WeWork CFO follows Sandeep Mathrani out the door

Kurt Wehner to replace Andre Fernandez as the company’s fourth CFO in three years

WeWork chief financial officer Andre Fernandez (Getty, LinkedIn/Andre Fernandez)

WeWork chief financial officer Andre Fernandez (Getty, LinkedIn/Andre Fernandez)

WeWork chief financial officer Andre Fernandez is departing his role in a one-two punch of executive departures at the coworking giant. 

Fernandez is resigning on June 1 just shy of his first anniversary in the role, according to an SEC filing reported by Reuters. The company disclosed Fernandez’s exit a week after chief executive officer Sandeep Mathrani announced his own impending departure.

Mathrani praised his outgoing lieutenant for restructuring company debt and moving the company towards EBITDA profitability. Chief accounting officer Kurt Wehner, who has been with WeWork since October 2020, will be elevated to the CFO position — the company’s fourth since March 2020. 

Fernandez was named WeWork’s top financial officer a year ago and took the role effective June 10. 

Shares of WeWork have fallen rough 87 percent this year.

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Profitability remained elusive under Mathrani and Fernandez. In recent months, WeWork has been trying to avoid being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange, conducting a large debt restructuring and engineering a reverse stock split.

The company last year burned through $700 million in cash, closing the year with $287 million in hand; at the start of that year, WeWork had $924 million at its disposal. The company lost $299 million during the first quarter, an improvement from the nearly $500 million it lost during the first quarter of 2022.

In March, WeWork restructured its debt with SoftBank, eliminating $1.4 billion in debt and extending the maturity of the remaining $1.6 billion by two years to 2027. It wasn’t enough to stop ratings agency S&P Global from downgrading the company’s credit worthiness.

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During the company’s last earnings call, Mathrani predicted the company would be cash-flow positive by the end of 2024 — an updated forecast after the chief executive said it would be profitable by the end of this year.

Holden Walter-Warner

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