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WeWork said the deal with BowX gave it an equity value of $7.9 billion, far less than the nearly $50 billion value that its investors placed on the company in 2019. WeWork will receive $1.3 billion in cash from the deal, including $800 million from Insight Partners, Starwood Capital Group, BlackRock and other investors.
The pandemic emptied WeWork’s offices, and it is not clear how much demand there will be for its office space in the future. Many people have become used to working from home and some large employers like Target and Dropbox have said they plan to give up big chunks of their office space because they expect fewer employees to come in daily. Other businesses like the retailer R.E.I. sold its headquarters all together. WeWork said Friday that memberships fell to 476,000 last year, from 619,000 in 2019.
Still, BowX’s chief executive, Vivek Ranadivé, told CNBC in an interview Friday that the pandemic would be a “tailwind” for the office-sharing company.
“Companies have now decided that flex space is the must-have,” said Mr. Ranadivé, a technology entrepreneur who owns the Sacramento Kings basketball team. “Maybe for their own headquarters they want to own that space. But for everything else, they want to hand it over to a WeWork.”
WeWork said it had lowered its costs since its failed public offering. The company is expecting revenue to surge in the coming years. It also offered a bullish forecast of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, an often flattering measurement of cash flows, but did not say what its profit might be. In the past, it has struggled to meet lofty projections. And it must try to draw tenants at a time when the office markets in New York, London, San Francisco and other big cities are awash with cheap sublet space.
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