A Minnesota-grown fitness brand is merging with a Florida-based fitness company.

On Thursday, Woodbury-based Self Esteem Brands and Boca Raton, Florida-based Orangetheory Fitness jointly announced plans to “merge as equals.” The two entities plan to form a new company with a new name that hasn’t been determined yet. The deal is described as an all-stock transaction.

Self Esteem Brands is the parent company of several fitness brands, including Anytime Fitness, Basecamp Fitness, and The Bar Method. The company has nearly 5,500 locations around the world, including on a ship that spends time in Antarctica. Orangetheory, meanwhile, has more than 1,500 studios across 24 countries.

The Anytime Fitness and Orangetheory brands will survive the merger.

Both companies are privately owned, but they share an investor: Roark Capital, an Atlanta-based private equity firm that primarily invests in franchises. The firm takes its name from the main character in Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead. Roark has invested in Self Esteem Brands since 2014 and in Orangetheory since 2016.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson said that a search is underway for a new CEO of the combined fitness company. In the interim, Self Esteem co-founders Chuck Runyon and David Mortensen will remain in their respective roles as CEO and president, and Orangetheory co-founder and CEO Dave Long will keep his role, too. But once the deal is finalized and a new CEO is found, all three will transition to members of the new company’s board of directors.

For now, both companies will keep their respective headquarters in Minnesota and Florida. It’s not yet clear if the merger will result in any layoffs. Timing of the deal isn’t clear yet, either. Regulatory authorities still need to give their blessing.

Though several fitness industry players have struggled coming out of the pandemic, leaders at Self Esteem Brands and Orangetheory maintain that the merger is a growth-driven decision. Fellow Minnesota-based fitness company Life Time, for instance, this week finally reported a year-end profit in 2023 after losses in the two prior years. Life Time went public in late 2021.

Late last year, the local YWCA even ended its fitness offerings in downtown and Uptown Minneapolis locations, in part, because of a turbulent landscape in the industry. “The fitness industry wasn’t great before the pandemic, but it has not come back in the same way, whether you’re Life Time, LA Fitness, or places like us and the YMCA,” Shelley Carthen Watson, president and CEO of the YWCA Minneapolis, told TCB at the time.

Still, Self Esteem Brands and Orangetheory leadership had nothing but positive things to say about the merger. Orangetheory CEO Long said the deal will “unlock future growth and pioneer a healthier tomorrow for consumers around the world.”

Runyon at Self Esteem said his company has been working to “meet ever-increasing demand for more holistic and personalized health and wellness service.”