WeWork IPO Filing Reveals Huge Revenue and Losses

WeWork’s parent company unveiled the papers for its initial public offering Wednesday, depicting a firm whose revenue growth is steep but whose losses have grown at nearly the same clip.

The filing gives the most detailed financials to date of We Co., which was known as WeWork Cos. until recently. From 2016 to 2018, the company more than quadrupled its revenue to $1.82 billion. But its loss also mounted to $1.61 billion.

In the first six months of 2019, We generated $1.54 billion in revenue and posted a net loss of $689.7 million. 

The filing also outlines the atypical relationship the company has with co-founder and Chief Executive Adam Neumann, including his personal loans and real-estate transactions with the firm.

We, which has been valued as high as $47 billion in the private markets, plans to list its shares under the symbol WE. It didn’t disclose the exchange where it expects to list.

The 9-year-old real-estate company primarily rents long-term space, renovates it, then divides the offices and subleases them short-term to other companies. The sometimes quirky company has often said it should be compared more to technology companies than traditional real-estate firms. The second page of its filing on Wednesday states: “We dedicate this to the energy of We—greater than any one of us but inside of each of us.”

We’s public filing would allow the company to debut in September, though some people close to the deal say timing could still slip. Its executives in recent months have been targeting September as they worried that good times in the U.S. stock market might not last, with major indexes at or near record highs. 

The company, currently the country’s most valuable startup, had privately filed to go public with the Securities and Exchange Commission in December. 

The Wednesday filing says We operates in 528 locations in 111 cities around the world, with 527,000 memberships able to work in those offices.