WeWork says it will skip $95 million in interest payments
Tuesday morning, WeWork’s stock plunged more than 20% after the company announced a day earlier that it would not make two sets of interest payments totaling more than $95 million.
Two months ago, WeWork said it had “substantial doubts” about its ability to survive, a move that could raise questions about the company’s future. In the meantime, the embattled coworking company says the missed interest payment will buy it time to negotiate with creditors and free up liquidity as it attempts to implement its turnaround plan, which includes renegotiating leases and stemming membership cancellations.
The interest payments for WeWork (WE) must be made within a grace period of 30 days, the company noted in a securities filing on Monday. It stated that it has the cash to make the payments and that it “may decide to do so in the future.”
In August, the company reported that it had $205 million in cash on hand at the end of June. Additionally, the company reported a net loss of $696 million for the first six months of this year.
In 2019, WeWork failed to go public and struggled to fully recover from its peak valuation of $47 billion. IPO paperwork revealed larger-than-expected losses and conflicts of interest with Adam Neumann, the company’s founder and then-CEO. A couple of years later, the company went public at a valuation of about $9 billion, but it continues to burn cash and struggle to retain members.