WeWork, which was to have one of the most anticipated initial public offerings of the year, has formally filed a request to withdraw its registration statement on the S-1 form that was initially filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In simpler terms, WeWork no longer plans at coming public at this point.
Bad press has plagued this company, as analysts slashed its valuation over the course of this year. There’s even speculation that WeWork could run out of money.
Near the onset of IPO talks for this company, a brokerage house valued WeWork at roughly $100 billion. By the time the IPO was shelved, some estimates valued the firm at $10 billion. Some analysts are even calling this a classic example of the “greater fool theory.”
Co-CEOs Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham commented:
We have decided to postpone our IPO to focus on our core business, the fundamentals of which remain strong. We are as committed as ever to serving our members, enterprise customers, landlord partners, employees and shareholders. We have every intention to operate WeWork as a public company and look forward to revisiting the public equity markets in the future.
If WeWork would have come public, it would most likely have faced the same fate as some other major IPOs this year: Lyft Inc. (NASDAQ: LYFT) (−47.2%), Slack Technologies Inc. (NYSE: WORK) (−42.9%), Chewy Inc. (NYSE: CHWY) (−25.7%), Uber Technologies Inc. (NYSE: UBER) (−27.1%) and SmileDirectClub Inc. (NASDAQ: SDC) (−22.0%).
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