The Gym Group revenues rise as membership numbers grow

The Gym Group reported a rise in full-year revenues on Friday as membership numbers grew.

In a pre-close trading update for the year ended 31 December 2019, the company said total revenue jumped 23.6% to £153.1m on the year, as average members grew 14.9% to 796,000. Total year-end memberships rose 9.7% to 794,000.

Average revenue per member per month was up 7.6% to £16.02 as LIVE IT - its premium pricing product - continued to make good progress. The Gym Group said that 150,000 members, 18.9% of the total membership, had subscribed to LIVE IT by the end of December, compared to 11.7% in the same period the year before.

Chief executive officer Richard Darwin said: "Our strong proposition, as the UK's lowest-price, high-quality gym operator, continues to grow the market and bring affordable fitness to more people across the UK.

"We expanded our business by 20 sites in 2019, which included the first two of our new small box gym concept, which delivers low cost fitness to smaller towns. There remains a long runway of potential sites in the UK and with our small box rollout underway we plan to accelerate the expansion of our gym estate in the coming year."

The company said it had had an "encouraging" start to January trading and expects 2020 to be "another year of significant progress".

At 1050 GMT, the shares were down 0.8% at 307.60p.