Virgin Active: Billionaire owner of Richard Branson-founded gym chain eyes UK listing

The billionaire majority owner of Virgin Active is looking to list the business in the UK, according to reports.

South African Christo Wiese owns the company private equity firm Brait, while Richard Branson’s Virgin Group holds a 16.8 per cent stake.

A listing is “most likely” to be in the UK, with a secondary offer in Johannesburg, Brait CEO Peter Hayward-Butt said in an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday.

Wiese bought into the brand in 2015 for £682m when plans for an IPO were cancelled.

Virgin Active was founded in the late 1990s by Sir Richard Branson and Matthew Bucknall, who stepped down as CEO in 2022.

The group’s first club was opened in Preston, Lancashire, while it now runs hundreds across the world.

The news comes after City AM reported at the end of October that Virgin Active continued to make a huge loss during its latest financial year.

The London-headquartered chain posted a pre-tax loss of £146.7m for 2023, after also reporting a loss of £147.3m in 2022.

The last time the group made a pre-tax profit was the £22.2m it reported for 2018

Accounts filed with Companies House also showed that Virgin Active’s revenue increase from £436.4m to £511.4m during 2023.

Virgin Active did however achieve an operating profit of £4.9m – its first since the Covid-19 pandemic.

In its results for the six months to 30 September 2024, Brait said Virgin Active’s “strong operational performance has continued”.

It said that the growth has been driven by active members increasing by six per cent year on year with yields rising by by nine per cent, driving a 16 per cent uplift in revenue, excluding Kauai.

Brait added that the performance was mainly because of a 19 per cent rise in revenue year on year on Italy, a 16 per ent growth in South Africa and 34 per cent jump in Singapore.

By comparison, Virgin Active’s UK market grew by 11 per cent.

As of September, Virgin Active had 134,000 active members in the UK. Play Video