The world's largest WeWork coworking network will attract $ 2 billion from SoftBank. But for the company it is bad news

The Japanese SoftBank Group will soon invest $ 2 billion in the world's largest coworking network, writes Financial Times with reference to sources familiar with the upcoming deal. This is much less than $ 16 billion, which SoftBank was going to invest in WeWork at the end of last year. The Vision Fund created for the money of the Arabic sovereign funds, which is managed by SoftBank, will not participate in the new round of financing at all. Changing SoftBank plans could make the recent flight of investors from shares of technological companies, FT believes. Investors could decide that Wework, which so far shows only losses, in fact turned out to be not a technological giant, but an aggressive newcomer in the commercial real estate market, Bloomberg adds .

Read more. WeWork can be announced about the new round of financing this week, although the transaction has not yet been agreed and can fall apart, FT writes. Initially, SoftBank, along with the Vision Fund, was going to invest more than $ 16 billion in the company, of which about $ 10 billion would have been redeemed by shares of other external investors, and $ 6 billion to the development of the startup itself. But back in December, WSJ, citing their sources, wrote that Arab investors, which have most of the $ 100 billion collected in Vision Fund, doubt the plans of SoftBank to continue to pump up with money. According to FT, as a result, Vision Fund will not participate in the new round of financing.

In total, SoftBank and Vision Fund have already invested $ 4.4 billion in WeWork, and together with other obligations (including convertible debt papers and the last round of $ 2 billion, which should be transferred to the company in 2019) - more than $ 10 billion. According to the last round, the WeWORK rating amounted to about $ 42 billion - this The startup displayed in second place after Uber.

WeWORK remains unprofitable, and this should also be alarming investors. With revenue of $ 1.5 billion, the company for nine months of 2018 amounted to $ 1.2 billion - this is four times more than in the same period of 2017. In general, last year, WeWork losses can be about $ 2 billion.

• In 2010, the WeWORK startup was founded by Israeli's native of Adam Newmann. As of January 2019, Forbes estimated his fortune at $ 2.5 billion. The company takes offers for long -term rental, repairs them and submits them to the sublease monthly. Now under the control of a network of 457 offices in 89 cities. This year, the first offices of the company will open in Russia.
• Masaiyi Song, the most richest man of Japan, defended the most of the WeWork business model, the founder of SoftBank (Forbes estimates his fortune at $ 20.4 billion). All the companies invested by SoftBank, he advised to rent a WeWork offices, and set an example himself - SoftBank occupied most of the premises of the startup in Tokyo. In total, SoftBank under his management has been invested in 1300 different companies, including it is the largest shareholder of Alibaba, Uber and Boston Dynamics.

Anton Baev