Immersed in a deep financial crisis, American WeWork may have placed its Spanish subsidiary called WeWork Community Workspace SL and which manages a total 12 coworking spaces, 6 in Madrid and 6 in Barcelona, on sale. According to what market sources told El Confidencial, this may be an alternative way of generating liquidity to face the crisis.
The financial results, which were not encouraging before, became worse with the pandemic, which led to confined workers and cancelled contracts. In an attempt to mitigate this scenario, WeWork received a 1 billion euro capital injection from Japanese bank Softbank, one of its shareholders, in August. But this capital injection may not be enough. According to Fitch Ratings quoted by Bloomberg, WeWork may need a further 1.27 billion euro between 2021 and 2022, but «it is unclear that further funding would be available in a distressed scenario», so the company should need to seek «additional liquidity, the availability of which is highly uncertain».
Selling its business in Spain, may or may not be, then, an alternative way of generating liquidity in the short-term. Despite market sources having guaranteed to El Confidencial that CBRE is already seeking buyers, WeWork denies it and advances that there are new financing options on the table to accelerate its growth in the country.