Shares in
WeWork
have plunged amid fears that the short-term office rental company, once valued at $47 billion, will soon file for bankruptcy.
WeWork
(ticker: WE) stock tumbled 37% in premarket trading on Wednesday, extending losses from an 11.6% slump on Tuesday. The company is planning to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as early as next week, The Wall Street Journal reported late Tuesday, citing multiple anonymous sources. WeWork declined to comment when reached by Barron’s.
The group, which tore through more than $500 million in the first half of the year, struck a deal with bondholders on Tuesday, giving it seven days to negotiate before it is considered to have defaulted on interest payments due in early October.
Default or bankruptcy would mark just the latest chapter in the WeWork saga.
Backed by SoftBank, the company was a venture capital highflier that lost its shine amid the ousting of co-founder Adam Neumann in 2019, with plans for an initial public offering ditched before the group went public via merger in 2021. Once valued in the tens of billions of dollars, the premarket stock price move implies a market capitalization for WeWork of around $75 million.
Write to Jack Denton at [email protected]
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