WeWork’s Annual Loss Doubles to Nearly $2 Billion Amid Rapid Expansion

WeWork Cos. on Monday said its loss last year doubled to nearly $2 billion, as the nine-year-old company spent heavily in an effort to rapidly expand its network of shared offices around the world.

The New York-based company’s revenue more than doubled to $1.82 billion, mostly from leasing office space. But heavy expansion costs led to a loss of $1.93 billion.

WeWork executives said the losses are reflective of investments required to build out new offices, and that once locations are open and well-leased, they make far more money than the cost to operate. The company has plowed into its business billions of dollars in capital raised by SoftBank Group Corp. and its tech-focused Vision Fund.

The company said as of December it had more than 400,000 members who rented desks in 100 cities, and has increasingly signed up larger corporate clients, who make up about one-third of membership.

“We can offer you everything from a desk to an office to your headquarters or an entire fleet of buildings,” said Artie Minson, the company’s president and chief financial officer.

Still, there were several questionable figures in WeWork’s results that could spell trouble for the company if they continue. WeWork isn’t required to disclose its financial results publicly, but since it took on bond debt last year, it has provided to media outlets its financial presentation given to bond investors.

WeWork said its occupancy rate at the end of last year fell to about 80% from 84% in the third quarter, while another metric watched closely by WeWork—the average revenue each member creates per year—continued a gradual fall to $6,360. It is now down 13.5% from the start of 2016.

WeWork said occupancy is down because it increased its pace of expansion at the end of the year, and new offices traditionally take up to 18 months to fill. It has previously said its revenue per user has been falling, in part because it is expanding to lower-cost markets.