the we company Archives - Crunchbase News /tag/the-we-company/ Data-driven reporting on private markets, startups, founders, and investors Thu, 10 Oct 2019 13:53:24 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.5 /wp-content/uploads/cb_news_favicon-150x150.png the we company Archives - Crunchbase News /tag/the-we-company/ 32 32 WeWork’s IPO Issues Could Trouble Its Bets In China, India /startups/weworks-ipo-issues-could-trouble-its-bets-in-china-india/ Thu, 10 Oct 2019 13:18:52 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?p=20934 Morning Markets: An anecdote from WeWork India’s operations as we watch its domestic business eye layoffs to curtail costs.

It’s an open question whether pulled public offering will chill the domestic IPO market. But the failed transaction is having an impact on at least some companies, namely the company’s country-focused simulacrum like .

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According , WeWork India “has seen talks with local lender ICICI Bank […] on $100 million in funding break down since The We Company’s botched stock market launch.” The We Company is the parent company of WeWork, the popular co-working startup.

According , WeWork India raised from Embassy Group. The same Reuters story notes that the company is looking to raise $200 million more.

WeWork India is not the only WeWork subsidiary, however, that could get hit by the We Company’s IPO fallout. may be an even larger bet. Crunchbase notes that the China-focused subsidiary has , each totaling $500 million. The first, , was led by the , though it had a putting capital to work. WeWork China then raised the second $500 million . co-led that round with the Vision Fund.

The India and China-focused WeWork efforts aren’t small. Sure, they haven’t raised as much money as the We Company, but I’d hazard each will qualify in the top-decile of all funded companies when all is said and done.

The wager that we’ve seen regarding the We Company is large, therefore, but not complete. There are other, smaller bets on the company’s model that we can find around the globe. And all dollars in this gambit seem to lead back to SoftBank.

Here’s the We Company discussing its various subsidiaries in its final, (Bolding: Crunchbase News):

To facilitate our expansion into Asia, we formed a number of joint ventures, strategic partnerships and similar entities to drive growth in a capital-efficient manner. We now operate in China, Japan and the broader Pacific region through a series of joint ventures, which we refer to as ChinaCo, JapanCo and PacificCo, respectively. Our key investors in ChinaCo are Softbank, Hony Capital and Trustbridge, and we own 59% of the entity. Our joint venture partner in JapanCo is SoftBank, and we hold a 50% interest in the joint venture. Our key investor in PacificCo is SoftBank, and we own 60% of the entity. We also operate in India through a strategic partnership from which we receive a revenue and profit share. For each of ChinaCo, JapanCo and PacificCo, in addition to our equity interest, we are entitled to a percentage of revenue in exchange for providing certain intellectual property and trademark rights and other services.

These strategic relationships have allowed us to expand into new regions without putting our capital at risk.

Terms that generous could only come from an investor committed to the model, I suppose. What matters is that the WeWork IPO mess looks like it could cause more damage. The bad news, for SoftBank shareholders at least, is that the Vision Fund is looking increasingly like AIG if we consider WeWork to be a .

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WeWork Is Pulling Its IPO /venture/wework-is-pulling-its-ipo/ Mon, 30 Sep 2019 15:30:01 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?p=20691 Morning Markets: An unsurprising end to a surprising saga.

News broke this morning that , parent to the popular WeWork coworking brand, will withdraw its infamous S-1 filing and delay its IPO. The company is virtually guaranteed to not go public in 2019. How the company will finance itself is now an open question.

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The highly-valued company that it has “decided to postpone our IPO to focus on [its] core business, the fundamentals of which remain strong,” and that the management team has “every intention to operate WeWork as a public company and look forward to revisiting the public equity markets in the future.”

The future is the key operative there. It’s going to take some time to de-poison the company’s cost structure and culture. Regarding the former, the company’s financial woes are well-known (and well-illustrated in its S-1). Turning to the latter, here’s merely in a number of pieces detailing what was wrong at the company.

So What

That WeWork is pulling its IPO isn’t a huge surprise. The firm couldn’t generate sufficient investor interest at a fraction of its preceding valuation due to low margins, high costs, and astronomical cash burn. Its founder was found to be in the middle of a web of self-dealing that was impossible to defend. And WeWork’s internal culture and corporate governance were bonkers.

Now the CEO is out, the governance is changed, the non-core businesses are being sold off, layoffs are likely, and the IPO is off. That leaves WeWork with a slimming cost structure, yes, but also a possibly serious cash situation. It’s something that we’ve covered before.

In short, WeWork’s cash burn is astronomical. The firm’s cash immolation in the first half of 2019 was around $2.54 billion, between operations and investing categories. WeWork had $2.47 billion in cash-on-hand at the end of the second quarter of this year (gross cash and equivalents). You can do the math.

Provided that WeWork can dramatically slow its spend, its burn may fall. But the company looks shaky without some money coming in. And now we know that it won’t come from public investors. At least for some time.

So much for October.

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As Unprofitable Unicorns Raise Record Sums, WeWork Turns To Private Investors /venture/as-unprofitable-unicorns-raise-record-sums-wework-turns-to-private-investors/ Thu, 26 Sep 2019 15:44:47 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?p=20647 Morning Markets: As expected, SoftBank may be ready to plow more capital into its WeWork bet, because sunk cost fallacy only impacts gosh darn quitters.

Following abortive attempt at an IPO, the parent company of the popular WeWork coworking brand is looking towards its for the cash it needs to stay afloat.

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According to , SoftBank is “in talks” to provide more capital to WeWork. Business Insider the Japanese conglomerate and investing impresario are considering providing WeWork with “a $1 billion lifeline.” Given the scale of capital that WeWork consumes, the money is needed. (More on WeWork’s fundraising history .)

Few expected SoftBank and its Vision Fund to walk away from the troubled unicorn, especially after the company went through the painful process of getting rid of its founder-CEO (he’s now non-executive chairman of the board) in a very public manner. The now-former CEO’s antics, spending habits, unrealistic dreams, and inability to build a self-sustaining business ultimately doomed his tenure.

But not before the markets got the chance to vet his creation in a very public manner. The WeWork S-1 was masterfully opaque but also stark in its presentation of how much cash the company consumed to grow, and how unprofitable it remains.

The firm’s is art:

If you don’t spend time reading docs of this nature, let me help. Observe the final column. Those are the companies cash burn tallies for the first two quarters of 2019 (H1’19, if you will). So, WeWork’s operations alone burned just under $200 million in that time period. Its investing cash flow burned $2.36 billion during the same period. That’s a combined $2.56 billion, or about $14 million per day in the first half of this year.

And that’s just cash, mind, net income is something else.

I bring all this up to continue the point I made yesterday regarding unicorns, their health, and what portion of the asset class (startup cohort!) will survive a downturn. While it’s good fun to point out that WeWork spent lots of money working to “elevate the world’s consciousness,” it’s also worth bearing in mind how many unprofitable unicorns are successfully going public.

Indeed, as Bloomberg , we’re at record levels of unprofitable IPOs, reporting that firms with negative net income are “raising money in initial public offerings at the fastest pace since the dot-com bubble.” The publication’s excellent digest of the matter () contains a wealth of charts, including this one:

Observe the rise in the blue bars towards the end of the chart. That is the sum of money raised by unprofitable companies over time. And it was in that very climate that WeWork couldn’t go out. That’s why you shouldn’t conflate every unicorn with WeWork. It’s nigh-uniquely troubled.

Perhaps another billion will do the trick.

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WeWork CEO Steps Down As Company Reportedly Considers Layoffs /startups/wework-ceo-steps-down-as-company-reportedly-considers-layoffs/ Tue, 24 Sep 2019 17:20:11 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?p=20599 executives and bankers have considered laying off up to 5,000 employees to cut costs, according to a new report from , and CEO Adam Neumann will step down.

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The layoff consideration comes as WeWork’s initial public offering remains in limbo. CEO Neumann has been under pressure from investors to step down from his position. The reported Tuesday that Neumann was expected to step down as CEO, but remain chairman. reported that Neumann will be replaced by Sebastian Gunningham and Artie Minson as temporary co-CEOs.

“As co-founder of WeWork, I am so proud of this team and the incredible company that we have built over the last decade … While our business has never been stronger, in recent weeks, the scrutiny directed toward me has become a significant distraction, and I have decided that it is in the best interest of the company to step down as chief executive,” Neumann said in a statement.

The company’s S-1 revealed that its losses are mounting. WeWork reported that it had $1.37 billion in operating losses for H1 2019, compared to $677.9 million during H1 2018.

In the past few weeks, WeWork’s valuation has been slashed, its corporate culture has drawn scrutiny and the company postponed its IPO until at least October. The company was last privately valued at $47 billion, but has discussed a valuation of $10 billion when it goes public, according to .

If it lays off 5,000 employees, it would cut its headcount by a third. WeWork isn’t the first unicorn to consider layoffs after burning through cash as it goes public.

, another highly valued private company with huge losses, has gone through two rounds of layoffs since going public in May. It slashed its marketing team and most recently announced layoffs on its engineering team.

WeWork raised $12.8 billion in primary, secondary and debt financing as a private company, according to Crunchbase.

We’ve written about WeWork’s troubles in the past few weeks, and you can read about it here. Investors have asked the company to shelve its IPO plans, its corporate governance and structure has been questioned, and its corporate communications team has also seen departures. There’s been a lot going on, and the CEO stepping down and discussion of mass layoffs only add to the complication.

Founder Power

Neumann’s exit should be considered in more than its own, narrow context. The ousting of a CEO who, seemingly days ago, was considered of paramount importance to the company by their investors is a market anomaly; it’s hard to recall this happening aside from the well-known case of Uber, and erstwhile CEO Travis Kalanick.

In the Uber case, it was said in technology circles that the investors that helped to oust Kalanick would see their ability to invest suffer; that founders would not trust investors who had a history of firing members of their class. It isn’t clear if that happened.

However, with Neumann’s forced exit, few similar noises are being made. Indeed, with the former WeWork CEO’s history of self-aggrandizement and personal-enrichment, it seems that few are irked by his exit.

Changing his shares from 20 votes per share (Neumann holds Class B and Class C stock in WeWork, each which control ten times the votes of Class A stock, the equity that the firm intended to sell in its IPO) to 10 wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough when Neumann returned some money, agreed to change how his own businesses interests intersected with the company or indicated that his spouse would not help select his successor in the event of his death.

But the imprint of reckless hubris remained stamped on the company all the same. Out went the CEO. Perhaps we’ve witnessed the high watermark, and breaking point, of the founder-friendly unicorn era.

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WeWork’s Board Reportedly Pressures CEO To Exit /business/weworks-board-reportedly-pressures-ceo-to-exit/ Mon, 23 Sep 2019 14:59:33 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?p=20582 is not your average CEO, and his venture, (better known as WeWork), is not your average enterprise, either.

The ups and downs—mostly downs, as of late—of the company’s bid to go public have played out in its regulatory filings, in the press, and behind the boardroom door.

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Sources over the weekend that several of The We Company’s directors are placing pressure on Neumann to step down from the CEO seat. Notable among the stakeholders calling for his ousting are investors at which, through its $100 billion , has invested upwards of $10.5 billion in the coworking space and office leasing company. represents the SoftBank Vision Fund’s interests on WeWork’s board of directors.

Investors are concerned that Neumann’s unconventional leadership style and approach to structuring business relationships is hampering the company’s efforts to go public. WeWork, which was last valued at roughly $47 billion in its , contemplated cutting its valuation to as low as $15 billion, or lower. Last week, The We Company shelved its IPO roadshow until “at least” October.

Like many large-scale startups going public these days, The We Company loses more money than it makes. The company sustained a nearly $1.7 billion operating loss in all of 2018, and lost nearly $1.4 billion in the first six months of 2019 alone. Without the money it expects to raise in its IPO, alongside the debt facilities which are contingent on a successful offering, The We Company will likely run out of working capital within the next year, barring significant changes to its business.

Although the board recently pushed through a number of changes to the company’s governance structure, it’s unclear how it can force Neumann out of the CEO spot. Neumann controls a supermajority of the company’s voting shares, and although their voting “weight” has been halved, it seems like he’ll have to relinquish executive control voluntarily.

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WeWork Shakes Up Its Governance As It Works To Salvage IPO /venture/wework-shakes-up-its-governance-as-it-works-to-salvage-ipo/ Fri, 13 Sep 2019 13:36:53 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?p=20424 Morning Markets: WeWork is making a number of reasonable changes to its governance. A good question is how its governance structure got so messed up in the first place.

, better known by the name of its coworking brand WeWork, is shaking up its governance structure ahead of its hoped-for initial public offering. The deeply unprofitable, cash-hungry company’s anti-democratic voting structure has drawn censure from the investing public in the form of valuation cuts.

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When added to the company’s widely-condemned self-dealing by its CEO Adam Neumann, WeWork had set a high watermark for self-inflicted wounds ahead of an IPO. (Don’t forget the CEO’s large pre-IPO cashouts as well.)

Now the company is working to unwind the mistakes, . If the changes will be enough to alter the narrative surrounding the We IPO isn’t clear. The following steps, however, are pointed in the right direction.

Here’s our digest of what The We Company is changing:

  • The appointment “of a lead independent director” in 2019;
  • Reducing the voting rights of select stock from 20 votes per share to 10;
  • Maintenance of a board that is made up of “majority […] independent directors,” and no members of the CEO’s family will serve on the board;
  • Greater board diversity;
  • The CEO will give the company “any profits he receives from the real estate transactions he has entered into with the company;”
  • Reductions in the CEO’s ability to sell shares after the IPO to “no more than 10% of his shareholdings” in the second and third years following the offering.

Previously the CEO promised to give back the payment he received for WeWork’s use of the “We” trademark that he inexplicably owned, and decided to charge his own company for access to; it’s been a wild run for WeWork, one of the worst-run companies I’ve ever read an S-1 from, judging the company from a corporate governance perspective.

I doubt that the above will salvage WeWork’s IPO valuation to a SoftBank-approved figure. But it’s worth recalling that all of the above was predictable and unnecessary. The company didn’t have to get into this mess. It was poorly managed into this situation.

For startups the lesson in the above is clear. If you aren’t growing at 100 percent per year while generating GAAP profits and positive cash flow, maybe drop the supervoting stock and build a company with regular checks and balances. Those things are best practices for a reason. Your unicorn is not unique.

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As The WeWork IPO Totters, How Much Money Does It Need To Reach Independent Viability? /venture/as-the-wework-ipo-totters-how-much-money-does-it-need-to-reach-independent-viability/ Tue, 10 Sep 2019 13:12:51 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?p=20350 Morning Markets: Concerns are mounting about the viability of WeWork without an IPO. An IPO that seems increasingly unlikely.

Even if it manages to go public, could need yet more capital before it becomes a self-sustaining business according to . The news implies that the firm may need to further lever itself or dilute investors in the future.

And with its IPO struggling to launch, WeWork’s financial health looks increasingly tenuous and externally-driven. That’s not a regular position for a company defending a valuation of .

IPO Pricing

It’s tough days for The We Company, better known by the name of its coworking brand, WeWork. The highly-valued company has faced several setbacks in its attempts to go public, struggling to find a price that was palatable to itself, its myriad backers, and public-market investors it needs to convince to buy its shares.

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The intricate and embarrassing financial dance has led first to an admission that the company’s valuation might be closer to $20 billion than the $47 billion price tag it earned most recently from private investors. Next, WeWork’s potential public valuation was said to slip further, dropping under the $20 billion mark.

Most recently the company’s key backer .

SoftBank and its Vision Fund have poured capital into WeWork over the years, driving its valuation — and the implied value of its own stake — north. (SoftBank is raising a second Vision Fund at the moment, making WeWork’s wobbles a double-issue for the company, damaging returns and possibly limiting future investing capital.)

Future Struggles

The company’s financial situation without an IPO and constituent debt raise (a $3 billion IPO haul unlocks $6 billion in debt for the struggling coworking giant) looks bleak. Yesterday, in a fit of reserve, I wrote the following concerning the situation:

[Y]ou could argue that WeWork, provided it keeps its H1 2019 pace of cash burn alight, could be short of money [provided no IPO or debt raise] by the end of the year. I am incredibly hesitant to say that idea is fact; the WeWork S-1 is so complicated that I am loath to make declaratory statements regarding financial facts.

However, that the situation might be even worse than we calculated.

Indeed, in a Breakingviews column, the publication wrote that even with a $9 billion combined IPO and debt raise, the company would still run short of cash in the time it would take to merely reach operating cash flow parity with a rival that enjoys a far slimmer revenue multiple:

Even with $9 billion more available, he may run out of cash within five years, according to a new Breakingviews calculator. Assume revenue growth declines to 30% by 2023 from just over 100% last year, and that operating cash flow matches profitable peer IWG’s 19% of revenue by the same date. Finally, assume Neumann reduces capital expenditure as a percentage of revenue to IWG’s 17% from WeWork’s 113% in 2018. WeWork will still incinerate $15.4 billion of cash from 2019 to 2023. That leaves a $4 billion shortfall even after allowing for IPO and debt proceeds – and that’s a generous set of assumptions.

That’s double-plus-ungood.

Go Legit?

Why can’t WeWork slow its growth rate, reduce its burn, and try to make a go of it as a more traditional company, investing operating cash flow back into itself?

First, it would have to have some positive operating cash flow to reinvest. Second, the actions would function as an admission that it was wrong all along, that its growth model was only functional when fueled by infinite external capital, and that its era of growing at 100 percent per year is over. A slower growth rate could slash The We Company’s valuation.

And WeWork would still need more capital. But at a lower valuation, the funds would cost more in terms of dilution, if the company could find private-market investors willing to fund its operations. Such a situation would likely be less than palatable to SoftBank’s crew after they tied up eleven-figures of capital in the company; a stake they can ill afford to see diluted or lose value.

What happens next? Perhaps WeWork takes a huge lump, goes public at a valuation of less than $20 billion, raises its $9 billion or as much of it as it can, and tries to reach cashflow breakeven faster than its doubters think it can? Email in your ideas (alex@crunchbase.com), I’m a bit lost here.

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WeWork Could Face Further Valuation Cuts, Bringing Its Worth Under The $20B Mark /venture/wework-could-face-further-valuation-cuts-bringing-its-worth-under-the-20b-mark/ Mon, 09 Sep 2019 13:45:15 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?p=20326 Morning Markets: How low can The We Company’s valuation slip before the IPO is called off? And then what?

, better known as WeWork, is a cash-hungry company. And its fight to feed itself is generating longer odds by the day. Between a debt offering and an IPO, the company is on a mission to raise around $10 billion. That sum is astronomic and increasingly close to the amount of money that the company itself may be worth.

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According to , “WeWork’s parent is eyeing a valuation for its initial public offering that could fall below $20 billion,” the $20 billion figure is already a massive cut from its final private valuation and a figure previously tipped as a possible compromise between the company and Wall Street.

If WeWork managed to go public, say, worth $18 billion, it isn’t inconceivable that the firm would be worth less than the it had raised by that point. (The firm’s new debt is contingent on an IPO of sufficient size, making the two a sort of package deal.)

Unspooling WeWork’s venture, debt, and private equity . Between country-specific subsidiaries, warrants, two different pools of SoftBank money ( and ), not to mention traded bonds, debt rounds, and the potential for a new credit facility along with an IPO, it’s complicated. But the firm has raised more capital than $8 billion (debt and equity) to date, and if you add the $10 billion that WeWork seeks, you get a number that sounds dangerously similar to its potential valuation.

How did WeWork get here? A mixture of opaque financials, high-costs, rapid growth, and a . You can still write a bullish case for WeWork, mind, but the market is rapidly repricing a firm, giving us, mere scribes, more than sufficient cover to ask pointed questions.

Like if the IPO will happen at all. The Journal notes in that there are some calls to pull the IPO. Of course, if the IPO is even delayed, how WeWork doesn’t get into trouble is hard to see. Here are a few numbers regarding its cash supply and consumption from its IPO filing:

  • WeWork cash and equivalents, June 30 2019: $2.47 billion
  • WeWork net cash used by operations, H1 2019: $198.7 million
  • WeWork net cash used by investing activities, H1 2019: $2.36 billion

As you can see, the latter two sum to a higher number than the former. Or, in more pedestrian English, you could argue that WeWork, provided it keeps its H1 2019 pace of cash burn alight, could be short of money by the end of the year.

I am incredibly hesitant to say that idea is fact; the WeWork S-1 is so complicated that I am loath to make declaratory statements regarding financial facts. But, the numbers at least ±ô´Ç´Ç°ìÌýbad for a firm that could be forced to punt on a $10 billion combined debt-and-equity fundraise that it was likely expecting to use to fund its continued, high-burn growth.

WeWork’s valuation is coming down as its cash needs are at reported–and, possibly, all-time– highs. For a company looking at a slimming IPO at best, this is dangerous history to lean on:

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WeWork Won’t Be The First Company This Cycle To Go Public At A Discount /venture/wework-wont-be-the-first-company-this-cycle-to-go-public-at-a-discount/ Thu, 05 Sep 2019 22:38:04 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?p=20301 News broke today that , better known as WeWork, may go public at a sharp discount to its last private valuation. As Crunchbase News wrote here, the firm could target a price as low as $20 billion. That would represent a nearly 57.5 percent discount to its last private valuation.

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If WeWork does debut for a price lower than its final, privately-sourced valuation, it will not be the first company to do so. Indeed, it won’t even be the first company to pull off the feat recently. Several other companies in the current technology cycle have managed a similar result.

Let’s remind ourselves who did.

: 2017

The seeds of Hadoop-focused Cloudera’s down IPO were planted in its enormous  that took place in early 2014. Worth just $765 million (post-money) after that brought the firm $65 million in new capital, Cloudera later raised a two-part Series F.

The first traunch, a , represented quick value growth in the two years since Cloudera’s Series E. The second part of the Series F, , mentioned previously, pushed the firm’s valuation to over $4.1 billion. ( led the first, took on the second.)

The firm’s real worth never caught up. After its March, 2014 Series F rounds, the company grew but not enough by the time it went public. Here are our notes from its IPO pricing cycle:

In its most recent fiscal year, which wrapped January 31st, 2017, Cloudera reported aggregate revenue of $261.0 million, up 57.2 percent from its preceding fiscal year. In that year, Cloudera’s revenues were a more modest $166.0 million. Cloudera also lost $187.3 million—down 7.8 percent from its gut-busting prior-year loss of $203.1 million. Those are GAAP results, mind, not adjusted figures.

It wasn’t enough. The company priced at $15 per share, valuing Cloudera at around $2 billion, a massive discount to its final private price. The company is worth just $2.3 billion today, years and a merger later.

: 2018

Ah, the Domo IPO. Amidst a successful and increasingly interesting Utah startup scene, Domo’s IPO was a rare misstep. The firm’s debut came after posting an impressive fundraising history. However, that fundraising wound up being more indicative of the company’s ability to raise, instead of its ability to grow.

Domo is worth $681.6 million today, according to Google Finance. According to Crunchbase the company . You generally want to see a multiple of the latter when you calculate the former. Domo is still underwater, quarters after its public offering.

And its sub-unicorn valuation is a fraction of the $2.3 billion it was once worth. The firm’s last private round, , did not provide enough space for the business intelligence company to grow into its valuation. Our review of its S-1 filing and constituent financial performance was largely incredulous. .

The market wound up pricing the high-burn, low-growth company at . In terms of percent declines from private valuation to IPO worth, this may be a record.

: 2019

Uber’s IPO, did you hear about it? If you’ve ever read Crunchbase News, you have. But just in case, a reminder.

In terms of a startup’s rise, Uber’s growth from startup to behemoth is now legend. From breaking rules around the globe, to raising billions and billions of dollars, to VC-CEO intrigue, Uber’s story is a distillation of the Unicorn Era.

Its IPO, however, was more comedown than comeback. The company, once expected to be worth over $100 billion when public, wound up pricing at $45 per share, valuing it at (higher on a fully-diluted basis). That figure was towards the low-end of its IPO range, making it a disappointment for the company.

Notably, an with that brought Uber $500 million . So, Uber’s IPO valuation was a hair under the company’s final private valuation (Crunchbase , but hang tight.) Regardless of how we value the firm (diluted, not diluted), or which final private valuation we peg to the firm, Uber’s shares opened lower than its $45 price and closed down on their first day.

The company’s quick share price declines wound up continuing. Today Uber is worth about $55.5 billion, and we’re including it in this list as it managed to barely meet its final private valuation while pricing its IPO but opened $3 per share lower. That’s down.

And given that Uber is now worth a fraction of that fabled, and now ridiculous-sounding $120 billion IPO guesstimate (bankers!), it’s a down IPO in spirit if not also in name.

Short List

It’s not a very long list of companies we can recall caring about and going public at a down valuation. If WeWork prices where it now seems likely, the company will have a lot to prove ahead of it. That said, Uber and Cloudera are still worth billions despite IPO troubles. Perhaps WeWork will manage a good debut, and find some positive momentum when public.

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WeWork May Reduce Its Valuation Ahead Of IPO By Tens Of Billions /startups/wework-may-reduce-its-valuation-ahead-of-ipo-by-tens-of-billions/ Thu, 05 Sep 2019 18:47:30 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?p=20305 is considering aiming for a valuation between $20 billion to $30 billion in its upcoming IPO—far less than its last valuation as a private company— reported on Thursday.

The We Company, as its known now, was last valued at $47 billion after round in January 2019. (In tandem, Softbank .)

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WeWork has raised in primary, secondary and debt financing, according to Crunchbase. Its valuation has swelled as the company has rapidly grown, but it has yet to turn a profit.

The company’s revenue grew from $446.1 million in 2016 to $1.82 billion in 2018, according to its S-1 filing. While posting its torrid growth, the company’s operating losses increased from $396.3 million in 2016 to $1.69 billion in 2018.

What’s It Worth

To understand how WeWork’s valuation got so far ahead of its potential IPO price, let’s take a look at the company’s valuation history.

WeWork, based in New York and founded in 2010, raised . Its valuation at that point is unclear, but by the time of round in February 2013, the company had of $318 million

The company reached the coveted unicorn status, a $1 billion valuation, after its Series C round in November 2013. The $157 million Series C brought the company’s valuation to $1.6 billion, more than four times what it was valued at the beginning of 2013, .

WeWork had a pre-money valuation of $4.6 billion by the time of in October 2014. That pre-money valuation grew E in May 2015 in November 2016. (Or, in post-money dollars, $4.96 billion, $10 billion, and $16.9 billion respectively.)

While the valuation of WeWork historically rose and the sums of capital it attracted scaled as well (a $690 million funding round is an enormous amount), the biggest amounts of cash come when and showed up.

WeWork’s largest venture funding round to date was in August 2017, when it pulled . Its valuation after raising the Series G shot to $20 billion. Softbank continued to lead WeWork’s later rounds (billions in convertible notes in November 2018 and the $1 billion in January), eventually valuing the company at $47 billion.

From a $1 million seed round in 2011 to a $1.6 billion price tag in 2013 to a valuation of $47 billion this year, WeWork’s appreciation has been rapid. To see it slash its potential valuation would be surprising if we discounted the broad market pessimism concerning its price tag.

Other unicorns with high valuations (Uber and Lyft, for example) have failed to do as spectacularly on the public markets after their IPO as they managed while private. WeWork may be adjusting its private valuation to limit potential struggle after its debut.

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