WeWork Inc.’s first-quarter loss narrowed sharply as gross desk sales reached prepandemic levels with the gradual return of employees in the U.S. to in-person work.
The shared-office company said Thursday its top line rose 28% from a year ago, with 166,000 desks sold, the highest level since the first quarter of 2020. Revenue was higher than WeWork’s forecast for the period and the company raised the low end of its revenue outlook for the year.
The results are the latest sign that in-person work is slowly normalizing, after the pandemic forced many office workers to work from home and companies reassessed their real estate needs.
WeWork, which maintains office space that it rents out to workers on a piecemeal basis, went public in October through a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company. The process came after an implosion of earlier plans for an initial public offering over corporate-governance issues and questions over its valuation. The company also cut ties with its co-founder and former chief executive,
Adam Neumann.
The company brought in a new CEO,
Sandeep Mathrani,
who has refreshed company operations by closing locations, renegotiating leases and cutting thousands of jobs.
In the first quarter, which ended March 31, the reduced costs substantially cut down on the company’s net loss, which came in at $435 million, or 57 cents a share, compared with a loss of $2 billion, or $14.34 a share, a year earlier.
Analysts polled by FactSet had been expecting a loss of 72 cents a share.
Revenue rose to $765 million in the quarter, just under Wall Street forecasts of $768 million but ahead of the company’s earlier projection.
The company’s total expenses fell to $1.1 billion from $2.1 billion a year earlier, aided by a $130 million gain from lease terminations.
WeWork raised the low end of its second-quarter revenue guidance to $800 million from $775 million, and upped the low end of its expected full-year revenue by $50 million to $3.4 billion.
The company said it improved its liquidity with $350 million of debt backed by
Brookfield Asset Management.
Shares of WeWork, down more than 58% over the past 12 months, rose more than 9% in premarket trading.
Write to Dean Seal at [email protected]
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Appeared in the May 13, 2022, print edition as ‘WeWork Narrows Loss as Desks Fill.’
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