After unsuccessful IPO, WeWork wants to go public via a SPAC

WeWork has agreed to go public through a merger with blank-check firm BowX Acqui­si­tion Corp in a deal that values the office-sharing startup at $9 billion inclu­ding debt.

It marks a steep drop from the $47 billion that WeWork was valued for a listing in 2019, ahead of a botched listing plan that implo­ded due to inves­tor concerns over its busi­ness model and its foun­der Adam Neumann’s manage­ment style.

Even though WeWork has long lost billi­ons of dollars, it always found ways to attract huge invest­ments from deep-pocke­­ted inves­tors. Now, less than two years after it was rescued from a collapse, the co-working company has found yet another backer willing to over­look its losses. The company announ­ced on Friday that it had agreed to merge with a blank-check firm in a deal that would give it a listing on the stock market it was denied when it was forced to shelve an initial public offe­ring as inves­tors ques­tio­ned its finan­cial strength and dubious gover­nance practices.

Instead of a tradi­tio­nal I.P.O., WeWork is merging with BowX Acqui­si­tion, a company listed on the stock exch­ange for the sole purpose of buying a busi­ness, in a type of deal that has become hugely popu­lar in recent months. Inves­tors, bankers, and even cele­bri­ties and athle­tes have rushed to float such special purpose acqui­si­tion compa­nies, or SPACs, because they offer their crea­tors a chance to mint huge profits rela­tively quickly. And merging with these vehic­les is attrac­tive to compa­nies like WeWork because they provide an express lane onto the stock market without the obsta­cles that scuttled WeWork’s public offe­ring in Septem­ber 2019.

A SPAC is a shell firm that uses proceeds from a public listing to buy a private firm and WeWork is the latest in a slew of high-profile compa­nies that have taken this route to the markets.

“There have been doubts raised about its busi­ness model, and those doubts may be diffi­cult to address in an I.P.O. road­show,” said Michael Klaus­ner, a Stan­ford busi­ness profes­sor, refer­ring to the presen­ta­ti­ons that compa­nies give to mutual funds, pension mangers and other insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors before a public offe­ring. SPACs are “highly proble­ma­tic” because their struc­ture can encou­rage buyers to over­pay, hurting share­hol­ders in return, he said.

In 2021 only, 295 SPACs had gone public (USA, source New York Times), raising $93 billion and brea­king last year’s record in a matter of months. Because so many of these compa­nies are now out there, some have tried to use star power to get busi­nesses to enter­tain their merger offers.

WeWork said the deal with BowX gave it an equity value of $7.9 billion, far less than the nearly USD 50 billion value that its inves­tors placed on the company in 2019. WeWork will receive $1.3 billion in cash from the deal, inclu­ding $800 million from Insight Part­ners, Star­wood Capi­tal Group, Black­Rock and other investors.

WeWork will fetch $1.3 billion in cash from the latest deal, inclu­ding $800 million in private invest­ment from Insight Part­ners, funds mana­ged by Star­wood Capi­tal, Fide­lity Manage­ment and others.