WeWork Sees Highest Monthly 2021 Revenue With September’s $228M
By Anna Staropoli October 8, 2021 12:52 pm
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Coworking giant WeWork reported its highest 2021 monthly earnings last month, raking in $228 million.
The September income accounts for a fraction of the company’s estimated third-quarter revenues of $658 million, an improvement from the previous quarter, the company announced during its Oct. 7 digital investor day presentation ahead of its public debut later this month.
These latest results are a step toward reversing last quarter’s decline, when WeWork reported net losses amounting to $888.8 million. In the first quarter of 2021, WeWork saw its revenue hit $598 million, which dropped to $593.4 million in the second quarter.
Aside from an expected jump in revenue from the second to third quarters, September also marked the company’s fifth consecutive month of positive growth.
New and retained customers have contributed to this swell. Last month, the total occupancy of WeWork spaces was at 60 percent, whereas in the same period last year it was at 52 percent.
Meanwhile, the third quarter reported 154,000 in desk sales: 84,000 of which were new clients. This surge marks seven straight months of rising net desk sales throughout WeWork spaces.
Pandemic-spurred changes to office spaces are partially responsible for this trend.
“In the pre-pandemic world, flex was part of an office offering,” Sandeep Mathrani, the CEO of WeWork, said in a statement. “In a post-pandemic world, flex is its own channel of distribution, much like e-commerce is its own channel of distribution. The flexible workspace TAM [total addressable market] is one of the most exciting things to us and gives us confidence as to the growth potential of our business, even just looking at the traditional space-as-a-service business.”
WeWork continues to look toward future growth and plans to go public in late October, despite 2019’s failure that resulted in then-CEO Adam Neumann stepping down. Following 2019’s setbacks, WeWork’s valuation dropped $3.2 billion in 2020.
In March, special acquisition company BowX Acquisition made a $9 billion deal to merge with WeWork to take it public, bypassing the traditional initial public offering route that derailed WeWork in 2019. BowX shareholders will vote on whether or not to take the company public on Oct. 19.
Anna Staropoli can be reached at astaropoli@commercialobserver.com.
