Re:WeWork Parent Weighs Slashing Its Valuation in Half
by babaganoosh89 on Thursday September 05, 2019 @12:50PM
(#20888523)
They almost definitely have liquidation preferences on that 2B.
Re:WeWork Parent Weighs Slashing Its Valuation in Half
by JumpCrisscross on Thursday September 05, 2019 @12:53PM
(#20888546)
> They almost definitely have liquidation preferences on that 2B
Automatic conversion clauses typically force convertible pref to convert to common in the event of an IPO. This makes liquidation preferences generally irrelevant to public offerings.
Re:WeWork Parent Weighs Slashing Its Valuation in Half
by acchow on Thursday September 05, 2019 @05:14PM
(#20890690)
You can define arbitrary preference rules. For example, the conversion doesn't have to be 1-to-1.
In the case of Square's IPO, Series E preferred had a provision giving them extra free common stock to make up the gap if it IPO'd below $18.55 (which it did).
Re:WeWork Parent Weighs Slashing Its Valuation in Half
by ChuckMcM on Thursday September 05, 2019 @06:14PM
(#20891122)
You can, and I may be wrong here, but I seem to recall that one has to call out these sorts of options in the S-1. It is material to people investing in the IPO.
Re:WeWork Parent Weighs Slashing Its Valuation in Half
by jonknee on Thursday September 05, 2019 @12:55PM
(#20888563)
Well that's a different thing than what the OP claimed (marking up an investment with a tiny secondary round). They marked it up with a giant round!
Re:WeWork Parent Weighs Slashing Its Valuation in Half
by throwaway_law on Thursday September 05, 2019 @01:18PM
(#20888822)
>marking up an investment with a tiny secondary round
Maybe a $2B round is tiny in the face of annual losses of $1.9B which was 2x the loss from the year before.
Who really knows anymore, maybe doubling your losses is just another metric VCs can spin as positive growth. After all the Unicorn IPO mantra seems to be, but we can stop our billion dollar losses whenever we want and then its all profits.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wework-m-a-softbank/softb...