Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WeWork has frittered away $46.7B in value as the stock sinks below ¢50

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 274 posts

Re: WeWork has frittered away $46.7B in value as the stock sinks below ¢50

#51

Post by CPLX »

sokoloff wrote: post #29
CPLX wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean if it used to be a very large pile of US currency then yes, it definitely had a lot of value that was apparently destroyed.

It never was a large pile of US currency (at least nowhere near as large as the peak of last_price * shares_outstanding would suggest). If you today form a company having 1 billion and 1 shares and I agree to buy 1 share from you for a dollar, you aren’t a billionaire.

Yes but if you buy the shares from me for $22 billion, as happened here, that’s a little different.

Re: WeWork has frittered away $46.7B in value as the stock sinks below ¢50

#53

Post by Hamuko »

gchamonlive wrote: post #44
fallingknife wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Losing money doesn't destroy wealth. It just transfers it from one place to another.

If wealth is not destroyed but transferred, where does it go after an earthquake?

Construction companies?

Re: WeWork has frittered away $46.7B in value as the stock sinks below ¢50

#55

Post by CPLX »

Hamuko wrote: post #50
diceduckmonk wrote: post #24

I think the market cap is less than the amount Adam walked away with.

Elizabeth Holmes should've picked an easier industry than healthcare considering Adam Neumann was selling hot air and made out like a fucking thief.

In Adam’s defense he created what’s actually an excellent product. I’m a happy WeWork customer it’s a great experience as a customer. Things would be a lot different for Holmes if that’s what she did.

Re: WeWork has frittered away $46.7B in value as the stock sinks below ¢50

#56

Post by throwaway290 »

cturner wrote: post #45
jfengel wrote: post #3

Was anything of value lost? The idea, as I understand it, was co-working spaces. They were there to optimize that, extracting the maximum profit in the way they leased stuff. Ok, fine. Is co-working still going on? Has something desirable been lost? Were they creating any value that couldn't be recreated by someone else. I can't care one way or another about fake valuation of market cap. But I do care if work is gett…

It was poorly allocated capital. Akin to building an expensive bridge to nowhere. Sometimes there are silver linings to those situations - eg dark fibre after the dot com crash. Here there will be discounted coworking space. Regardless, failure in the market demonstrates that there are better things the effort could have gone to as far as we know at this moment. Therefore it's justified to say that value was lost.

Poorly allocated indeed. I still remember the outrage over how the founder of WeWork used the company to buy stuff like branding assets and real estate from himself at very good (for him) prices...

Re: WeWork has frittered away $46.7B in value as the stock sinks below ¢50

#57

Post by kibwen »

Hamuko wrote: post #53
gchamonlive wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If wealth is not destroyed but transferred, where does it go after an earthquake?

Construction companies?

'The parable of the broken window was introduced by French economist Frédéric Bastiat in his 1850 essay "That Which We See and That Which We Do Not See" ("Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas") to illustrate why destruction, and the money spent to recover from destruction, is not actually a net benefit to society.'

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

Re: WeWork has frittered away $46.7B in value as the stock sinks below ¢50

#58

Post by rwmj »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #2

It never had that much value, it just made it look like it did for long enough to get people to invest in it at vastly inflated prices. "Renting offices to work in" was never going to be a silicon valley style success, because it just can't scale that way.

Not to mention that the business had already been done. It's Regus with nice sofas.
Post reply on HN