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OCBJ INSIDER

WeWork’s financial DNA has a lot more in common with Uber than Irvine Co.

As a longtime real estate reporter at the Business Journal, and before that an IPO reporter at Dow Jones, the shared space operator’s long-awaited paperwork to go public was a must-read last week, timing up well with our coworking edition—see our front-page story and Special Report starting on page 21 for much more.

The nearly 300-page document reads like one from a Silicon Valley upstart entity like Uber (see our page 1 story on Karem Aircraft’s partnership with the ride-sharing firm) than one of a venerable real estate company. Even N.Y.-based WeWork’s “Space as a Service” motto is a riff on the SaaS lingo used by cloud-based tech firms.

Other similarities to Silicon Valley offerings, per its S-1: a nearly $4 billion accumulated deficit, close to a $900 million net loss for the first six months of this year, and executives with titles like “Chief Culture Officer.”

One OC figure worth comparing: WeWork said it’s opened about 38 million square feet of “usable space” since the start of 2016. The IPO document didn’t disclose the company’s likely valuation upon going public, but prior reports peg its expected value in the $47 billion range.

OC’s top landlord, Irvine Co., has a workspace portfolio in the 50-million-square-foot-range—owned, not leased, and that figure doesn’t include its many other assets. Last month, we estimated the fortune of its chairman and owner, Donald Bren, at $17.7 billion.

One of those valuations is likely too high, and one is probably too low.

Irvine Co. is WeWork’s largest landlord partner in OC—a region expected to be a continued source of growth for the N.Y. company going forward, the IPO documents say. The latest partnership between the two is a new Spectrum Terrace office entirely leased to WeWork.

The landlord’s been paying attention to what works. Irvine Co. officials told our Katie Murar they’ll be rolling out a new flexible workspace product of their own soon. See page 24 for some early details of the plan, which observers expect to come online later this year.

What makes UCI so good from a financial standpoint? “A strong graduation rate and affordable tuition fees for Californians,” notes the latest edition of Money.com.

How good? The now all-digital magazine’s annual ranking of the 25 Best Colleges in America was released last week. It lists UCI as the county’s best, ahead of (in order) City University of New York, Princeton, UCLA, UC Davis, and Stanford. Cal State Fullerton came in 22nd place, in a listing dominated by California schools.

To outsiders, UCI “might seem like a surprising No. 1,” but Money’s metrics for the ranking gives the Anteaters strong marks for student borrowing, alumni wages, and a graduation rate “30% higher than colleges that serve similar students.”

The school’s also doing well on attracting funds—both public and private—for research; see page 6 for more.

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Mark Mueller
Mark Mueller
Mark is the Editor-in-Chief of the Orange County Business Journal, one of the premier regional business newspapers in the country. He’s the fifth person to hold the editor’s position in the paper’s long history. He oversees a staff of about 15 people. The OCBJ is considered a must-read for area business executives. The print edition of the paper is the primary source of local news for most of the Business Journal’s subscribers, which includes most of OC’s major corporate and community players. Mark’s been with the paper since 2005, and long served as the real estate reporter for the paper, breaking hundreds of commercial and residential real estate stories. He took on the editor’s position in 2018.
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