Proliferating spirals drive a community mad in classic horror manga Uzumaki. SoftBank boss Masayoshi Son should take note. WeWork, a favoured investment of the Japanese tech group, is spiralling towards destruction. SoftBank has swooped in with a bailout valuing the equity of the US flexible offices business at $8bn, compared with $47bn in a recent financing. That’s one hell of a “down round” and stands to leave SoftBank, a company with a risky financial structure, spinning in ever-decreasing circles too.
It is offering a $9.5bn package of debt and equity that would raise its stake in WeWork to up to 80 per cent. SoftBank has two aims: to avoid or postpone a writedown and to halt the drop in WeWork’s worth. Lex valued the company at no more than $3bn last summer, when bankers were readying figures of up to $104bn.
At a $8bn valuation the loss attributable to the SoftBank group would be $3.6bn, according to Bernstein. This would consist of a $2.2bn hit on a direct investment and 51 per cent of a $2.8bn loss on the Vision Fund’s stake. SoftBank can probably forestall a writedown almost as large as its annual net income.