An analyst who specializes in new listings is claiming that WeWork’s recent pre-IPO filing does not contain the information needed to create a financial model of the company.
According to Rett Wallace, CEO of Triton Research, the prospectus “is a masterpiece of obfuscation.”
“If the underlying facts were positive, why would a company go to so much trouble to prevent you from understanding them?” said Wallace.
Triton has a strong reputation of predicting the winners and losers among technology IPOs using an obfuscation index as a factor in its ratings, and the firm has indicated high levels of obfuscation in WeWork’s S-1 filing.
For example, the company stops counting sales and marketing expenses once a location has been operating for two years.
IPOs that have received the highest Triton scores include Elastic NV and Anaplan Inc., while companies that received low scores include Dropbox and Lyft.
Wallace said that the lack of disclosure in the company’s IPO is evident when compared to other IPO filings.