Yet Regus is actually profitable. Its parent company, UK-based International Workspace Group, reported a profit of nearly 300 million British pounds (about $350 million USD) for the first six months of 2019. And the company consistently makes money.

WeWork, on the other hand, consistently burns cash and has no expectation of making money “in the foreseeable future” according to its own SEC filing.

In fact, WeWork lost almost $1 billion in the first six months of 2019, putting it on pace to lose even more money than the $1.9 billion it lost in 2018.

WeWork currently has around 10 million square feet of office space, and hopes to grow to 40 million in total.

But Regus already has nearly 60 million square feet of office space worldwide. And it’s still expanding.

So Regus is MUCH larger and turns a healthy profit. WeWork is smaller and loses tons of money.

You’d think that Regus would be a much more valuable company. But no. Regus is valued at less than $5 billion. While WeWork is going public at a valuation of nearly $50 billion– ten times higher.

Much of this excess is due to WeWork’s legendary silver-tongued and messianic co-founder/CEO, Adam Neumann.

Neumann has actually been able to convince people that WeWork is a technology company, as a way to justify its absurdly high valuations.

In addition to extolling their ‘culture of inclusivity’ and ‘energy of an inspired community’, the company’s SEC filing refers to their ‘extensive technology’ more than 120 times.

Of course, there’s never any description of the technology, or what it actually does.

There’s also not a SINGLE line item in WeWork’s financial statements that shows ANY research and development.

For technology companies, this is ALWAYS an important item in their financials.

Google spent $16 BILLION on research & development last year, amounting to roughly 14% of its revenue. Amazon spent $22 billion, 12% of its revenue. Facebook spent $7.8 billion, nearly 20% of its revenue.

And even stodgy old Johnson & Johnson, which doesn’t even pretend to be a tech company, spent more than $10 billion (13.8% of revenue) on research & development in 2018.

WeWork claims to be a tech company, even though all they really have is a reservation system that is slightly less impressive than what Enterprise Rent-a-Car uses.

They keep saying how important technology is to their business (as if technology isn’t important to EVERY business in 2019. Duh.)

But WeWork doesn’t even investment enough money in R&D to register a single footnote in their financial statements.

This proves, beyond all doubt, that it’s just a big, giant farce.