they want to drop out. If we’re not pleasing them the way we aspire to, then they just give us the notice, a 30-day notice, and they drop out.
So this would have had zero impact. It’s that they’re basically forcing other companies to do what we’ve been doing the entire 30 years.
Eric Weaver (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
If I could add to that, Bram, I mean the other thing to remember, we are a use model. So when you think about a $10 or a $15 subscription that nobody’s using, for sure that’s at risk. But as Bram mentioned in his comments, members are visiting 13 times per month. So just hasn’t been an issue. No impact there.
Anthony Bonillo (Analyst at Wells Fargo)
Thanks so much guys.
OPERATOR
Our next question comes from Andrew Didoro with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.
Andrew Didoro (Analyst at Bank of America)
Hey, good morning everyone. So Bahram, just in terms of the unit growth expectations, the 12 to 14, you’ve clearly had a lot of success with the comp store set and new openings. So I guess what specifically are the constraints—you know, ongoing maybe above 14 new openings per year—kind of, you know, why is that the right target? You know, anything internally or externally keeping you at that number and, you know, maybe any milestones you would need to see met to move above that 14 new center target.
Thank you.
Bahram Akradi (Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
Look, our commitment—my past CFOs, now particularly Eric, one of the best I’ve ever seen—and myself commitment to you guys is try to not overpromise and underdeliver. So we are very cautious on how we speak and what we tell you. So it doesn’t take any. So the reality is can it possibly, some year, go more than 14? Yes. But for right now I think 12 to 14 is really the right number. It accommodates all of our growth metrics that we have in mind of how fast we want to grow the business.
It also allows us to deliver our brand with excellence every time we do it. Now is it possible that we can deliver more than that? Yes. Would I lead you on to just go ahead and start, you know, kind of modeling a bigger number? I wouldn’t want to do that. But the main thing is to make sure we deliver the right locations with the right quality and the right talent to deliver the experiences the way we want it.
Eric Weaver (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
And if I could come at it from a numbers perspective, I’d remind you also that we’re targeting double-digit revenue growth, 10 to 12%. And so, you know, we can get there with 14 clubs. We have ways that we can get there. So it’s not inherently just about the number of clubs. It’s about obviously the experience, as Bram mentioned, but again targeting that 10 to 12%.
Bahram Akradi (Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
What I feel really great about right now is the focus on the quality of the experiences and continuing to strengthen our brand with our customer who appreciates what Life Time brings to them. Secondly, going back to some of the earlier comments regarding sale-leasebacks and such, as we look at our long-range plan each year going forward, ’27 we need to do less sale-leaseback versus 2026 in order to still stay cash flow positive. ’28 we would need to do even less sale-leaseback.
And as we go forward, by the time we get to 2029, 2030, we can absolutely deliver all of our growth without even needing the sale-leaseback market. That doesn’t mean we won’t utilize that market when it’s efficient capital for us to come in. But we do have now the company at a place that when you can see down the runway, we are in a position to basically pick the best cost of capital, deploy the dollars in the best place for rate of return, and then look and see when we have opportunity to accelerate the growth.
Andrew Didoro (Analyst at Bank of America)
That’s great color. I’ll leave it there. Thank you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from Molly Baum with Morgan Stanley Investment Management Group. Please proceed with your question.
Molly Baum (Analyst at Morgan Stanley Investment Management Group)
Hi. Thank you so much for taking our questions. The first one—I wanted to ask another one on AI, but maybe more so if you could just talk about where you see some of the bigger opportunities from an AI standpoint, whether it’s from a member experience standpoint with Lacie, or if you see opportunities to use it from a maybe club-level productivity standpoint. I know you talked about some variance in-center execution, so if you see opportunities there.
Bahram Akradi (Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, it’s a great question. We have AI initiatives in every part of our business. From customer standpoint, we continue to work on making sure AI can become a better tool for them and they can use AI in a way that just they expect today. As they get better with utilization of AI, naturally they have to be able to do that with our Life Time assets. So as of just yesterday within our own group, somebody brought up the LT Shop and it’s harder to find on the app because, of course, we offer 50 different programs on one app, so it’s hard to have everything surface on the front page.
But if you go to Lacie and just say, “Take me to LT Shop,” it will take you right to that. That’s as simple as an easy, simple example of having to make sure Lacie will continue to become a tool—an AI tool—for our members to navigate all the different programs that we offer in the company better. For internally, it’s everywhere. I mean, when you think about what AI can do for any individual, for every position, AI should be able to help any position. Somebody who manages a club—how can they be more aware of all the administrative, all the analytical things? With their AI companion, they will be able to be much more aware and organize, prioritize, execute all managerial tasks much, much better by utilization of proper—proper utilization of AI.
And then we, of course, have to build them an enterprise system companion so our information stays within our walls and then give them that. Then that makes them more capable of delivering what we’re looking for from them, which is performance, entertainment, engagement, leadership-type qualities. I don’t think there is a day that I am not in multiple meetings that we are taking a look and see how AI utilization can enhance our execution. In the back of the house, when you look at the—from our legal department to our finance department, analytics—we are basically putting AI to work in every aspect of our business every day, bringing AI champions in different areas to make sure they focus on educating and training everybody else on how to operate, how to prompt the AI functions.
So it’s really part of every hour of every day. I don’t know what else I could tell you, but we have been engaged. I have been driving the company for the last three years and I can say the team has done an amazing job and we’re in a really, really good place at this moment in time and we have plenty of runway to go and we don’t need to build anything in particular. What we need to do is we need to become more efficient in learning how to operate the AI tools that are available.
They will enhance themselves every six months, as everybody’s observing. So you just have to stay on top of how to use them.
Molly Baum (Analyst at Morgan Stanley Investment Management Group)
Got it. That makes a lot of sense and it’s very interesting. My next question is a bit more boilerplate than that, but just quickly, I wanted to also ask for new club openings. You may have talked about this in past calls, but it’s back-end weighted this year. And you talked today about your confidence in unit targets for 2027. Are you able to give any additional color in terms of cadence? Are you expecting a similar cadence where more of the clubs in ’27 are back-end loaded as well?
And that’s it for me. Thanks so much.
Eric Weaver (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
I don’t think we could make anything more back-ended than this year, so I would—it just pretty much the way the schedule fell together. You know, there’s almost seven clubs opening in the last quarter. I don’t expect that to happen next year. It will be a little more balanced throughout the year as I look at the schedule. Yeah, we’re just not going to have as many in Q4. I mean, you know, maybe a little back half, but certainly not back Q4—not back Q4.
OPERATOR
Our next question comes from Logan Reich with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Logan Reich (Analyst at RBC Capital Markets)
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions and congrats on the solid execution for yet another quarter. I wanted to ask just on Miora, we haven’t gotten an update on it yet on the call and I recall last quarter you were still working on kind of ironing out the kinks in the operating model before scaling it up. So maybe just an update on how the operating model work is progressing. And then second part of it is just what’s the, or how should we think about the rollout to additional clubs and maybe just sizing that opportunity either from number of clubs perspective or revenue or EBITDA contribution.
Bahram Akradi (Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
I would caution everybody not to put anything specifically for that for the immediate near future. This is a long-term growth opportunity for us. We have two ways to think about it: a broader, much easier, accessible-to-most-members strategy that we’re working on through what we call Life Time Health and Wellness Hub, that basically does not require as sophisticated a process as Miora, and then a much more in-depth programming and service and hands-on touch, almost concierge-like service with Miora, and that one is going to take a lot more fine-tuning of our systems.
We picked a system early this year for our administration and software to operate and that system has not proved to be successful for our team. So we had to pause and we are in the process of changing the system. A few more details ironed out and then we will—I have no doubt that long term we will have a Miora location in every market, and then more likely in probably every other club ultimately, or a third of our clubs would have them, because the demand is there.
Our customer wants this. We have incredible engagement. So the retention of our customer in Miora is absolutely amazing. It’s in the 90% range, which is really what we’ve expected from that physical connection. The expectation long term is to be rolled out across every market and many, many clubs. There’s no loss of enthusiasm towards that. We just want to make sure we do it very, very right. And then the other plan is to just have a much broader reach: blood work, blood analysis, and guidance through Life Time Health and Wellness Hub. So those are the two channels that we’re working, the macro and the micro—one much easier, accessible for everyone, and one a lot more in-depth through the Miora facilities.
Logan Reich (Analyst at RBC Capital Markets)
Got it. That’s helpful. And then just my follow-up is on in-center services more broadly. I mean, you guys have executed really well on the DPT model. You’re taking that over to the spa and that seems to be driving acceleration as well. I guess just bigger picture for the in-center business, are there any other services that you guys are sort of contemplating adding into the clubs to capture more wallet share from your members in the health and wellness space?
That appears to be growing pretty rapidly.
Bahram Akradi (Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
The short answer is yes. We’re always, always working on what are the other natural programs and services that our customers would want to have under the same brand. And we are excited about some of the initiatives that we are on right now, particularly through potential growth channels for LT Social. But we’ll give you more color as we get closer to implementation of some of those concepts.
Logan Reich (Analyst at RBC Capital Markets)
Very helpful. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Bye.
OPERATOR
We’ve reached the end of our question and answer session. I would now like to turn the floor back over to Connor Wiener for closing comments.
Connor Wiener (Senior Vice President, Treasury and Investor Relations)
Great. Thank you, operator. Thank you everyone for joining us this morning. Look forward to having you on the next call.
OPERATOR
This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
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