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WeWork is finally WeProfitable again.
One year after restructuring its debt after declaring bankruptcy in November 2023, WeWork has regained profitability and is debt-free, the coworking company told Bisnow Tuesday.
The company became notorious for its shared working office spaces across the globe, ballooning to over 800 locations and reaching a market cap of nearly $10 billion in 2022 and a peak valuation of $47 billion.
The company renegotiated with creditors as a way to shed expensive and unprofitable leases and clear up its $4 billion in debt.
In April 2024, real estate tech company Yardi Systems announced that it had become the majority owner of WeWork and said it would guide it through its bankruptcy and into the future.
“We were burdened for many years with our portfolio that everybody knew about and saw,” WeWork Regional President for North America Luke Robinson told Bisnow.
Robinson told the news outlet that the company has now posted six-consecutive months of positive revenue before accounting for interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, a figure that indicates strong revenue but which doesn’t mean WeWork is turning a net profit.
It also confirmed to Inman that it now has 170 locations, which puts it among the largest coworking companies in the U.S. despite being far smaller than its 2019 peak.
In its previous heyday, the company gained fame both for its size, flashy office spaces and eccentric CEO Adam Neumann, who was behind the company’s rapid rise and its failure to successfully go public.
Under its new leadership, WeWork has also tweaked its approach at some locations, working directly with landlords to act as a property manager that leases space in buildings and shares revenues with the owners.
That’s alongside its more traditional approach of leasing space and then renting that space to people who need office space.
Several investors and landlords told Bisnow that WeWork’s leadership had shifted and regained trust in the industry, leaving the company an open pathway to rebuild and continue growing.
“When you have a firm where the pendulum has swung back and forth many times, when someone can provide trust and stability, that is a very precious commodity,” Cushman & Wakefield Chairman of Global Brokerage Bruce Mosler told Bisnow.
