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WeWork Warns of Possible Bankruptcy

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Re: WeWork Warns of Possible Bankruptcy

#2
> The spectacular collapse of a company once valued by SoftBank at $40 billion has been years in the making, but is still surprising given the number of large commercial buildings around the world that don the company’s name.

Is it actually surprising? If you too many assets that you bought with variable interest rate debt, then going bankrupt in a higher-interest-rate environment is exactly what I would expect.

Re: WeWork Warns of Possible Bankruptcy

#3
The story of WeWork is fascinating and sad to watch (for the employees). Adam got his but his employees didn't.

The financial numbers are pretty sad too.

- Market cap below $500 million.

- Lost $700 million in 6 months this year

- Lost $2.3 billion in 2022

- Roughly 3 billion in debt

- Total liquidity of only $680 million (only 1/3 is cash).

Re: WeWork Warns of Possible Bankruptcy

#5

The story of WeWork is fascinating and sad to watch (for the employees). Adam got his but his employees didn't. The financial numbers are pretty sad too. - Market cap below $500 million. - Lost $700 million in 6 months this year - Lost $2.3 billion in 2022 - Roughly 3 billion in debt - Total liquidity of only $680 million (only 1/3 is cash).

What is crazy is that he was able to raise 350 millions from a16z for what is basically a simple property management company. After all the sh*t he did. And then you go to a16z with an idea, and they reject it because it is not innovative enough. Then VCs wonder why 80% of their investments fail to produce the expected money on average.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/16/how-a16zs-investment-into-...

Re: WeWork Warns of Possible Bankruptcy

#6

The story of WeWork is fascinating and sad to watch (for the employees). Adam got his but his employees didn't. The financial numbers are pretty sad too. - Market cap below $500 million. - Lost $700 million in 6 months this year - Lost $2.3 billion in 2022 - Roughly 3 billion in debt - Total liquidity of only $680 million (only 1/3 is cash).

Don’t forget that the VCs backed him again on a somehow even shadier, blatantly dystopian startup idea with a metric ton of money again [1].

1. https://fortune.com/2023/07/11/adam-neumann-new-company-flow...

Re: WeWork Warns of Possible Bankruptcy

#9
post #2

> The spectacular collapse of a company once valued by SoftBank at $40 billion has been years in the making, but is still surprising given the number of large commercial buildings around the world that don the company’s name. Is it actually surprising? If you too many assets that you bought with variable interest rate debt, then going bankrupt in a higher-interest-rate environment is exactly what I would expect.

Did they actually buy buildings? I thought they just took long term leases from owners and sold short term to their customers? I once read an article saying that for all the tech bs, weworks was basically just a (at the well timed) commercial rent play: fix low rent and then charge rising rents as the market goes up.

I might be wrong though?

I remember thinking it was like a bank (exposed to time risk) but with property...

Re: WeWork Warns of Possible Bankruptcy

#10

The story of WeWork is fascinating and sad to watch (for the employees). Adam got his but his employees didn't. The financial numbers are pretty sad too. - Market cap below $500 million. - Lost $700 million in 6 months this year - Lost $2.3 billion in 2022 - Roughly 3 billion in debt - Total liquidity of only $680 million (only 1/3 is cash).

Still $25B more in green than Uber!
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