Q3 a weighty miss

WW stock heavy lift even for Oprah

Investors put shares of WW International, formerly Weight Watchers, on a crash diet Wednesday after the company missed Wall Street’s revenue expectations.

The stock fell nearly 15 percent — to close at $31.95 per share, despite WW’s delivering better-than-expected earnings and playing up its partnership with superstar Oprah Winfrey, who owns 11 percent of the company.

WW said that Winfrey’s WW-sponsored nine-city health tour, dubbed “Oprah’s 2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus,” is already 80 percent sold out.

The tour, set to run Jan. 4 to March 7, will “do what both WW and Oprah Winfrey do best, bring communities together with a shared goal of health and wellness,” Chief Executive Mindy Grossman said on an earnings call.

Investors, however, couldn’t seem to get past the shortfall in revenue. The $348.6 million recorded for the quarter was down 4.7 percent from the year-earlier period and missed analyst expectations by 1.2 percent.

Some watchers blamed shifting tastes in how customers subscribe to WW, which is moving away from in-person “studio” meetings to all-digital subscriptions that are less lucrative for the company.

WW noted that paid weeks by digital-only members increased 11 percent during the quarter even as paid weeks by studio-plusdigital members decreased 9.1 percent.

On an earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Nicholas Hotchkin acknowledged the importance of reversing declines in WW’s studio business — especially since “the price of a studio subscription is twice that of a digital subscription.”

This trend may already have the market afraid that WW’s revenue miss “may not be for just one quarter but that there’s more to come,” Morningstar analyst R.J. Hottovy told The Post. Still, “the outlook suggests 2020 is being set up as a nice rebound year.”

In addition, the company also raised its full-year earnings guidance to $1.63to-$1.75 a share, from $1.55to-$1.70 a share.