👉 Background: Kayla Itsines is the Australian personal trainer who began selling fitness ebooks back in 2013. After the success, she launched an app called Sweat in 2016, alongside her partner-at-the-time, Tobi. And after five years pushing Sweat, they grew to over 30 million downloads of the app.

👉 What happened: In 2021, iFIT Health and Fitness acquired Sweat for a whopping $150 million USD. But late last year, iFIT announced that their newly-acquired fitness app lost $85 million for the year. And then, iFIT wrote down the value of the company's goodwill by $81 million.

👉 What else: Now, Kayla Itsines and her ex-partner have bought back Sweat. And apparently, the amount is "nowhere near" the original deal size.

What's the key learning?

💡Just like beauty, a company's valuation is in the eye of the beholder. And, many factors can play into the valuation: market trends, competition, and often, even emotion.

💡At the time of iFIT's acquisition, people were locked at home without gyms, so everyone had turned to online fitness programs. But since then, gyms have opened and the markets have become a little more bearish. So Sweats revenue has actually gone backwards.

💡This ain't the only example of an acquisition or major investment gone wrong:

• BWX acquired 51% of Zoe Foster Blake's Go To Skincare for $89 million. And now, with BWX in voluntary administration, it's believed Zoe Foster-Blake might pick up the 51% for as little as $20 million.

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