WeWork Gave Founder Loans As It Paid Him Rent, IPO Filing Shows

Stockolio

Stockolio

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...er-loans-as-it-paid-him-rent-ipo-filing-shows

In 2016, Neumann borrowed $7 million from WeWork at a generous annual interest rate of 0.64%. Neumann paid it back early, in November 2017, with about $100,000 in interest. It was one of several times Neumann borrowed company money. “From time to time over the past several years, we made loans directly to Adam or his affiliated entities,” WeWork wrote in the filing.

Neumann took out a much bigger loan from WeWork a few months ago. The company lent him $362 million in April at 2.89% interest to help him exercise options to buy stock. This month, Neumann repaid the debt by surrendering the shares back to the company. It’s not clear from the filing why these transactions happened.

The business is, in some respects, a family affair. Rebekah Neumann, the CEO’s wife and a cousin of Gwyneth Paltrow, is listed as a founder, chief brand and impact officer of WeWork and founder and CEO of WeGrow, a corporate project to build and run private elementary schools. She was also among those behind a proposal this summer to hire Martin Scorsese to direct promotional videos for WeWork, Bloomberg reported last week.

Avi Yehiel, Neumann’s brother-in-law and a former professional soccer player in Israel, has served as WeWork’s head of wellness since 2017. He receives a salary of less than $200,000, according to the prospectus. WeWork hired another one of Neumann’s immediate family members to host eight events last year for a total of less than $200,000, the filing said. The events coincided with the Creator Awards, a live pitch competition with celebrity judges hosted by WeWork. The company said it spent more than $40 million on the show in 2017 and 2018. In March, WeWork brokered a deal with its largest shareholder, SoftBank Group Corp., in which the Japanese conglomerate agreed to reimburse the company $80 million to cover costs associated with the Creator Awards.
 
Early this year, WeWork unveiled its new corporate brand: We Co. It then sought to acquire the trademark to “we.” The name was owned by We Holdings LLC, which manages some of the founders’ stock and other assets. WeWork said it paid the founders’ company $5.9 million for “we” this year, based on a valuation determined by a third-party appraisal. WeWork legally changed the company name last month.

WeWork also disclosed details on the widely scrutinized rental arrangements with Neumann. The company said Neumann owns four properties that count WeWork as a tenant. For one building, the company entered a lease within a year of Neumann acquiring his ownership stake. For the other three, it signed a lease on the same day the co-founder obtained his stakes.

In the first half of the year, WeWork made cash payments to landlord entities affiliated with Neumann totaling $4.2 million. Those lease commitments had future minimum payments of $237 million, which represented 0.5% of the company’s total commitments. Neumann didn’t extend discounts to his company, WeWork said.

WeWork was raising a $2.9 billion fund called ARK that would purchase buildings, including those owned by Neumann. The CEO said he would sell the properties WeWork wants for the same price he originally paid. The company called attention to this in the IPO filing, describing it as a mechanism for an “orderly transition” of these properties that ensures WeWork gets favorable treatment in the transfer of the assets. WeWork said it owns 80% of ARK, which also counts Canada’s Ivanhoe Cambridge Inc. as an investor. Neumann committed to not buying any more buildings for WeWork to occupy.

This is bigger rape then Enron, greed turned him insane...
 
"Chosen people" playing "chosen people" games, as always. Cannot say anything else as it would be deemed racist. Can't believe the Japanese (SoftBank) are dumb enough to fall for this though, good time to probably short both WeWork and SoftBank.
 
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1533523/000119312519220499/d781982ds1.htm

We have a history of losses and, especially if we continue to grow at an accelerated rate, we may be unable to achieve profitability at a company level (as determined in accordance with GAAP) for the foreseeable future

Regular scaling loses and it's stock based compensation will make sure it incurs massive losses towards Q4 2019, Q1 2020... 3 Billion + net loss a year going forward, the more they scale the more they lose
 
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