Life Time Fitness To Be Sold To Private Equity Firm

It was announced yesterday that Life Time Fitness will be sold to private equity from TPG Capital, who will transition the company to be privately owned. The company’s main business is its gyms but it also runs a series of endurance races, including several triathlons. The company announced last week that it would no longer offer a professional prize purse for its race series.

The investment firms Leonard Green & Partners and TPG Capital agreed on Monday to buy Life Time Fitness, a gym operator, for about $4 billion, including the assumption of debt.

Under the terms of the deal, the private equity firms will pay $72.10 a share in cash, a 7.3 percent premium to Life Time Fitness’s closing price on Friday. The offer is also a 73 percent premium to the company’s closing price on Aug. 22, the day before Life Time Fitness said it had begun exploring corporate financing options.

Life Time Fitness runs 114 centers in the United States and Canada.

The leveraged buyout is the latest done together by TPG and Leonard Green, which have banded together to buy the likes of J. Crew and Petco — the latter of which the two acquired two times in the last decade.

The consortium of buyers also includes LNK Partners, a previous investor in the company, and the chairman and chief executive of Life Time Fitness, Bahram Akradi, who will roll over about $125 million worth of the stock he already owns. The purchase price values his stake at about $180 million.

Read more: Nytimes.com