Summary

Basic-Fit’s setup rests on normalized post-COVID cohorts finally meeting expectations that the 2020–22 openings could not. Basic-Fit repeatedly missed its 2021 and, Buckley believes, 2023 investor-day targets because it opened too quickly during shutdowns, delivered inconsistent member experiences, and projected 2016–19 economics onto abnormal cohorts; Buckley says 2023–25 clubs are again performing like the pre-COVID cohort. With “almost everyone” either gone or holding only because the stock is cheap, a genuine operating beat could matter far more than another promise.
Buckley describes a roughly 30% target return on about 1.3 million of buildout cost and 400,000–450,000 of free cash flow per club at scale. Walker pressed the central bear case: if maintenance capex is closer to $150,000–$200,000 than the roughly $50,000 figure being presented, those returns narrow sharply. Buckley’s answer was that equipment is only part of the buildout and his checks with suppliers, franchisees, and other operators found “no one that largely disagrees” with Basic-Fit’s aggregate capex assumptions.
The €35 million French 24/7 rollout could be a major 2026 catalyst. Buckley initially found the surprise investment frustrating, but changed his mind after seeing a packed Paris club near midnight and hearing that Spanish 24/7 locations were attracting roughly 30% more members—an anecdotal figure well above guidance. If France permits staffless operation, approximately €30 million of the cost could be recovered; if Basic-Fit concludes it will not win the legislation, replacing expensive contractors with employees could roughly halve the relevant labor burden.
Buckley sees as much as 65 million–70 million of potential EBITDA across the 24/7 member uplift, more French conversions, labor insourcing, and possible staffless savings. Consensus 2026 EBITDA has fallen from roughly 450 million a year earlier to about 390 million, despite stronger alternative data and management’s report that Q3 was going well. He is not asserting every lever lands, but thinks 450 million is doable if several do: “I don’t think there’s any rational reason” estimates should be 60 million lower.
At roughly $25 per share, Buckley believes Basic-Fit trades near five to six times his 2027 free-cash-flow range versus a warranted 15 times. His conservative path is approximately 350 million–400 million of 2026 free cash flow and 450 million–550 million in 2027, eventually reaching about €6 per share; that supports roughly a $90 stock sometime between 2028 and 2030. He explicitly tempers the call—“everyone has forecasted this business wrong. I forecasted this business wrong”—but argues consensus has finally swung too conservative.
Capital allocation should remain measured: Buckley favors at least 100 corporate openings annually alongside share repurchases rather than recreating the 200-club growth strain. He views franchising as sensible but limited: Basic-Fit does not intend to refranchise its corporate estate, and Buckley says it could represent at most about 10% of value in three to five years if successful. Walker characterized the likely contribution as roughly 5%–10%. Buckley’s stronger governance view is that specialist gym operators matter; despite Walker’s concerns about years of overoptimism, he would keep the current team.
Fortressing creates attractive local economics, but Buckley does not pretend Basic-Fit has competition-free monopolies. He thinks mature Amsterdam clubs have EBITDA margins above 50%, yet a nearby rival might still take 250–500 members from a 5,000-member club; the incumbent can remain highly profitable even at 3,500. The ultimate bear case is therefore a repeat of the last cycle—“the wrong people,” excessive openings, or another forced shutdown—with another COVID-like event also a tail risk.

Deep dive

1. Abnormal COVID cohorts explain four years of broken forecasts

Basic-Fit is Europe’s largest gym chain, with a low-cost model Walker compared with Planet Fitness. Walker began with the uncomfortable record: he liked Basic-Fit in 2021, yet the stock subsequently stayed flat. Buckley’s diagnosis was blunt—“they’ve missed numbers for a long time,” including commitments from the 2021 and, he believes, 2023 investor days.
The core modeling error was applying 2016–19 unit economics to clubs opened in 2020–22. Basic-Fit also opened too many locations too quickly, sometimes without the right operators; stop-start openings, shutdowns, and vaccine-card requirements then constrained acquisition and produced a poor member experience.
Buckley says clubs opened in 2023, 2024, and 2025 are again performing like the 2016–19 cohort, while the damaged 2020–22 clubs have seasoned toward maturity. That provides a specific basis for believing the business has already returned to normal.
Some scars will heal slowly. Buckley estimated Paris clubs’ Google ratings at roughly 3.3–3.5 versus about 4.2 in Barcelona; even if two shift managers generate four new reviews daily, changing a history containing 300–400 reviews takes time.

2. The unit economics survived Walker’s maintenance-capex challenge

Basic-Fit targets a 30% return on invested capital, with an average club costing about 1.3 million to build and eventually generating roughly 400,000–450,000 of free cash flow per unit at scale. Ramp times are normally quick, although the 2020–22 cohort is still approaching mature performance.
Walker’s pushback—worth keeping—was that the roughly $50,000 annual maintenance-capex figure being presented implies an implausibly long replacement cycle. If true economic maintenance is instead $150,000–$200,000, subtracting it from $400,000 of club-level EBITDA makes the return substantially less compelling.
Buckley conceded machines need replacing far sooner than every 25 years, but argued equipment is only one component. Flooring, walls, ceilings, bathrooms, showers, and plumbing are expensive, longer-lived assets; after checking suppliers, Planet Fitness franchisees, and other gym operators, he found no broad disagreement with Basic-Fit’s aggregate capex figures.
His physical checks supported that conclusion. After visiting older and newer clubs across Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Paris, and Barcelona, he said they looked consistently well maintained and were packed within his small sample: “I never walked into a gym where I was like, this gym looks terrible.”

3. France’s 24/7 investment could convert a drag into a windfall

Basic-Fit surprised investors by spending about €35 million to keep roughly 330 French clubs open 24/7. Buckley was “definitely frustrated” and skeptical initially, but now believes it was the right decision after his August visits to gyms in Paris, Luxembourg, and Barcelona and meetings with Heather, the new co-head of IR, and Spanish and regional managers.
One Paris visit ran from roughly 10:30 p.m. until midnight, and the club was packed at 11:30. More importantly, Basic-Fit’s Spanish country manager said converted Spanish clubs were attracting about 30% more members—potentially anecdotal, Buckley cautioned, but dramatically above company guidance.
Basic-Fit guided that it would get back the investment by 2026. Buckley says the routes are member growth and staffing savings. If French regulators also allow staffless overnight operation, he estimates nearly €30 million of the €35 million cost could be recovered, leaving perhaps €5 million of cost against roughly 35 million–40 million of incremental member EBITDA.
Walker compared deregulation to repealing US Sunday alcohol “blue laws”: incumbents enjoy an initial windfall, but competitors eventually copy it. Buckley countered that Basic-Fit could extend 24/7 operation from 330 locations to perhaps 600–800 of its roughly 875 French clubs, while its existing clustered estate should preserve much of the benefit.

4. The 2026 earnings bridge is larger than consensus acknowledges

Buckley’s alternative data had kept him mostly away while the business weakened, allowing a low-20s average cost despite following the stock from the 40s. That data has strengthened materially, while management said at an ING conference that things were going well so far in Q3.
His bridge contains four principal buckets: about 28 million from the current 24/7 conversions; approximately 7 million in 2026 if they receive half a year, or about 14 million annualized, from additional French clubs; roughly 17 million–18 million from insourcing labor; and about 12 million from a successful staffless model.
If Basic-Fit concludes it will not win the French staffing legislation, it can replace contractors—currently used because they are easier to dismiss under French labor rules—with direct employees, potentially saving 17 million–18 million. Staffless approval would provide the separate roughly 12 million benefit.
Consensus 2026 EBITDA has fallen from around 450 million in late 2024 to approximately 390 million. Buckley thinks 450 million remains doable if several levers land, setting up a possible “beat-and-raise cadence” through Q3, Q4, and 2026, although he stops short of calling that outcome certain.

5. Cash flow, not replacement value, drives the $90 valuation

Walker framed the stock as almost a Ben Graham replacement-cost situation: a little over 1,600 clubs at about 1.3 million each imply roughly 2.1 billion of replacement cost, against approximately 2.6 billion of enterprise value. The buyer pays only about 500 million above that for the brand, members, and established recurring payments.
Buckley found the arithmetic directionally reasonable but prefers a cash-flow framework. He estimates approximately 350 million–400 million of free cash flow in 2026 and 450 million–550 million in 2027, putting the shares near five to six times his 2027 range.
His 15-times target multiple comes from discussions with Planet Fitness franchisees paying roughly nine to ten times EBITDA for clubs, which he equates to approximately 15 times after-tax free cash flow. Against today’s valuation, “that’s really cheap for this business.”
The longer-term endpoint is roughly €6 of free cash flow per share and a $90 stock, reached somewhere between 2028 and 2030; Buckley also puts present fair value near €60. His explicit caveat is forecasting humility: prior bulls, including him, repeatedly got the timing wrong.

6. Measured corporate growth matters more than franchising

Buckley sees both new clubs and repurchases as attractive uses of capital, leaving him without a dogmatic preference. His favored balance is at least 100 corporate openings annually, with excess free cash flow also used to buy back stock.
What he does not want is another reflexive acceleration to 200 annual openings. The prior experience showed that pace can stress the system and produce sloppy decision-making; he thinks 100 openings can be executed effectively without creating holes in the operating structure.
Franchising will be limited to new geographies, not a refranchising of the existing estate. Even a five-year scenario of 100 corporate and 200 franchise openings annually produces only about 2,000 corporate and 1,000 franchise clubs, leaving Buckley’s $90 target perhaps $100 if franchising succeeds.
Walker also noticed lower marketing spend as a percentage of revenue, but Buckley did not view it as a major signal. The next six to nine months depend much more on incremental members per club, French staffing rules, and execution of the 24/7 plan.

7. Specialist management outweighs the CEO’s history of optimism

Walker voiced the recurring shareholder objection: CEO René has been too positive for years while growth overshot organizational capacity and forecasts repeatedly failed. Buckley nevertheless wants no leadership change because “gym CEOs are specialists” and few people can operate a large system well.
His cautionary example was Xponential Fitness. In Buckley’s telling, the departure of Anthony Geisler and experienced colleagues left non-specialists running the company; StretchLab AUV subsequently fell from roughly $600,000 to $500,000, and the replacement CEO was dismissed about a year later.
Buckley also said the short seller never proved wrongdoing at Xponential: in his account, the SEC and California investigation found no issue with the company’s business practices. His own change of mind carries the point: he lost money and sold Xponential even though he still believed his research was correct, because the new team could not run the business.
Applied to Basic-Fit, operating expertise matters more to him than punishing prior forecasting errors.

8. Local adaptation strengthens the model without eliminating competition

Buckley sees no fundamental European aversion to gyms: Basic-Fit resembles Planet Fitness, and penetration rises as convenient, inexpensive clubs become available. He says fitness penetration has increased in France alongside Basic-Fit’s expansion, with similar access-driven potential in Spain, Germany, and elsewhere.
Fortressing also lowers local marketing costs and lets members use clubs near both home and work. Mature Amsterdam clubs are the strongest example: Buckley thinks their EBITDA margins are above 50%, although he still describes the market as competitive rather than monopolistic.
Local execution is unusually granular. Because warmer-weather Spanish customers wear shorts and emphasize legs, Spanish clubs carry more leg equipment; when Fitness Park opens nearby, Basic-Fit may remove indoor-cycling space for more machines. Planet Fitness’s announced Spanish entry initially worried investors and pressured the stock, but the country manager told Buckley it was not a concern; Fitness Park was the meaningful competitor.
Walker’s sharp question was why Basic-Fit waits for a rival before correcting an apparent equipment mismatch. Buckley’s honest non-answer was, “I don’t have the exact answer for you”; priorities, resources, or an already-full 5,000-member club might explain the delay.
Fortressing therefore means healthy competition, not immunity. A rival half a mile to a mile away might take 250–500 members from a 5,000-member club, but the incumbent can remain profitable at 3,500. Buckley’s operating downside is instead a repeat of the last five years—wrong people, excessive growth, and shutdowns—while another COVID-like event remains a clear tail risk.

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