WeBorrow.
If the high-yielding bonds of Netflix and Telsa are a little dull for you then maybe WeWork Companies Inc. can provide you with something a bit less plain vanilla.
Equally adept at incinerating cash, the office-space sub-letter cum unicorn recently announced a $500m unsecured seven-year offering that still ultimately proved to be sheepish on the yield deprived Street. WeWork raised it to $702m after orders of $2.5bn accumulated.
The notes are squarely in junk bond territory with a single-B-plus at S&P and double-B-minus at Fitch, and the prospectus contains no shortage of interesting factoids for anyone inclined, including directors and executives of the company holding around 44% of the equity which is mostly comprised of the super-voting B shares with a 10x voting right per share. This is interesting because more typically, founders generally control around 20% of their company following a Series-B fundraising round – WeWork, by comparison, completed both a Series-G round last July (which valued the company at $20 billion) and Softbank Group invested a further $4.4 billion one month later.
WeWork locks in long office leases from landlords (10 or even 20 years) and then offers companies month-to-month rental options; and as such now owes $18 billion in rent, which seems an impressive number. High-yield investor Xavier MacDuff tweeted that 2017 stock-based compensation expense of $261 million represented nearly 30% of last year’s $886 million in revenues. So perhaps unsurprisingly, profitability is currently elusive for WeWork.
Thankfully WeWork has kindly provided some alternative metrics to consult. For instance, adjusted EBITDA for 2017 noted to be negative $193 million. However, “adjusted EBITDA before growth investments” (a.k.a. adjusted adjusted EBITDA) came in at positive $49 million. And “Community adjusted EBITDA,” (or, adjusted adjusted adjusted EBITDA) at positive $233 million in 2017.
That is some accounting kung fu for you right there.