WeWork posted its best sales numbers in almost two years as the company seeks to go public while recovering from the twin blows of the pandemic and the implosion of its attempted 2019 initial public offering.
The news comes as the SoftBank-backed company prepares to go public through a SPAC deal valuing it at $9 billion, a sharp decrease from the company’s $47 billion valuation in January 2019.
WeWork sold 33,000 new desks in April and 39,000 in May 2021, WeWork said Monday.
The monthly numbers are WeWork’s best since September 2019, when the company pulled its IPO after investors pushed back against its unprofitable business model and ownership structure that gave eccentric founder Adam Neumann an unusual amount of control.
After paying Neumann a sweet exit package worth nearly a quarter of a billion dollars, WeWork says it is bouncing back under CEO Sandeep Mathrani, who took the reins last February.
Total occupancy at the company’s 767 locations ticked up from 50 percent in March to 53 percent in May, the company said.
WeWork now has 505,000 total members, up from 490,000 at the end of 2020 but far below 662,000 at the end of 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic destroyed demand for commercial real estate.
Dan Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, said WeWork’s new occupancy numbers could help bolster the still-unprofitable company as it prepares to take a second shot at going public.
“There is clearly heavy lifting ahead with challenges abound in commercial real estate and occupancy but WeWork is clearly on a much better path than it was a few years ago,” Ives told The Post. “WeWork is a major ‘prove me’ story in the eyes of the Street looking ahead.”
WeWork lost more than $2 billion during the first three months of 2021.