Oprah Winfrey said she was stepping down from the board of Weight Watchers, just months after she went public about taking a weight-loss drug.
The entertainment mogul has been Weight Watchers’ most important spokesperson since joining its board in 2015, helping it fend off competition from other weight-loss companies while opening up a broader conversation about obesity and nutrition.
Her endorsement of Weight Watchers — she has said she lost 40 pounds using the company’s points system — convinced many others to sign up, analysts said.
The announcement sent shares of Weight Watchers tumbling, with the stock down 25% early Thursday.
The company said in a special filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday that Ms. Winfrey had notified the president that she would not seek re-election in May, ending a nearly nine-year term on the board.
“Her decision was not the result of any dispute with the company on any matter related to the company’s operations, policies or practices,” Weight Watchers said in the filing.
Ms. Winfrey, who has spent decades dominating the nation’s debates about weight and diet, revealed in December that she was taking a weight-loss drug.
“The fact that there is a medically approved prescription for weight management and health maintenance in my lifetime feels like a relief, a redemption, a gift and not something to be hidden away and ridiculed once again.” , she told People magazine.
In a statement from the company on Thursday, Ms. Winfrey said she plans to continue advising Weight Watchers chief executive Sima Sistani on “elevating the conversation around the recognition of obesity as a chronic condition.”
A representative for Ms. Winfrey had no additional comment.
The company said in the statement that Ms. Winfrey will donate the value of her Weight Watchers holdings to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, in part to “eliminate any perceived conflict of interest around taking weight loss drugs.”
Kelsey Merkel, a spokeswoman for Weight Watchers, said Ms. Winfrey wanted to “genuinely advocate” for the weight-loss measures she believed were most effective, without anyone questioning her profit motive. It owned about 1.13 million shares worth $6.34 million, according to a Jan. 1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Ms. Winfrey has not specified which weight loss drug she was taking. In 2021, researchers found that semaglutide, a drug to treat diabetes, produced dramatic weight loss results in obese patients. Since then, demand has soared for new drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound that can help people lose weight, in part by suppressing appetite.
The emergence of such drugs has posed a business challenge to diet plans like Weight Watchers. But the company is turning to a business model based on its ability to acquire the limited supply of coveted weight loss drugs.
Last year, Weight Watchers acquired Sequence, a subscription telehealth platform that offers, among other benefits, access to health care providers who can prescribe weight-loss drugs, including Ozempic, for $106 million. (Users pay $99 a month, not including prescription costs.) The company also ditched some of its in-person meetings, a familiar tool in its weight-loss plans, inspiring some customers to organize their own support groups.
After an initial rally following the Sequence acquisition, Weight Watchers stock has lost more than half its value this year.
Shares in the New York-based company have been hit by “escalating concerns” about its growth prospects and liquidity, Barclays analyst Stephanie Davis said.
“It’s still early in the story of its recovery from being more of a diet model to becoming a digital health company,” Ms. Davis said in an interview, adding that “transitions have a lot of risk.”
