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

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111–120 of 274 posts

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

#111

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.

Explain why. It’s literally Uber for offices. It could’ve worked if managed right.

Is it Uber for offices? Uber's model is that individual people with cars and spare time effectively loan out that car and their time to people wishing to make journeys, with the two parties being connected and the deal arranged by Uber, who take a cut. All the vehicle ownership risk was shoved onto the driver, and in the event that there was suddenly zero demand somewhere, that risk also was borne by the driver (at least, until various jurisdictions started enforcing minimum wage so that drivers who had no rides all day still got paid).

WeWork's model didn't appear to involve individual people with spare office capacity loaning it out for short periods to other people needing an office for a short while. WeWork's model appeared to be that WeWork itself leased office space, and rented it out to people. WeWork paid for the lease, and took on all the risk of that and all the risk of the demand vanishing.

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

#112
WeWork has always been a shitty REIT marketed and valued as a tech company. Not surprised at its demise.

The only thing I’m sad about is: Neumann is not rotting in jail. He defrauded investors, misled people yet he was actually rewarded with a golden parachute.

Per article he is now pushing some other junk product with rental housing. Probably buying up distressed properties, applying cheap aesthetic fixes, and jacking up the prices and pushing out people from their homes.

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

#114

I’ve ridden this stock down almost all the way (came in at $5 then 2.50 then again at $0.50). I am a pretty bad investor in that my top criteria is to buy stocks that produce a good or service I love and then stick with them a long time. As an operator WeWork adds so much value to us as we staff up all over the world. I love being able to go into any city and have a fun energetic and aesthetically beautiful environme…

> When I look at the WFH shift, I struggle to rationalize how companies wouldn’t rather utilize flex space as needed for group huddles than commit to long term leases.

It still requires that everyone be in the same city more or less. Basically only applies to companies that had an office and now don't want one, and even then only for a while.

Once you're working fully remote anyway you're giving up one of its major advantages (geographically unconstrained hiring pool) by keeping to one city like that. If you find meeting in person to be advantageous enough to justify that, you probably should capitalize on it and just have an office.

It's one of those things that sounds good on paper, and kinda was good during some periods of the pandemic. But it's a compromised middle ground that realizes none of the advantages of committing to either approach.

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

#115
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you buy a stock for 100 dollars, and due to a series of bad results which led to price adjustments, the stock is now worth 1 dollar, you lost 99 dollars. Nobody else picked up those 99 dollars. Asset depreciation is a fundamental concept that you should be familiar with, as it influences several aspects of your personal finance: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/depreciation.asp

In order for the stock "price" to move, somebody sold. Stocks don't reprice without transactions.

If there is a sufficiently impactful information, investors will reassess their valuation and pricing strategies.

Company X's stock are worth 100 dollars. A scandal breaks out, revealing that their second most important product must be removed from the market immediately due to health concerns. The company will survive, as it has other products, but it is clear that their income will go down and they will spend a fortune on litigation.

Suddenly Investor A wants to sell this stock, because they don't want to hold a risky asset. But who will buy it? Investor B is willing to buy this stock, and will reassess their targets, decide that this stock is now worth around 75, and only buy it at this price.

Investor A has two options now: hold a risky asset, or take a loss. If they decide to take a loss, the stock is now priced at 75. If they decide to hold it, then the price might be artificially 100, but this asset is not liquid now, as nobody is willing to buy it at 100.

So the price has already dropped, before any transactions happened.

See also pre market trading: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/premarket.asp

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

#116
post #5

Yes its a huge value loss but isn't this part of the VC model - invest in some companies knowing most will probably whither away in one way or another but a few will hit it out the park? The article mentions Benchmark and Insight have done ok in their other investments. Softbank though is a bit of an outlier - maybe it was a one-hit-wonder with Alibaba. They don't appear to have invested like other VCs at any rate.

Benchmark was reported to have done secondary sales back in the Softbank days that made their Wework investment successful:

https://news.crunchbase.com/startups/report-adam-neumann-ben...

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

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter and YouTube don’t make profits, yet are still wildly successful. With a high enough amounts of hype, stock price, and money, a company can stave off reality in seeming perpetuity.

Wasn't Twitter mostly profitable, except for some hugebsttlement with the FCC (?)? Until recently that is.

Elon said that when he acquired Twitter it was burning $4 million per day.

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

#118
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…

Coworking is absolutely still going on. My wife and I go to https://kiln.com/ which is a fantastic option if you are in SoCal or Utah. They seem to be thriving. The workspaces are fantastic, they get us all the benefits of going to a (very nice) office with none of the downsides (we choose when to go, and they're a five minute bike ride from the kids school.) Lots of opportunities to meet other members, network, and…

I’ll never understand why you would want to subject yourself to an office AND pay for that experience. Networking aside (why can’t that be done outside of a co-working environment), I don’t see any benefits.

I would rather dump the $3,900 per year into my mortgage or other debt tbh.

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

#119

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.

Explain why. It’s literally Uber for offices. It could’ve worked if managed right.

It’s not Uber for Offices. It’s AWS for offices.

The AWS bet is that some companies, especially when starting out, will pay a high premium to not have to manage certain physical resources, and to have the flexibility to scale up or down easily.

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

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't Twitter mostly profitable, except for some hugebsttlement with the FCC (?)? Until recently that is.

Elon said that when he acquired Twitter it was burning $4 million per day.

Afaik the number was after the acquisition, and thus with Twitter on the hook for $1.2 billion of yearly debt repayment from the acquisition loans?
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