REUTERS: WeWork owner The We Company is considering slashing the valuation it will seek in an initial public offering to a little over US$20 billion, less than half the US$47 billion valuation it achieved in a private fundraising round in January, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
In May, Uber completed its IPO at a valuation of US$82.4 billion, well below the US$120 billion bankers had told the company it could be worth in 2018. It still fared better than the We Company stands to, given that Uber's IPO valuation was higher than its most recent valuation of US$76 billion in the private fundraising market.
The New York-based company lost more than US$900 million in the first half of 2019, up 25per cent from a year earlier, even as its revenue doubled to US$1.54 billion, as it burned through cash to expand. We Company Chief Executive Neumann recently met with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son to discuss SoftBank making an anchor investment in the IPO to support demand, or making a further private investment in the We Company in order to postpone the IPO, according to the Wall Street Journal.