Hybrid working ‘big bang’ drives Regus-owner IWG’s record revenue
Booming demand for hybrid working saw workspace provider IWG, which owns Regus, net a record £1.7bn in system-wide revenue in the first half, up 16 per cent year-on-year.
Adjusted EBIDTA also jumped nearly 48 per cent year-on-year to £198m, as the flexi-working specialist benefited from a global trend towards hybrid business models.
Mark Dixon, Chief Executive of IWG, said “we continue to grow as expected, producing a record period for IWG with our highest ever revenue in our over 30-year history… We have done this through a combination of higher demand for flexible work products [and] improved pricing and cost discipline.”
Discussing its plans for the year ahead, the FTSE 250 firm said that the majority of its revenues had been “denominated in or linked to US dollars,” and alongside volatility in Sterling, this had prompted the board to review IWG’s reporting currency, “irrespective of listing venue.”
In later comments to the Times, however, Dixon said that moving the firms’ London listing was “something the board is thinking about all the time.”
“Most of our customers, most of our users and most of our revenue are from the US; it’s not that there’s a problem with the UK market, it’s that the US may be a more appropriate market.”
Despite netting record revenues, IWG maintained a “cautiously optimistic” outlook for the year ahead, citing FX headwinds and a “challenging economic and competitive environment” as a result of inflation.
That being said, the IWG’s chief maintained that the first six months had been a “continuation of the ‘Big Bang’ we started seeing in 2022, when the continuing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic finally led to the lift-off of the hybrid model that some of us have been anticipating for many years.”
IWG has been accelerating its “capital light growth strategy,” which sees it partner with commercial property owners to rent out buildings and rising demand has seen it sign almost as many agreements in the six months to June as in the entirety of 2022.
Since January, it has penned 400 new deals, which include a recent investment in 33 new private offices in the Portomaso business tower in Malta, taking its global network to 3,398.
Seperately, home working trends have slowed slightly this year, with online meeting platform Zoom yesterday announcing it had mandated workers to come back into the office on the back of falling net profits.