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πŸ“Ί Former ITV HQ set to be digital hub
Norwich City Council is nearing completion of a Β£4 million refurbishment of Townshend House, Expand πŸ‘‡ transforming the former ITV regional headquarters into a digital hub for tech start-ups. Set to open in spring, the facility aims to accommodate up to 25 companies and create approximately 200 jobs. The hub will be managed by IWG.
The UK, along with other European local governments have been at the forefront of creative public financing around repurposing spaces on high streets and their equivalents of CBDs. While past deals have been more centered around leases, along with other trends we are witnessing, this is a shift towards third party management agreements.
πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ UK hotel and coworking chain acquired by Blackstone
Blackstone announced their acquisition of Village Hotels from KSL Capital Partners. The 22-hotel Expand πŸ‘‡ group also own and run VWorks, a coworking brand based within their "well-located assets in large regional cities and suburban areas across the UK".
Why this may matter: ICYMI Blackstone own 70-location brand Fora (the merged entity of The Office Group and Fora) and were exploring a $1.9B sale of the group. Capital Markets are closely watching this sale, as its one of the deals that could set precedent for just how much above "zero dollars per square foot" a flex space business can be valued at.
πŸ”¨ Could we still see WeWork go private and resold?
Keith Larsen from TheRealDeal shares an increasingly popular theory around why Yardi took a majority Expand πŸ‘‡ stake of WeWork, in that the former is looking to "fix and then flip" the latter for a "small profit". It’s possible, but given the other properties Yardi owns in coworking, there still could be a pure
Even though I did call it that Yardi would become a WeWork investor back in 2013, I did then call that IWG would land up acquiring WeWork for the franchise play, I may still be ‘in the money’ as they say.
However, since then, a new player has started making waves with acquisitions within the franchise space. Could we see Vast Coworking Group move in here? What if Yardi takes WeWork private first?
πŸ’₯ About that WeWork + Yardi emergence financing deal
Key events: WeWork announced that they’d taken significant steps towards emerging from Chapter 11, Expand πŸ‘‡ including raising $450M in new financing. This followed reporting that they’d gone to Softbank and Yardi to raise the capital and fend off Adam Neumann’s takeover bid. When the details emerged about the secured funding, people lost their marbles that Yardi had swooped in to secure 60% stake of the global coworking brand.
This does makes some sense – as a strong WeWork is good for Yardi and their existing software collaborations, and we all kinda called it back in Week 10 of 2023 (yeap, 2023!).
The question I keep hearing is… "what does this mean for Yardi customers who compete directly/indirectly with WeWork?". I’d suggest another angle, in questioning if this lines Yardi (and their web properties like CoworkingCafe) to better compete with (or even buy out) Instant/Worka?"
(Personally still shocked that IWG didn’t dive in and bring the brand in as a new franchise play.)
πŸš€ IWG posts highest revenue… in THIRTY FIVE YEARS.
IWG just reported in preliminary results for last year that revenue had grown 10% to Β£3.3B (approx Expand πŸ‘‡ $4.2B). Of that their gross profit increased by 41% to Β£528M, with margins up from 15.9% in 2022 to 20.4% in 2023.
For those holding shares via the London Stock Exchange, it’s interesting that they have announced that they will both pay a dividend (of 1p per share) and are considering a New York listing.
For everyone else, it can be helpful to see what kind of scale and revenue a multi-brand operator with 3,514 locations across 120 countries is getting – especially when the media and certain companies like to paint coworking and flex workspaces as "unsuccessful" or unprofitable.

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