WeWork owner The We Company said on Monday it had filed for an initial public offering with U.S. regulators, laying the groundwork for the shared office space manager to go public.
WeWork said the amended filing, which follows one submitted with the Securities and Exchange Commission in December, will enable it to make the decision to become publicly traded. WeWork, which was most recently valued at $47-billion, has helped pioneer “coworking,” or shared desk-space, with a focus on startups, entrepreneurs and freelancers, and has received significant backing from some of the world’s biggest investors, including Japan’s SoftBank.The company has also faced questions about the sustainability of its model, which is based on short-term revenue agreements and long-term loan liabilities.
In the first three quarters of 2018, WeWork posted a net loss of about $1.22-billion on revenue of $1.25-billion. Earlier this year, SoftBank boosted its stake in WeWork by $2-billion in a deal that was billions of dollars below what the shared workspace provider had hoped to raise to fund growth and buy out existing shareholders.