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

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

#231

Post by anonymouskimmer »

barelyauser wrote: post #227
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> power is zero sum. Power is finite and very scarce. As technology[1] increases power increases. It is social capital to convince others that is zero sum (holding the number of people constant). [1] - and here I mean all technology, not what's commonly called 'tech' today. > You can create tremendous wealth and later find out it ended in the hand of a single person. And that person is not willing to share. Having a…

Note the fact that I did not mention money. I mentioned wealth. Holding a huge bag of money is useless because as you stated, people can now choose to use another currency and I lose all my money, it becomes worthless. Or people can work for each other, without money. But what if I own all the productive land? What if I own a corporation that manufactures a product you depend on? This is wealth.

> But what if I own all the productive land? What if I own a corporation that manufactures a product you depend on? This is wealth.

If people won't take your money to defend your wealth, then your wealth belongs to whoever takes it. It's only the rule of law that allows material wealth to exist.

This is a very strong force, and is effectively insurmountable in most circumstances in lands with well-functioning governments. But things like the following do, very rarely, happen even in them: https://morbidology.com/the-town-that-got-away-with-murder/

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

#232

Post by uoaei »

CPLX wrote: post #139
uoaei wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be consistently conflating potential value with real value, but potential value is and always will be a red herring, so it's important to distinguish them and treat them each separately.

Real value can be destroyed. Dollars can be printed, planes can crash. Crops can grow, or rot. The effort of humans can be deployed wastefuliy, like making snowmen, or not, like planting crops and building shelter. Wealth represents an assessment of the value to humans of existing resources and it can go up and down based on the decisions of how to allocate that wealth. There’s absolutely no controversy whatsoever ab…

Your response confuses me given my comment. What is your definition of "conflate"?

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

#233

Post by unusualmonkey »

neilk wrote: post #119
BulgarianIdiot wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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

It's not even a high premium if you need what cloud offerings have.

Management is expensive. Scaling is expensive. Security and compliance is expensive.

Cloud isn't for everyone, but when you need what it offers it can be amazingly cost effective.

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

#234

Post by CottonMcKnight »

I wonder about a connection between the collapse in commercial real estate and the recent flood of editorials, news segments, interviews, public statements, tweets, etc., railing against Work-from-Home.

It feels like a lot of investor-class losses are on the verge of being realized, and they are getting desperate.

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

#235

Post by anonymouskimmer »

joosters wrote: post #152
bluepizza wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if there is no reconstruction? Not every catastrophe is a catalyst for reconstruction. If a house is destroyed in a fire, it loses its value as a house. Now you have the value of the land, which will be offset by the cost of clearing it. So the value of the land is below market. The asset has depreciated. Large scale construction tends to be very good for the economy because it both increases economic activity (…

Surely some of these costs / economic activities are just like the parable of the broken window? For example, the meal makers. Construction works buy their lunches from shops nearby - that's great for those shops. But how is this improving the economy? Those workers would have needed lunches anyway. If they weren't working, they could have made their lunches at home, and not had to eat out. It would have (probably) b…

> But how is this improving the economy? Those workers would have needed lunches anyway.

In economics this is called hedonic adjustment. The economy is improved because the workers value purchasing a lunch more than making their own.

It's cheaper to listen to the radio, or even buy a CD, than to go to a concert. Going to a concert is not seen as economically inefficient.

9 foot ceilings are not seen as economically inefficient compared to 8 foot ceilings. The additional foot is seen as value.

A house made of bricks is valued more than a house made of straw, despite them both functioning equally as well as long as a huffing and puffing wolf isn't around.

Etcetera.

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

#236

Post by qwytw »

Ensorceled wrote: post #209
qwytw wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their net income back in 2021 was -223.32 mil. So only ~0.6 million per day. The interest payments on the $12.5 billion of debt Musk offloading to its balance sheet to fund his 'purchase' is way more than that. Basically Musk alone costs Twitter about the same as 4000 - 8000 employees. Which is why he had to fire that many people.. Seems like a great deal. Not that I mind him running Twitter into the ground it's horr…

As always, you are (were) using Twitter wrong. I follow authors, artists and journalists. Now, since Musk, the comments on anything newsworthy is a cesspool of paid subscribers with inane comments or just a string of emojis. If you had told me 6 months ago that I would grow to hate the clown emoji, I would have been bewildered.

> As always, you are (were) using Twitter wrong. I follow authors, artists and journalists.

Well yeah, but those authors, artists and journalists can only use Twitter to share links and images (and announcements) since no meaningful content can fit into 230 chars. The worst is when people split a single paragraph text into 5+ tweets, that just brain damage inducing UX....

IMHO removing the limit would've been the only good thing Musk did if it was available to everyone.

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

#237

Post by bradlys »

I mean, come on. Almost all growth stocks have been completely hammered in the last 18 months. Nearly every SPAC is down monstrously from its merger. All the hyper growth IPOs have dropped to a quarter of their ATH - with many startups not even going public now. (Stripe, Instacart, etc.)

Nearly everything got hammered. WeWork is just one of hundreds. Admittedly, they’re the poster child for this economic situation.

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

#238

Post by wizofaus »

dazc wrote: post #185
ninth_ant wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single parent working three jobs just to cover rent and food works hard. Grifting hedge funds maybe isn’t easy, but get no sympathy from me for “working hard.” Lots of people work hard.

'A single parent working three jobs just to cover rent and food works hard.' Is this a reality though? I was desperate for work many years ago and all the part-time jobs were optimized for a specific time of the day - say 10 am to 2pm or thereabouts. I can imagine a scenario where someone is holding down 2 jobs but 3, this is hard to comprehend? For context, I should add I am in the UK where there are perverse incent…

> Is this a reality though?

Most certainly in the age of the gig economy. Even my own partner has about 4 different jobs now - as a registered nurse. They don't necessarily add up to a massive number of hours a week but she'd no doubt prefer not to have to jump back and forth between so many employers, each with their own set of expectations and management styles etc. But she'd have to settle for a pretty crumby base salary for any sort of full time position.

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

#239

Post by ethbr0 »

bboreham wrote: post #109
ethbr0 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The quoted price can and does move without transactions. The last-traded price does not.

How would the quoted price move without transactions? (And I realize we're bleeding over into market making dynamics here)

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

#240

Post by wizofaus »

emacsen wrote: post #87
bluepizza wrote: post #63

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

Unrelated to this is the distinction between money and wealth. The challenge for a company like Weework is that it's hard to identify what wealth they generate- at least for me. In other words, what are they making (goods) or doing (services) that provides value to the world (wealth). I suppose they'd say that their core value is making it easy to rent space quickly. This is certainly providing some value, but I hard…

WeWork certainly provides value to the companies that rent their offices (including the one I work for). If someone else were looking for office rental options I'd recommend WeWork on the basis of the experience I've had working within their office space over the last 8 months or so. But obviously it was massively oversold as being a lot more than an office remodeling/ maintenance/ cleaning/subletting service.
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