SoftBank's latest valuation of WeWork is lower than previously thought - at under $5 billion
- SoftBank slashed its pre-bailout valuation of WeWork by 83% in three months to $4.9 billion, according to an investor presentation dated for release on Friday.
- SoftBank Investment Advisors, which manages the Japanese conglomerate's $100 billion Vision Fund I, cut WeWork's valuation by 74% even after accounting for parts of SoftBank's rescue deal, from $29.6 billion on June 30 to $7.8 billion on September 30.
- Vision Fund I posted an $8.8 billion investment loss last quarter.
- Read more of Business Insider's WeWork coverage here.
SoftBank slashed its pre-bailout valuation of WeWork by 83% in three months to $4.9 billion, according to an investor presentation dated for release on Friday.
SoftBank Investment Advisors - which manages the $100 billion Vision Fund I that counts Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth funds among its investors - cut the shared-workspace group's valuation by 74% even after accounting for parts of SoftBank's rescue deal, from $29.6 billion on June 30 to $7.8 billion on September 30.
In a footnote, the fund's managers pegged WeWork's value at under $5 billion. That figure excludes SoftBank's accelerated $1.5 billion investment and Vision Fund I's exchange of its interests in all regional joint ventures outside of Japan for shares in WeWork at $11.60 a share.
The figure is about a tenth of WeWork's $47 billion valuation in January.
Vision Fund I posted an $8.8 billion investment loss last quarter, the presentation showed. The fund more than halved the estimated value of its $4.3 billion investment in WeWork to $2.1 billion as of the end of September.
SoftBank's latest earnings included the $7.8 billion valuation of WeWork, but not the $4.9 billion figure. The Japanese conglomerate lost at least $4.7 billion by investing in WeWork, and combined with losses at Vision Fund I and Delta Fund, it plunged to an operating loss of $6.5 billion last quarter.
The presentation includes a short timeline of WeWork's IPO fiasco, from cofounder Adam Neumann stepping down as CEO in late September to WeWork withdrawing its S-1 filing and losing out on $9 billion in expected funding, the "liquidity impact and material downward revision of growth forecasts" at the start of October, and SoftBank's recent rescue deal which raises Vision Fund's ownership of WeWork from 15% to 20%.
Business Insider has reached out to SoftBank for comment.