Table of Contents Reorganization Transactions The We Company was incorporated under the laws of the state of Delaware in April 2019 as a direct wholly owned subsidiary of WeWork Companies Inc. In July 2019, as a result of various reorganization transactions, The We Company became the holding company of all of the direct and indirect subsidiaries that were held by WeWork Companies Inc. prior to the reorganization transactions and the then-stockholders of WeWork Companies Inc. became the stockholders of The We Company. Prior to the reorganization transactions, The We Company did not engage in any business or other activities except in connection with its incorporation. As a general matter, the reorganization transactions resulted in us having a corporate organizational structure similar to a structure commonly referred to as an “UP-C” structure. However, unlike in many UP-C structures, no holder of a profits interest or other interest in the resulting partnership is entitled to a “tax receivable” payment or other similar payment by us in respect of tax attributes that may accrue to us upon the exchange of such profits interests or other interests for cash or shares of our common stock. The reorganization transactions were undertaken as a result of our belief that the holding company structure created by the reorganization transactions would enable us to realign our existing and future business lines into different sister subsidiaries. Such a structure allows us to separate our WeWork space-as-a-service offering from the rest of our existing businesses, and will also allow us to hold separately any future business areas into which we may expand. We also believed that creating a holding company structure might reduce the risk that liabilities of any of our businesses, including such business’ debts or other obligations, would be attributed to or restrictive of the operations of any of our other businesses. We believed that the reorganization transactions would facilitate our expansion by providing a more flexible structure for acquiring other businesses or entering into partnerships or collaborations while continuing to keep the operations of our existing WeWork space-as-a-service offering separate, as opposed to “above” any future acquired entities. We also considered that the reorganization transactions would facilitate the issuance of profits interests in the We Company Partnership, resulting in a new structure for certain management incentive compensation, as further described in “Certain Relationships and Related Party Transactions—Operating Partnership”. ARK/WPI Combination In August 2019 we combined ARK, our recently launched global real estate acquisition and management platform, with our separate existing real estate investment platform for the WPI Fund (the “ARK/WPI combination”). As a result of the ARK/WPI combination, all of the real estate acquisition and management activities of The We Company have been combined into a single platform comprising multiple real estate acquisition vehicles (including the ARK Master Fund and the WPI Fund) managed by a single sponsor vehicle majority-owned and consolidated by us. We account for our share of the underlying real estate acquisition vehicles and joint ventures as unconsolidated investments. See “Business—Our Organizational Structure—ARK” for a more detailed description of the ARK/WPI combination and the organizational structure of ARK. Acquisitions In July and August 2019, we acquired Waltz, an access controls solution, Prolific Interactive LLC, a mobile application developer, and Space IQ, a real estate planning platform. Components of Results of Operations We assess the performance of our locations differently based on whether the revenues and expenses of the location are consolidated within our results of operations (“consolidated locations”) or whether the revenues and expenses of the location are not consolidated within our results of operations but we are entitled to a management fee for our services, such as locations (“IndiaCo locations”) operated by WeWork India Services Private Limited (“IndiaCo”). The term “locations” includes only consolidated locations when used in “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Components of Results of Operations” but includes both consolidated locations and IndiaCo locations when used elsewhere in this prospectus. 88