Soho House reduces losses as membership waitlist hits ‘all-time high’
The New York-listed business, which operates 42 members clubs worldwide, reported a loss of $118m (£93m) for the year ended 31 December 2023 off a total revenue of £1.1bn, an improvement on the $221m it lost from a revenue of $972m in 2022.
Membership revenues increased 32.5% year-over-year to $361.5m, while in-house revenues grew 13% to $482.1m.
Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) rose from $61m to $128m, which CEO Andrew Carnie said reflected the group’s ‘continued focus on driving a better member experience’.
“The strong results we delivered in 2023 demonstrate our continued focus on driving a better member experience and significant progress on improving profitability,” said Carnie.
“We grew Soho House membership approximately 20%, including the benefit of maturing Houses and entering into South East Asia and Latin America for the first time. We more than doubled adjusted EBITDA, reflecting 11% margins up from 6% in 2022.”
Soho House’s results come little more than a month after it was forced to hit back at claims made in a short seller report by GlassHouse Research, which accused the member club group of being ‘a company with a broken business model and terrible accounting’.
The report, entitled Soho House & Co: A company facing an existential crisis, went on to criticise the group for a ‘persistent lack of profitability’, issues with ‘overcrowding’, and a ‘perceived decline in service quality’.
At the time, Soho House said it ‘fundamentally rejected’ the report and claimed GlassHouse’s intention was to drive down the company’s stock price for its own benefit.
Speaking on an earnings call on 15 March, Carnie said an independent review of the group’s accounting practices had ‘shown no material issues’.
The company engaged a ‘large, globally recognised forensic accounting firm and a prominent independent global law firm’ to review its accounting practices to ‘counter any misleading statements that have been made about us’, he continued.
Soho House’s results show that its membership waitlist now sits at approximately 99,000, an ‘all-time high’.
In December last year the group revealed that it would stop accepting new members at its clubs in New York City, Los Angeles and London until at least the end of 2024 amid complaints of overcrowding.
Soho House had 193,865 at the end of 2023, up from 161,975 the year before.
“We are excited for the year-ahead. I would like to thank our teams globally for their commitment and hard work, and our members for their enduring loyalty over nearly 30 years,” Carnie added.
