Photo/Shetuwang

July 5 (NBD) -- WeWork's China rival Ucommune is preparing an initial public offering (IPO) in the U.S. next year to raise up to 200 million U.S. dollars, according to Bloomberg reports.

Sources privy to the matter said that the IPO plan is now in its preliminary stages and subject to change. Ucommune previously mulled U.S. IPO in the third quarter of 2018 but later abandoned the deal due to market circumstances, according to the informed sources.

On the website of Ucommune, National Business Daily (NBD) noticed that the four-year-old workspace sharing firm has set up over 200 co-working spaces in 44 cities and new areas across the globe as of December 2018. The company closed a 200-million-U.S. dollar Series D funding round last November.

The Chinese shared-office provider changed its name from "UrWork" to "Ucommune" after WeWork filed a lawsuit against the Chinese firm, claiming that a confusingly similar brand would misguide potential customers to believe UrWork’s services are affiliated to or sponsored by WeWork.

NBD noticed that WeWork is planning to go public in the U.S., too. This April, the U.S. startup announced that it filed paperwork confidentially with the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission to hold an IPO.

In recent years, shared-office businesses have been sprouting in China, and the brands include Soho 3Q backed by Pan Shiyi, Fountown, and KrSpace.

However, cut-throat competition in the sector has weeded out a flurry of smaller players. Date from Internet data provider VC SaaS showed that in 2018, 40 co-working brands that had been operated for less than 2 years disappeared, and 28.1 percent of the shared-office firms were either under sluggish development or on the brink of bankruptcy.

Industry insiders held that the most urgent problem facing co-working enterprises is to identify a clear profit model. "Companies should manage to maintain a high occupancy rate in order to profit from the shared-office business."

Email: gaohan@nbd.com.cn