WeWork Raises $3B More From SoftBank, Now Valued At $42B
Not to be outdone by Amazon, which announced the result of its headquarters search Tuesday, WeWork has revealed that SoftBank is investing another $3B in the flexible office company, an investment that ultimately values the company at $42B.
WeWork revealed the investment while discussing third-quarter results that showed it made a loss of $1.22B on $1.25B of revenue for the nine months to the end of September, Bloomberg reports. In the whole of 2017 it took a loss of $933M on revenue of $886M.
Its third-quarter revenue was $482M, and it said it was on course to make revenue of $2B next year.
The investment by SoftBank will come in two tranches, and gives the Masayoshi Son-founded investment firm the right to buy shares at $110 each if WeWork goes public, the Financial Times said. The deal takes the total amount invested by SoftBank through its $100B Vision fund to around $7.5B.
On paper, WeWork’s new valuation makes it the fourth-most-valuable startup in the world, according to data from Pitchbook, behind Ant Financial at $150B, Uber at $72B and Didi Chuxing at $58B, and ahead of Airbnb at $31B.
For a comparison with traditional real estate companies, it means the company has a valuation more than twice the market capitalization of the largest listed U.S. office REIT, the $19B Boston Properties. It is still smaller than the $60B market cap Simon Property Group, which owns more retail space than any other company.
It is more than 10 times the market cap of the world’s biggest serviced office firm by number of desks, IWG. IWG has around 3,000 sites compared to WeWork’s 170.
