Sandeep Mathrani は WeWork CEO として初めて テレビ中継されたインタビューで CNBC と対話する。
Sandeep Mathrani は 今日,WeWork CEO として初めてのテレビ中継された CNBC の番組 Squawk Box で Andrew Ross Sorkin とコロナウィルスのパンデミック中の WeWork の将来について対話した。
以下は,このインタビューの書き起こし記録である:
Q:多くの企業が,従業員の安全を考えてオフィスをどのように設計すべきかを再検討しています。WeWork は,全世界に渡って コワーキング空間の変更を展開しています。
今朝は,この TV インタビューに Sandeep Mathrani を WeWork の CEO として初めてお招きしました。
Sandeep, お早う。お会いできてうれしいです。今回のパンデミックは,商業用不動産業界,特に オフィス空間の世界で 極めて厳しいもののように外からは見えます。ところが 一方ではこれとは反対の見解があり,あなたも そして一部の企業も,WeWork のような企業にとっては やりようがあるとのことですね。
SM:お早う。私は この週末に
Face the Nation [CBS の報道番組] で Google の元 CEO Eric Schmidt の話を聴きました。彼の話では,このパンデミックでは社会的隔離が標準であり,そのため 事実上 多くのオフィス空間が必要になる … ということでした。私も,同じことを確信しています。私は 多くの企業顧客に言ってきました ── 職業上の隔離が標準になれば,あなたがたは多くの空間を求めるようになるだろうと。
WeWork にとってカギを握るのは,柔軟性 ── 空間と時間の両方の柔軟性である。当社は "Hub & Spoke" モデルを信頼する;当社の企業テナントが このモデルを必要とすると言う。従業員の通勤時間を少なくするには,スポークは 従業員が住むところに近い必要がある。
我々は 中国での 100 以上のビルでの経験から,職業的隔離と HVAC (空調+換気システム) と殺菌を実現する 業界最高のオフィスを作るには何が必要かを幅広く学んだ。この4月を丸々1ヵ月かけて,数千万ドルを投じて,人々が安全に戻って来れるオフィスを用意した。安全だということを実感してほしい。自分の家にいるように感じてもらいたい。
Q:That’s the question, though, because the conventional wisdom is that WeWork has always been about community, about bringing people together, even people who don’t necessarily work at the same companies. But in a social distancing world, how many of those people are going to prefer—given that they’re in relatively white collar jobs that can be done on a laptop and a telephone—to do those tasks at home if they’re not going to do them at the traditional office that they would have otherwise gone to?
SM: Actually, the key to WeWork is flexibility—flexibility of space, flexibility of time. If you actually come visit our WeWork locations, you’ll see that people can sit six feet apart. There’s distancing available. It’s very easy to reconfigure our spaces to make it safe for the employees. It is not conventional space where you have walls or cubicles that cannot be relocated so quickly.
As I was listening to some of the earlier players on your show, one of the questions was “How do we reconfigure space?”Again, you should think of us as being flexible. Flexibility means you can de-densify. You can spread out locations and people can come to work. I’ve been going to several WeWork offices over the last few weeks, and it is encouraging to see people come and sit in these open spaces six to eight feet apart. So, as a matter of fact, the key words for us are flexibility and collaboration while marking in your distancing.
Q: Right. Sandeep, what does it do to the economics of your business even if you’re able to fill all of these offices at, let’s say, 25 percent, 30 percent? We talked a lot about what’s happening at Disney. It’s one thing to be able to reopen, it’s another thing to be able to get to a significant enough group of people who are there to make each location profitable.
SM:So that’s a very good point. We ended Q4 with about 740 locations. We’re ending Q1 with about 830 locations. One thing that happened, that’s fortunate, is we had this additional supply that came online at the very right time. So, in our case, that effectively gives us an opportunity to increase occupancy and, therefore, we should not see much impact to our economics.
We took a period of time—almost 18 months to 24 months—to mature these buildings, and so if you’ve got 60 additional buildings with capacity to mature over a 24-month period, occupancy is the more important factor than actually occupancy per square foot, from a rent perspective. We do believe that, because of where we sit on an occupancy range, that effectively economics will not drive our decision to create a safe environment for the employees.
Q:
The other question when it comes to safety: There was an article in today’s Wall Street Journal talking about elevators. How many people can go in an elevator? In fact, there are people developing and thinking about an elevator for one. How does that work, and how are you thinking about it?
SM:Again, looking at China, we’ve been able to see places that take four people per elevator. You essentially time when people can come in. It’s almost like commuters: When you commute, you pick the best time to commute to make sure traffic is the least for you. I think, over a period of time, people will get used to the times elevators are busy, and they will time it out.
We’re fortunate actually that in 40 percent of our buildings we sit lower in the building where people could use stairwells as well, so that happens sort of by default. We took real estate lower in the buildings and that helps a commuter come into the building without that much traffic. So, again, I think the fortunate part of being flexible in our office space, our location within the buildings, allows us to be more nimble when it comes to serving our employees.
Q:The other question—this idea of a distributed workplace—how much do you think that improves the cause for some companies? You could argue either everybody should be at home or everybody should be at the office. But this sort of midway strategy or middle-ground strategy, does that advance things for a big enterprise company that may want to only put a handful of people in Brooklyn so they don’t have to travel into Manhattan?
SM:Looking at our own workforce and seeing how we bring them back to work, we find it to be—it doesn’t really work if you have an A/B system (if you have teams that stay at home and work by Zoom and other teams that come to work). So the aspect of being geographically distributed, going back to the hub-and-spoke model, bringing teams together so they can work in packs, even if that means they’re in different offices, is actually the way I think people will come back to work.
I think it’s all or nothing, but it will be scaled because no one wants to rush. We ourselves are bringing in 25 percent of our people week one, and after two weeks we’ll bring another 25 percent. Again, having our own geographic distribution, we’re able to accommodate our colleagues to come back and spread out throughout the city and throughout the boroughs of New York City.
I do think, the aspect of WeWork having the flexible space, being geographically distributed within the city and around the world, will actually be an advantage. Enterprise clients of ours are reaching out and saying, you can provide something to us that we really can’t provide ourselves, which is that professional distancing and geographic distribution closer to our employees. So we actually do think this could be a silver lining that I think will help occupancy of our new assets to be brought online in the first quarter.
Q: Adam Neumann, the founder of WeWork and the former CEO there, is suing SoftBank for walking away from that $3 billion tender offer. Obviously the situation has changed from when the tender offer was made, but what’s your position on the situation?
SM:SoftBank has provided about $5.5 billion of liquidity to WeWork since the fall of 2019. That gives us enough capacity to operate our business. We still have $4 billion of liquidity today, and effectively we’ve been able to right-size our organization. We’ve been able to improve by leasing our assets. We’re on a path to profitability in 2021.The $3 billion tender offer has to do with our existing shareholders. It’s noise in the background as far as I’m concerned. My focus is to right this ship, and it doesn’t really take up our time or our energy focusing on a lawsuit between existing shareholders and SoftBank. We’re focused on righting our ship.
Q:Sandeep, are you paying your rent, and how many of your customers have called you up and said, “Wish I could, but I can’t pay my rent this month”?
SM:A good friend of mine, Jeff Blau of Related said, if you can pay your rent, you should pay your rent. So, I called him up and asked him a question. I said, “What should I do?” He said, “The places you make a lot of money, you should pay your rent.” So, I’d like to sit back and say I followed his advice.
We’ve paid our rent at over 80 percent of our locations in April and May. The remaining locations, we’re just in discussions with our landlords in a friendly way. And therefore, we plan to make whole on our entire obligation. I do believe in the trickle-down economy. If I stop paying my rent, landlords can’t make their mortgage payments, and then it’s a domino effect.
On the collection side, we’ve collected over 70 percent of our rents in the month of April, and we are working with small and medium businesses on deferrals and freezing rents in different ways. I speak to them myself. On Saturday, I spoke to a gentleman out of Los Angeles and worked out an amicable solution. Yesterday, I spoke to a gentleman out of our London office and worked out an amicable solution. So we are working with those who can’t afford to pay rent by deferring their rent for a period of time and accommodating to create a win-win situation.
Q:OK. Sandeep, we appreciate your taking the time to speak with us this morning. We hope to follow your progress and hope you come back on as things move forward. Thanks again.
SM:Thanks for having me. Have a great day.
Q:You bet, thanks.