WeWork reports $802M loss in first earnings as public company

Despite an uptick in revenue, WeWork’s first earnings report as a publicly traded company revealed that it continues to hemorrhage hundreds of millions of dollars.

The flex-office company, which went public in a SPAC merger last month, reported a net loss of $802 million in the third quarter, a $139 million improvement over the $941 million it lost in the same period last year.

Total revenue during the third quarter was $661 million, down from $811 million in the same period last year, but up 11.5 percent from the second quarter. Monthly revenue hit $230 million in September, marking a fifth consecutive month of revenue growth.

The stock market reacted positively to the report, with WeWork shares up 2.8 percent on the day as of 4 p.m. Wednesday.

The company said it has benefited from increased demand for flex offices as businesses remain uncertain about their workplace needs. While its portfolio makes up about 0.5 percent of total office space in the U.S., it said it accounted for more than 9 percent of U.S. leasing volume in the quarter.

WeWork did especially well in New York and London, leasing 1 million square feet of office space in each city in the quarter. The company reported leasing 360,000 square feet in Los Angeles, 210,000 square feet in San Francisco and 100,000 square feet in Miami.

The earnings report comes just over two years after WeWork laid off thousands of employees in the wake of a botched 2019 IPO that saw co-founder Adam Neumann removed after investors raised questions about the company’s valuation and corporate governance. Last week, in his first public comments since his ouster, Neumann expressed “tremendous regret” over the way the failed public offering impacted employees at the firm.

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