Co-working office space company WeWork has set a date for its second shot at going public after the previous attempt failed nearly two years ago.
Pending final approval, WeWork will merge with a special purpose acquisition company on Oct. 21 to complete its journey toward becoming a publicly traded company, opting for a different approach than its IPO campaign in 2019. The company announced the merger timeline Monday in a news release.
Since its inception, WeWork has aimed to make an aggressive play into the coworking market, which makes shared office space available to smaller companies, self-employed workers and other groups who don’t need to lease a full office suite.
But the beleaguered company has faced a volatile road to this point, rising at one point to a $47 billion valuation before seeing its IPO bid fall apart. This latest effort to go public, which was announced in March, values the company at $9 billion.
Softbank, the company’s largest investor at the time of the IPO, ended up taking over, severing ties with former CEO and co-founder Adam Neumann, and handing the reins to current CEO Sandeep Mathrani.
WeWork’s latest effort to go public involves merging with BowX Acquisition Corp. The SPAC’s stockholders will meet Oct. 19 to decide whether to green-light the merger. If all goes as expected, the deal would close Oct. 21 and propel WeWork into a place in the New York Stock Exchange. The newly merged company will trade under the symbol “WE.”
