5 Crazy Numbers We Found in WeWork’s Horrorshow IPO

By CCN Markets: The prospect of a WeWork IPO was met with skepticism after the official S-1 filing to the SEC revealed some extravagant facts and figures about the company and its CEO. Here are 5 interesting numbers to be found in the IPO filing.

13 – the number of times ‘energy’ is mentioned

WeWork Energy
WeWork CEO Adam Neumann once said the company’s energy and spirituality were more important than its revenues | Source: SEC.gov

Co-founder and CEO, Adam Neumann, once told reporters that his company’s “energy and spirituality” were more important than its revenues. The firm’s focus on such ethereal matters was in full display in the IPO filing, with the word energy being used 13 times.

In fact, the S-1 document is even dedicated to “the energy of we – greater than any one of us, but inside each of us”. The same tone permeates the entirety of the document and serves to convey an office-leasing company as something more than it really is.

$237 million – the sum the CEO charged his own company for rent

CEO Adam Neumann owned many of the buildings eventually rented by WeWork, and he charged what the S-1 describes as a “fair market value” for the lease. This amounted to payments of $16.7 million between 2016 and 2018, while $11.6 million was returned as improvement reimbursements.

In 2019, a further $4.2 million was paid by the We Company to Neumann. As of June 30th, 2019, the future lease payments still to be made total $237 million.

$362 million – the value of the shares the CEO cashed out in 2019

The filing notes that Adam Neumann hasn’t sold any shares since 2017, and states that he has no intention to do so in the future. Yet in early 2019 Neumann took out a $362 million loan from the We Company at 2.89%, and paid it back in August by surrendering an equivalent amount of shares.

What’s more, the company then issued those shares back to him under a ‘profits interests’ scheme.

$5.9 million – how much was paid for the ‘We’ trademark

The ‘We’ trademark was bought in July 2019 as the company underwent a rebrand. Rather than being paid for in cash, $5.9 million worth of shares in the We Company were given to WE Holdings LLC.

According to Bloomberg, WE Holdings LLC is known to the founders, and manages some of their stock and assets.

$47 billion – the value of the WeWork pixie-dust horror show

After touting expected profits of $1 billion for the past year, the company was instead left nursing $1.9 billion losses. Valued at $47 billion, WeWork is worth more than Ethereum, XRP, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin combined.

Read: Goldman Sachs Forbids Bitcoin Buys on Apple Card; But Loves ‘Pixie-Dust’ WeWork

In the cryptocurrency world, the ICO craze lasted a short while before people finally came to their senses and saw it for the scam that it is. IPOs benefit from a better reputation, but why? Just like ICOs, most of them fail. WeWork, despite all of its energy, will likely tread a similarly doomed path.

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