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WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

reuters.com

21–30 of 404 posts

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#21
Cannot understand how they can restructure this. Even one new building in London which isn't anywhere near structurally complete WeWork has taken 18 floors on a 25 year lease (I think due to open 2020 or 2021).

Is there a way they can walk away from all these commitments? I understand they have a SPE structure which potentially allows them to do that, but I imagine there must be some costs or downsides to it, otherwise it isn't much of a lease commitment from WeWork's PoV.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#22
So this is what I do not understand: they burn through money like crazy. For them IPO was not a path to liquidity for stock holders, rather it was a way to do the next raise. The large market basically said "Nah, can't get that money on those terms. Sorry". Their only private source of funding is Softbank.

How are they going to raise more money for opex? Go back to Softbank and get another pile of cash at even higher valuation? Because it would be incredibly dumb for Softbank to do that as they have no serious competitors on the next round. So is softbank going to say 'This will be the down round and, we will now own 95% of the company and all of you, previous shareholders, get whatever is left? It is a down round with a wipe out, take it or leave it?'

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#23
post #5

This whole thing has been nuts. It's clear no one who invested late ever actually believed in the valuations -- matt levine says it better "We came to market and public investors informally expressed some skepticism and its private backers were immediately like “wait this company isn’t profitable, why did no one tell us, burn it all down.” I am not saying that the public markets are wrong, but I kind of wanted there…

Even simpler: it's fraud and they got caught. Hopefully it doesn't paint other great IPOs in a bad light.

In order for something to be fraud there has to be deception. This was never the case with WeWork.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many engineers does WeWork actually employ though? From everything I've read on here they're not really a tech company. I can't imagine that, even if it all goes up in flames, there will be many SWEs looking for new jobs from this. Uber is another story. They've got a sizeable engineering force.

At least 500 doing a quick search for 'software engineer' at 'wework'. Probably over 1000 for different job titles, etc.

That just seems mind boggling to me.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#25
post #4

Incoming layoffs... between wework and uber the market will be "flooded" with talent. I wonder if having wework on your resume is a good or bad thing.

Well in case of Uber their engineering side is quite strong. WeWork? Not saying their engineering is bad, but as far as I know there's nothing groundbreaking there besides a standard CRM & billing system? So I think as an engineer having Uber would be a very good signal your resume, WeWork would be just like any other company.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#26

Wow what a huge rise and fall in the past few weeks! What I don't understand is how the S-1 filing ever saw the light of day? How could nobody reviewing that see any of the red flags that were obvious? I think this just shows how hard it is to be objective when there are so many cultural/financial/etc influences affecting your judgement. Obviously their team bought the hype (and as a sad Browns fan I can totally symp…

Did you not watch the game yesterday?

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#29

Wow what a huge rise and fall in the past few weeks! What I don't understand is how the S-1 filing ever saw the light of day? How could nobody reviewing that see any of the red flags that were obvious? I think this just shows how hard it is to be objective when there are so many cultural/financial/etc influences affecting your judgement. Obviously their team bought the hype (and as a sad Browns fan I can totally symp…

> Obviously their team bought the hype

or nobody wanted to rock the boat. If you had pointed out this as a legal grunt or rank & file finance guy, you would have looked bad for "ruining" the exec's payday. Better to let the market decide and just keep your head down and receive your pay check.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#30
post #19

What I don't understand is how do things get this far down the road before a good old fashioned sanity check happens? I have got to think that Soft Bank knew/knows the valuation was off. The fact that they pushed on means they either intended to try and get away with it/take the money and run as I cant believe incompetence is the reason here. How did this get so far along??? As for Adam N, I have to think some part o…

> I have to think some part of him knew that it was a bullshit valuation

After reading some of the stories, I'm minded to believe maybe he didn't...

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