WeWork Looks To Restructure $3B In Debt, Raise Cash
Coworking giant WeWork is in talks to restructure its $3B in debt, as well as obtain hundreds of millions of dollars to keep afloat while it continues to reshape its operations, The New York Times reports, citing anonymous sources.
The company had already said that restructuring its debt is a goal.
“We'll start working towards the extension of the debt maturities,” WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani said during the company's earnings call in February, though he didn't specify a timeline.
Real estate software company Yardi is among those considering making a new investment in WeWork, the NYT reports. SoftBank, on the other hand, probably won't make any investments beyond the $10B-plus that it has already put into WeWork, some of which has been written off as losses.
SoftBank isn't done with WeWork, however. In January, it loaned WeWork $250M and soon after increased the size of a debt facility for the coworking company.
WeWork has been losing less money than previously, but profitability still eludes it. It reported revenue of $848M for the fourth quarter of 2022, an increase of 18% compared with the same quarter in 2021, though it also recorded a net loss of $527M for Q4 2022. In Q4 2021, the company lost $803M.
For all of 2022, WeWork lost nearly $2.3B, but that too was an improvement from 2021, when it lost about $4.6B. The company posted revenue of $3.2B in 2022, up from $2.5B in 2021.
In January, the company announced plans for 300 layoffs to its worldwide workforce, mostly at underperforming locations. In November, WeWork said it would close 40 locations, noting that “demand didn’t come back as swiftly as we thought.”
After word on the restructuring negotiations broke, WeWork stock ticked upward, gaining about 5% on Wednesday morning. Since the company went public via a special purpose acquisition company in 2021, its stock price has dropped about 90%.
