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The We Company S-1

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Re: The We Company S-1

#321

Post by ilikehurdles »

xchaotic wrote: post #313
nabnob wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a property company that's planning tracking everything people do in their buildings. >WeWork's latest acquisition is a small software company with 24 employees. Euclid is a spatial analytics platform...Euclid's website says the company is "focused on redefining the workplace experience of the future." Translation: optimizing every aspect of the physical workplace so workers are their most productive. Euclid does…

Did Euclid / WeWork realise that many people prefer to work from home? My past 14 years of professional experience would net WeWork 0 rental income.

I'm part of an almost entirely remote company, where the headquarters is stationed in a coworking space. If the company offered a WeWork membership for us remote-workers, I'd occasionally like to visit the space for the atmosphere of working around other working people and the conveient coffee, booze, and views.

But as it stands WeWork is far too expensive for me to justify paying out of pocket for considering how noisy the shared areas are compared to any of the cafes down the block from my home, where I can get the same work done in a similar environment for a fraction of the daily cost.

Re: The We Company S-1

#322

Post by phonon »

gizmodo59 wrote: post #66

The executive compensation looks interesting. I wish they publish the ceo salary before 2018. Is that more for a public perception? And we see only CFO/Legal and no one else.

"Employment Agreement

The Company does not have an employment agreement in place with Adam and, accordingly, Adam does not earn any salary from the Company and would not be entitled to severance if he no longer served as Chief Executive Officer. Adam earned no salary in 2018 and only earned $1 in 2017. Moreover, Adam is not entitled to any perquisites from the Company and elects to reimburse the Company in full for any perquisites he may receive in connection with his service as our Chief Executive Officer."

The value of the options he was granted, as well as related party transactions are quite significant though...

Re: The We Company S-1

#323

Post by cosmodisk »

wpietri wrote: post #152
nabnob wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a property company that's planning tracking everything people do in their buildings. >WeWork's latest acquisition is a small software company with 24 employees. Euclid is a spatial analytics platform...Euclid's website says the company is "focused on redefining the workplace experience of the future." Translation: optimizing every aspect of the physical workplace so workers are their most productive. Euclid does…

Yeah, I don't see that providing the outsized gains they're hoping for. I've talked to a number of entrepreneurs who business plan is basically 1. Collect data 2. ??? 3. Profit And every time I quiz them on point 2, they get squirrely. They can never explain exactly how it works; at best I get hazy references to Google making lots from data, which is at best a partial truth. In this case, I doubt having that data wil…

I'm sitting in a very similar situation.The company I work for provides relatively basic service, however the operational( we are brokers) model is challenging. We have tons of reports and dashboards measuring things from A to Z, sometimes it feels like we are some sort of analytics company. While some metrics are useful and help steer the ship either way,the rest simply becomes noise. Also a lot of data is not being interpreted correctly because of lack of statistics/math skills within the company.

Re: The We Company S-1

#324

Post by dctoedt »

staticautomatic wrote: post #308
dctoedt wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WeWork's litigation counsel might have wanted the pitch-deck stuff to go into the S-1 to make the information more understandable to non-business people. That way, the pitch deck would be an official part of the record; in turn, this would mean a couple of things: 1. If disgruntled investors were to sue WeWork, the pitch-deck material could be referred to by WeWork's counsel in tactical maneuvering such as a motion f…

As a jury consultant who's worked on a lot of securities and M&A-gone-wrong litigation, I don't understand why you think it would be beneficial for pitch deck stuff to go into a disclosure. If I were a defendant accused of making misrepresentations, I'd most likely want the pitch deck kept out. "Pitch deck stuff" is aspirational, to put it charitably. A defendant would ideally want to take the opposite position-- tha…

> As a jury consultant who's worked on a lot of securities and M&A-gone-wrong litigation

Plaintiff- or defense side?

> If I were a defendant accused of making misrepresentations, I'd most likely want the pitch deck kept out.

That's never gonna happen (keeping it out), so good defense counsel will grasp the nettle and get out in front of the issue.

Also (something I didn't mention before but should have): There's a jury-psychology benefit to being able to say, in effect, we submitted all this to the SEC, and they approved the registration. It's analogous to why patent applicants are well-advised to tell the USPTO about all the prior art that they know of — so that at trial, the patent owner's trial counsel can respond to the infringer's counsel with, yeah, we know about that prior art, because WE TOLD THE EXAMINER about it, and s/he issued the patent, so who ya gonna believe — this infringer's BS argument, or the government expert who was tasked by law with issuing only valid patents? That helps fend off infringers' invalidity challenges.

> "Pitch deck stuff" is aspirational, to put it charitably.

I perused the S-1; at first glance, that pitch-deck stuff is exactly what I imagine WeWork's litigation counsel might affirmatively want the judge, the judge's law clerk, and/or the jury to see — and, at trial, for an expert witness to be able to use as a visual aid in explaining the value proposition to the jury. (I've never done securities litigation, but I used to do IP litigation for complex technologies, where similar principles apply.)

> A defendant could easily get it into evidence through a fact witness or PMQ.

True, but again, it's always nice to be able to point out to the judge/law clerk/jury that this is what was disclosed to the SEC, and that the SEC approved the registration. Sure, legally that fact has very little weight; psychologically, though, it can't hurt and it costs essentially nothing. (You do have to make sure it's factually unchallengeable, but top-flight securities counsel will do their best to achieve that anyway.)

Re: The We Company S-1

#325

Post by vikramkr »

martin_bech wrote: post #287
vikramkr wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what you're buying. You're buying a share of the earnings/monetary value of the company, and are valuing it based on your belief in zuck as a leader. You are not buying any control in the company, and that's pruiced in. I'm sure shares would be worth more if zuck didn't control the company and you could gain control by buying shares.

So in the best interrest of shareholders, if you believe that shares would be worth more, if they they didnt have this class segregation, then they shouldn't.. Thats what would be best for shareholders..

Zuckerberg would argue that even if shirt term the value if the stock is lower, his judgement abilities are superior to that of the shareholders, and that it is better for the shareholders if he maintains control. He is also a shareholder after all, and he's doing what he believes will optimize the value of the shares since that is what he's encouraged to do. And who cares if it's in the best interest of shareholders? Shareholders know what they bought. They bought a share of the earnings generated by a company fully controlled by Zuckerberg. If they bought it, then they are fine with these terms. And zuck is clearly happy with things the way they are. If shareholders dont think zuck is maximizing their value, they dont have to own his shares, and if people cared and sold, that would incentivize zuck to change things.

Re: The We Company S-1

#326

Post by cosmodisk »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #321
xchaotic wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Euclid / WeWork realise that many people prefer to work from home? My past 14 years of professional experience would net WeWork 0 rental income.

I'm part of an almost entirely remote company, where the headquarters is stationed in a coworking space. If the company offered a WeWork membership for us remote-workers, I'd occasionally like to visit the space for the atmosphere of working around other working people and the conveient coffee, booze, and views. But as it stands WeWork is far too expensive for me to justify paying out of pocket for considering how no…

Don't rent in some hipster corner,where you'd have 9/10 doing anything but work.Find a slightly run down office space and get a desk or a tiny room there. I've been to so many non A+ office buildings and most of them are dead quiet because most tenants in such buildings have to work their asses off to make living because they don't operate in high margin,low competition markets.

Re: The We Company S-1

#327

Post by AgloeDreams »

navigatesol wrote: post #305
AgloeDreams wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. This was true of Tesla back when they made only the S & X and blew their R&D dollars on Model 3/AP/Batteries but the Model 3's margins are incredibly bad with sky-high ops costs while they are digging a hole like a car stuck in mud. They are promising FSD (to paid customers), Semi & Roadster (To reserved customers), and a Model Y that will surely eat into Model X sales, meanwhile they are clearly reducing sp…

I agree, but want to emphasize that it's not necessarily sinister: they simply have no money to do the things they've promised. That's best case. Worst case is sinister.

I agree, for the most part, FSD seems simply outlandish and by this point they already had promised coast-to-coast. There really wasn't any real path to their promises.

Re: The We Company S-1

#328

Post by rdslw »

dctoedt wrote: post #183
notyourday wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, except that's not how this works outside the theoretical realm. In practice, those that actually took companies public know that the more terrible crap you throw into the S-1 ( pitch deck included ) as long as you state that risk-wise you are probably a terrible investment for the public, the better protected you are from the lawsuits in the future when the public's investment does not pan out: you say 'we are…

This is also true. Back when I was drafting my then-company's Form 10-K annual reports, for just that reason I loaded up the risk section with a list of all the things that could go wrong, based on studying similar lists from the big software companies. It's sometimes known as vaccination or inoculation — "hey, we told you all these things that could make our stock price go south!" (The danger with this approach, of…

Your actions are reason, why this (yours incl) sections are useless from investor perspective.

Take for example a risk from We Work company S1: > the sustainability of our rapid growth and our ability to manage our growth effectively;

translation: getting older may cause you die.

in other words: dont put your cat to microwave, and beware as your tea might be hot in your cup.

Re: The We Company S-1

#329

Post by cosmodisk »

nabnob wrote: post #301
DebtDeflation wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a couple of issues with this. It's a well-known effect in management theory that workers behave differently when they know they're being observed. Also, presumably most of their tenants employ knowledge workers not factory floor workers, and so data about how often they go to the bathroom or how many steps they take in an hour is probably a lot less relevant than tracking what they're doing on their compute…

Yeah, I don't think this is an effective way to improve worker productivity, and I think it would also be pretty demoralizing. With that said, there's already companies that track workers like this, so I definitely think there's a market for it.

Measuring every single second of how it gets spent- That's idiotic. Knowing that everything you do can be easily checked and measured- sometimes it works miracles.

Re: The We Company S-1

#330

Post by jly »

gdgtfiend wrote: post #205

WeWork has $33.9 Billion in Non-canceable lease commitments, and it's lease payments are increasing 100% YoY. I think that is the true ticking time bomb for this company. In a world where billion dollar losses (Uber) seems somewhat normal, those lease obligations are still outrageous, and those payments will come due eventually, whether they have the money or not. In 2019 they attributed over $800 Million to operatin…

Even worse, WeWork doesn't generate that much more revenue from tenants than it spends servicing its enormous lease obligations. They admit in the risks section that a significant portion of their members are small and medium sized businesses/freelancers who may be negatively affected by economic downturn. Their average lease duration is 15(!) years, and most do not have early termination provisions.

Oof.

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