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WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

reuters.com

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Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#181

Post by bduerst »

ghaff wrote: post #119
sk5t wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Peloton is one that comes to mind Is it not possible that both investors and the public will find the shine off the apple of pairing two independently somewhat unattractive things--a stationary bicycle and a hefty monthly fee--as used models start to hit the secondary market? Have you ever tried to sell a used stationary bicycle? It ain't easy! The evidence of the gulf between good intentions and regular use is rig…

It's certainly not hard to imagine Peloton is something of a fad. There is no shortage of those in the fitness space--in addition to the, as you say, general omnipresence of New Year's resolutions vs. ongoing use.

Or Pelotron could be the start of communal home fitness, taking the place of gym (e.g. Soul Cycle) subscription fees. Point is there is no way to know for certain.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#182

Post by semi-extrinsic »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #156
mikeryan wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't quantify it - but WeWork's scale does give them a bit of an advantage. I run a small digital agency, as a WeWork member when I'm on the road being able to know I can find and book space for meetings or work is invaluable. We've also spun up offices in new cities (Mexico City for us) easily and quickly with a confidence in the level of service and support that we're getting. There is a premium for this and we'…

> WeWork's scale does give them a bit of an advantage Within the original thesis per se it gave them a possible demand-side advantage. (Commercial real estate is too big for any meaningful sell-side advantages.) Being able to say "let's open a branch in Singapore and see how it goes for 6 months" with a few clicks is quite awesome. If I trusted it to be around in a few years, it would change how I think about deployi…

> Being able to say "let's open a branch in Singapore and see how it goes for 6 months" with a few clicks is quite awesome.

I'd have thought that for most businesses, the two big obstacles for doing this are a) getting skilled people to suddenly move to Singapore at your will, and b) getting the Singapore office well integrated with the rest of the company.

Compared to those two, setting up an office lease is about as hard as tying your shoelaces.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#183

Post by ralph84 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #87
pbreit wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this comment relevant to WeWork? How has it "cheated"? It definitely is early/first and very smart.

> How is this comment relevant to WeWork? How has it "cheated"? They borrowed short, lent long and then pretended it was as sustainable business. To their credit, they abundantly disclosed their shenanigans. (I haven't seen any evidence suggesting investors can reasonably claim fraud.) But they were playing fast and loose with basic economics. At its core, sure, WeWork could have been a business. Its thesis, that off…

> They borrowed short, lent long and then pretended it was as sustainable business.

You've just described almost every company in the financial sector.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#186

Post by hourislate »

S_A_P wrote: 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…

>What I don't understand is how do things get this far down the road before a good old fashioned sanity check happens?

Wall St. et al, didn't care about anything but off loading this POS onto Investors and then taking their money and running.

That's how it works. Thank goodness it rolled over and now the race to zero. Couldn't have happened to a bunch of nicer guys.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#187

Post by bananocurrency »

human20190310 wrote: post #85
michaelt wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible Neumann was some sort of idealistic hippie who believed his own BS and got in over his head. But I have trouble squaring that with extremely hard-nosed moves like cashing out $700 million, and getting loans from the company to buy buildings to lease back to the company.

Hippies are at least as greedy as anyone else.

When you #define hippie whoever you want it to mean then I guess anyone is as greedy as anyone else.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#188

Post by wpietri »

S_A_P wrote: 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 think there's a class of narcissist that doesn't really have knowledge and beliefs as much as they have desires and things to say that get them closer to their desires.

So in some sense I think asking what Adam Neumann and Elizabeth Holmes really believe is a category error. Knowing the truth makes lying really hard. If you spend a lot of time figuring out what's true, that builds mental habits that make lying feel bad. But if mostly ignore "true", then it's much easier to focus only on what Nixon's press secretary called the "operative statement" [1]. For narcissist CEOs, I think they treat the objective truth like a child sometimes treats a scary closet: if they never look at it or think about it, it's not a problem.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/weekinreview/the-nation-t...

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#189

Post by abvdasker »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #43
S_A_P wrote: 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…

“There are three ways to make a living in this business: be first, be smarter, or cheat.“ -Margin Call SV ran out of the first two because they are much harder. We are left with the dying gasps of companies trying the third way.

Oh man, what a fantastic film. It's a been a while since I saw Margin Call, but I still feel like it's one of the films that best captured the 2008 financial crisis. Jeremy Irons' portrayal of a Goldman CEO-like character — I think he's the one who delivers the line you quoted — remains probably the most convincing portrayal of that type of person I can remember.

The wonderful board room scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhy7JUinlu0

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#190

Post by jazzyk »

notyourday wrote: post #134
ac29 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dropbox, slack Are these good examples, though? Dropbox is down ~35% since IPOing, and Slack is down almost 50%. This certainly suggests the market thinks they were both overvalued when they IPO'd.

I think you are confusing the opening price with an IPO price. Slack went public at $26, it is at $23.50 today. It is less than 10% less than the IPO price.

Yes, but this is at a time when the overall market is close to an all-time high.

What happens when the inevitable correction comes? The Fed will run out of monetary tricks, eventually.

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