Global flexible workspace provider WeWork warned that “substantial doubt exists" about its ability to continue as a going concern unless it can improve liquidity and profitability over the next 12 months.
The New York-based company said its memberships, subscriptions for individuals or companies to gain desk space in offices it rents out around the world, fell because of issues including increased competition and “macroeconomic volatility” that led to a higher member churn.
WeWork completed a financial restructuring with investors including majority shareholder SoftBank in May that cut its debt by about $1.2 billion and extended most of its debt maturity to 2027. The company said it had drawn $175 million in July of $680 million of liquidity it had at the end of June.
The company's shares closed at 21 cents in New York on Tuesday and lost another third of that value at one point in after-hours trading. That was a dramatic turn after it became a publicly traded company in October 2021 following a failed attempt at an initial public offering in 2019 amid corporate governance concerns that led to the ouster of its co-founder and former CEO Adam Neumann. The company’s valuation at the time of its IPO in 2021 had already tumbled to $9 billion from a $47 billion valuation by SoftBank in 2019.
WeWork said in a separate statement it named four new directors to its board who Interim Chief Executive David Tolley said have “the deep financial expertise and robust business experience that” will “add immense value” as WeWork doubles down on “sustainably reducing costs, continuing to grow memberships and revenue, and strengthening" its balance sheet. Three board members stepped down.
While WeWork has mentioned risk factors in the standard forward-looking statements section of previous regulatory filings, the “going concern” language was put higher in the body of the earnings statement because the company’s cash level triggered such an accounting disclosure, a WeWork spokesperson told CoStar News. WeWork may potentially boost its bottom line through measures such as cost-cutting and adding more members, the spokesperson said.
WeWork's cash and cash equivalents declined to $205 million from $625 million in the year-earlier second quarter.
At the same time, its net loss narrowed to $397 million from $635 million after WeWork boosted its physical occupancy and lowered rent and other operating expenses. Consolidated revenue rose 4% to $844 million. While its adjusted loss before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization totaled $36 million, a $98 million improvement from a year earlier, the results missed the company’s prior forecast of that metric to be in the range of a loss of $10 million to a profit of $15 million.
Lower Membership
Physical occupancy at its consolidated locations globally rose to 72% from 70% a year earlier, but physical memberships fell 3% to 512,000. Enterprise physical membership, measuring demand from companies with at least 500 employees, also dropped to 41% of total membership from 45% a year earlier.
As of June 30, WeWork had 610 consolidated locations across 33 countries that included about 715,000 workstations.
The membership decline came despite the company recently signing more deals with members such as Amazon in New York and London. WeWork said in the first quarter demand picked up from large enterprise customers after small and medium-sized companies were a key driver last year.
“Excess supply in commercial real estate, increasing competition in flexible space and macroeconomic volatility drove higher member churn and softer demand than we anticipated, resulting in a slight decline in memberships,” Tolley said in a statement.
Tolley became interim CEO after former CEO Sandeep Mathrani left in May, after just three years on the job, to join private-equity firm Sycamore Partners.
WeWork’s results came just after rival IWG, parent of the Regus and Spaces brands, reported record revenue and said it was riding the wave of a global pivot toward hybrid working.
IWG, which is the largest global operator of flexible workspaces with 3,398 locations across 120 countries, said it has been refocusing the business since 2022 on "capital light" management, or franchise agreements with property owners and companies, that it said is already contributing to record revenue in the company’s 30-year history.
‘Different Model’
"In terms of our friends at WeWork, it is the same business but a different model and that is what is causing them a problem,” Chief Executive Mark Dixon said on a call to discuss earnings. “The space is wrongly fitted out. We have taken over maybe 50 WeWorks and we have to refit them and go again. The performance here would be better if they reshape in some way. This is an anomaly from a massive investment made a few years ago. It is unraveling, but it will normalize."
To be clear, WeWork also has been trying to shift to what the industry has described as the asset-light strategy by seeking partnerships with landlords without it being saddled with lease costs.
WeWork’s woes came as different studies show the hybrid-work pattern that accelerated in the pandemic is expected to increase demand for flexible office space. For instance, Mindspace, a provider based in Tel Aviv, recently opened its first New York location, competing against market incumbents including WeWork and IWG as well as Industrious, which this week opened its 20th New York location, and Convene. Landlords including Tishman Speyer and The Durst Organization have also rolled out competing offerings.
“After a period of unprecedented disruption in demand for office space, many tenants are emerging from the pandemic with the realization that in times of uncertainty, flexibility is the greatest amenity,” JLL said in a recent study.
It added that “demand for flexibility in lease terms is rising. Tenants are increasingly requesting expansion, contraction and termination options in leases and are favoring short-duration commitments as they await greater clarity in business conditions and workplace strategies.”
The new directors at WeWork are Paul Aronzon, founder of PSA Consulting and a strategic financial consultant; Paul Keglevic, former CEO of Energy Future Holdings and a former audit partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers; Elizabeth LaPuma, a former managing director and head of balance sheet advisory at UBS; and Henry Miller, a co-founder and retired Partner of Marblegate Asset Management and once a Salomon Brothers managing director as well as a managing director and co-head of investment banking at Prudential Securities.