Peloton Presses on With New Product Development

Peloton Presses on With New Product Development

Peloton clarified Tuesday (Dec. 14) that it won’t be curbing the development of new products like a report published by DigiTimes claimed, per a CNBC report.

The company plans to “innovate across all of its product lines” next year, a spokeswoman for the company told CNBC.

After the erroneous report that the company wouldn’t be developing new products, shares fell almost 5%. When Peloton refuted that information, the stock improved somewhat.

On Tuesday, Peloton CEO John Foley tweeted that the company has “never been more excited about our product pipeline and look forward to what’s to come in 2022 as we continue to innovate to help our Members lead healthier lives.”

Peloton has had a rough go of it lately, particularly after the HBO Max reboot of “Sex and the City” portrayed an important character dying after using one of its exercise machines, causing the company’s stocks to plummet.

The company tried to make up for it through a parody commercial with actors Chris Noth and Ryan Reynolds, who were talking about the positives of the company.

Peloton also rolled out a connected strength product in November. PYMNTS wrote that it was an artificial intelligence-enabled device called Peloton Guide, which connects to TVs and gives members access to instructors and content.

See also: Peloton Launches Connected Strength Product Amid Slowing Growth

The product also works with the Peloton Heart Rate Band, and comes with a machine learning-powered Movement Tracker that works with hundreds of strength classes, a smart camera, voice activated mode and more.

Tom Cortese, Peloton co-founder and chief product officer, said the Peloton Guide “demystifies strength training to create a more engaging experience that will help members stay motivated.”

Peloton had a rocky time in early 2021, with the company saying its website traffic had dropped more than expected and that the retail showroom not doing as well as expected. Because of that, the company had to lower subscription growth and ad revenue expectations for fiscal 2022.


Treasury Secretary: DOGE Has Found $50 Billion in Savings 

Treasury Department

The U.S. Treasury Secretary says a new government cost-cutting effort has found $50 billion in savings.

Speaking to Fox News Tuesday (Feb. 18) evening, Scott Bessent said the work by the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), a group created by executive order last month, could ultimately lead to “several percent of GDP that we are saving.”

The secretary added that the public doesn’t “have to be concerned about any of this,” in reference to attempts by the Elon Musk-connected team to access taxpayer data, leading Democratic lawmakers to raise concerns about privacy.

At the Internal Revenue Service, Bessent said, there’s one member of the DOGE team “looking at an outdated IT system, that’s all they’re doing.”

Bessent said two people at Treasury had “read only access” to the payments systems, meaning they don’t have the ability to make any changes.  “There are very strict guardrails around them,” he said.

The $50 billion figure is slightly lower than the $55 billion in savings DOGE claims to have found so far. However, a report from Bloomberg News Wednesday (Feb. 19) notes that while DOGE says it has saved $55 billion, its website accounts for just $16.6 billion.

That site also includes an error, the report added, mislabeling an $8 million contract as $8 billion, reducing the amount of the group’s itemized savings by nearly half.

DOGE’s efforts have helped bring about hundreds of thousands of government layoffs, some of which have been rescinded as departments realized they were missing crucial workers. 

For example, the mass firings led to the dismissal of a team in the U.S. Department of Agriculture working on the government’s response to the avian flu. The department has said it is now trying to reverse the firings.

In another incident last week, the National Nuclear Security Administration rescinded firings for employees responsible for monitoring the nation’s nuclear stockpile, only to discover it had no way of getting in touch with said employees.

The idea for DOGE was first floated last year, with President Donald Trump announcing that Musk would lead the project. However, the administration has since said that Musk was an advisor to the White House, and not in charge of the department.

In a recent interview with PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster, Amias Gerety, a Treasury official for the Obama administration, warned of the consequences if DOGE’s efforts to access payment systems created uncertainty.

“If there’s one phrase that dominates discussions about the Treasury’s role in the nation’s finances, it’s ‘full faith and credit,’” Gerety said.

“The full faith and credit of the U.S. government should not be impeached. It’s literally in the [Constitution]. If you’re a bank, if you’re an investor, if you’re a government contractor, if you’re a retiree receiving Social Security — you have to ask, will my payments go through? That uncertainty should be felt around the world.”