WeWork CEO: Tariff Uncertainty Is Truly Good for Our Enterprise

Many firms are sounding the alarm on the destructive repercussions of tariffs on their companies. Not WeWork.

WeWork CEO John Santora mentioned Thursday on the Semafor World Financial system Summit that the financial uncertainty round tariffs has truly attracted extra enterprise for the coworking house firm.

“So if we have a look at it and simply take right now’s setting with all of the uncertainty round tariffs and what’s occurring, who’s ready to decide to a 10- or a 15-year lease with $50 or $100 million spend?” Santora mentioned.

“The world, enterprise, investments are all on a pause proper now till you identify what impression it is going to have in your firm, in your provide chain, on the price of all of that,” he added. “So we’re seeing firms which can be in our areas right now lengthen, firms that have not been in our areas earlier than speaking to us about ‘Are you able to fill the short-term hole for us? What are you able to do for the subsequent six months?'”

Santora expanded on his remarks in an interview with Bloomberg on Friday, saying WeWork’s purchasers “look to a participant like us to offer them that flexibility.”

“You must pause,” he informed Bloomberg of how his purchasers are pondering of the unsure financial setting. “You must give it some thought. You must suppose whether or not or to not make investments that main capital in a market, not less than by this brief time period. You must step again.”

Moreover tariffs and their penalties, return-to-office mandates may additionally drive enterprise for WeWork, Santora mentioned.

“The opposite factor is, do we actually understand how many individuals are going to be within the workplace? We do not,” he informed Semafor. “We do not know whether or not it is going to be three days per week, 4 days per week, 5 days per week. We will mandate it, or corporations mandate it, however by taking that short-term have a look at it, do two years with us, do three years with us. At that time, the place your online business is heading.”

It has been a tumultuous few years for WeWork, which noticed the exit of founder and former CEO Adam Neumann in 2019. His departure adopted a failed IPO marred by considerations about WeWork’s enterprise mannequin, valuation, and governance. WeWork ultimately went public through a SPAC in 2021. The corporate later filed for Chapter 11 chapter in 2023.

WeWork declined to supply extra remark.