That's how the cookie crumbles
Emailed on September 6th, 2019 in The Friday Forward
I'm sure WeWork CEO Adam Neumann will write a book on this shortly but I'll do him a favor and draft the abstract:
WeWork: "We're worth $47B"
Wall Street: "... “
WeWork: "See here in these docs, we sell $47B worth of happiness and fruit water"
Wall Street: "We don't get it."
WeWork: "...~$25B?"
And that, my friends, is how you negotiate the sale of happiness and fruit water in the public markets.
Jokes aside, there's lots of WeWork IPO buzz after the WSJ reported that the company may go public at a valuation at less than half its most recent private mark of $47 billion. It also revealed that CEO Adam Neumann recently met in Tokyo with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son to discuss either a cornerstone IPO investment or a private capital infusion that would allow WeWork to delay its IPO until next year.
Many folks are touting Softbank as the big loser if the IPO price shakes out in this low range, but as explained by Axios' Dan Primack, it's important to remember that WeWork was valued at only $21 billion when it raised its Series G funding in mid-2017. That was the round led by SoftBank Vision Fund.
There are so many dad jokes but I'll stick with this : this roadshow just got juicy.