Stock Spotlight: Has the shine has come off the WeWork brand?

More than two years after its botched IPO, WeWork has finally reached the public market at a value just a fifth of what it had aimed for in 2019, and while the firm has demonstrated “signs of improvement”, the real estate company remains marred by investor concern.

On 21 October 2021, WeWork went public via a special-purpose acquisition merger with acquiring firm BowX for an estimated value of $9bn and issued its first results as a public company on 15 November, which showed further losses, but an improvement on the previous quarter. This markedly lower market value demonstrates "the extent to which the shine has come off the WeWork brand", according to Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, who added investors have suffered a "crisis of confidence" in the firm since 2019. "Although it initially attempte...