WeWork’s parent company unveils papers for IPO

WeWork’s parent company unveiled the papers for its initial public offering Wednesday, taking the next step toward the office-space firm’s high-profile debut as soon as September, reports Maureen Farrell of the Wall Street Journal.

The filing gives the most detailed financial picture to date of We Co., which was known as WeWork Cos. until recently. We generated $1.54 billion in revenue in the first six months of 2019 and posted a net loss of $689.7 million. In 2018, the company raked in $1.82 billion in revenue, but it also lost $1.61 billion. (https://www.wsj.com/articles/wework-ipo-filing-reveals-huge-revenue-and-losses-11565783212?mod=hp_lead_pos4)

The nine-year-old co-working start-up now operating under the We company umbrella of companies is hemorrhaging money; $219,000 every hour of every day during the 12 months leading up to March, according to the Financial Times. (https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-not-close-to-profitable-loses-hundreds-thousands-every-hour-2019-7)

In 2018, WeWork’s losses and revenue both doubled, to $1.9 billion and $1.8 billion, respectively. According to the FT, though the company in March projected $3 billion in revenue in the next year, it lost $700 million in the first quarter of 2019.

Masatoshi Son, CEO of the Japanese investment bank SoftBank,  is the major investor in WeWork and a mentor to WeWork CEO Adam Neumann. Son has invested more than $10 billion in WeWork. In December, Softbank was expected to invest $16 billion in WeWork but ended up investing only $6 billion, with $1 billion of that going toward existing shares, prompting renewed scrutiny of its business model.