After last month’s listing, WeWork posts first results and the losses are less

WeWork’s loss narrowed in the third quarter, the company said in its first financial results since going public.

The loss was $4.54 a share in the period that ended in September, compared with $5.51 a year ago, the New York-based company said in a statement Monday. Sales fell 18% to $661m in the quarter.

The company, which rents office space, went public in October by merging with a blank-cheque company. The current business is different in many ways from its predecessor, which was rejected by public investors two years ago. It has fewer apparent conflicts of interest, a smaller staff and a new CEO, a longtime real-estate executive named Sandeep Mathrani.

Trading of WeWork shares has been volatile since October. On Friday, the stock fell 80c below the $10 initial price of the blank-check company it merged with. It rose less than 1% in premarket trading Monday following the report.

The shares got a slight boost last week thanks to Adam Neumann. The co-founder gave a rare public interview in which he expressed regrets about his time in charge and proclaimed that WeWork has a “bright future”.

Mathrani’s WeWork remains similar to Neumann’s in that it still loses a great deal of money. The loss was nearly $3bn in the first half of the year, three times wider than in the same period in 2019.

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