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- Equinox Holdings is in talks to go public via a SPAC merger with Chamath Palihapitiya's Social Capital Hedosophia, according to a Bloomberg report.
- A potential transaction could value Equinox at more than $7.5 billion, the report said.
- The luxury gym operator also owns SoulCycle, BlinkFitness, and opened its first hotel in 2019.
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Equinox Holdings is in talks to go public via a merger with one of Chamath Palihapitiya's SPACs, according to a Bloomberg report.
The luxury gym owner could be valued at more than $7.5 billion if it goes public with Palihapitiya's Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. VI SPAC vehicle, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
Talks of Equinox going public heated up in March following a report from Sportico, which said the company was in discussions with as many as 12 different SPACs to complete the public debut.
Besides its luxury gyms under the same name, Equinox owns SoulCycle, BlinkFitness, and opened its first New York City-based hotel in 2019.
The company was hit hard amid the pandemic as it was forced to close many of its locations. Equinox lost about $350 million on $650 million in revenue last year, according to Bloomberg.
An Equinox merger with Social Capital would likely be viewed as a win for the gym operator, as Palihapitiya has been one of the most prolific investors to bring companies public via a SPAC merger.
Some companies brought public by Palihapitiya include Virgin Galactic, which arguably kicked off the SPAC boom in late 2019, as well as Opendoor Technologies, SoFi, and Clover Health.
But the Bloomberg report didn't drive the same surge in Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. VI on Wednesday that it might have a few months ago when SPACs were all the rage on Wall Street. The SPAC vehicle was down 2% in Wednesday trades, signalling that investors might not be impressed with the potential deal.
The SPAC market has deflated following a peak in the first quarter of 2021. Few issuances have gone public since April, when the SEC signaled that it would increase regulatory scrutiny on the IPO vehicles, and SPAC stocks have cratered, with the Defiance Next Gen SPAC ETF down nearly 30% since its February peak.
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