WeWork’s bleeding continues as firm cuts 40 locations

After another brutal quarter, WeWork no longer expects to become profitable this year.

The once-high-flying coworking firm lost $629 million in the third quarter, or about $0.66 a share — a slight improvement from the $635 million it lost in the second quarter.

WeWork reported revenues of $817 million for the third quarter — up $2 million from the prior quarter, but its performance came in below consensus estimates of $865 million in revenue and a loss of $0.44 per share.

The company no longer expects to get into the black this year, CEO Sandeep Mathrani said, a reversal from last year’s prediction that the company would “for sure” turn a profit by the end of 2022.

“It will be in the tail-end of 2023,” Mathrani said on a conference call with analysts Thursday.

To keep cutting costs, WeWork will close another 40 locations, or about 41,000 desks, which it said will save it about $140 million annually. Some 71 percent of WeWork’s locations are occupied — down slightly from the second quarter.

“We decided that to be profitable and sustainably profitable, we should close locations that are obsolete,” Mathrani said on the call, adding in a statement the firm was “leveraging all the tools at our disposal.”

Those tools include extending debt maturities to stave off defaults and give the company more time to get out of the red.

Though the firm cut a deal to extend the deadline on paying off $500 million worth of bonds, WeWork still has about $2.1 billion in short-term debt.

WeWork’s stock rose on the earnings news, despite the earnings miss. As of Thursday afternoon Eastern Time, the company’s stock sat around $2.60 a share — up 7 percent on the day but still down about 78 percent from its debut last year.

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