The We Co., parent company of WeWork, is struggling to convince investors they should look past its billions of dollars in losses ahead of its planned initial public offering.

That’s according to reports published today in Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal, which cited sources as saying the co-working behemoth is considering to file for an IPO at a significantly reduced valuation. The tipsters said WeWork’s new target is between $20 billion to $30 billion, significantly below the $47 billion the company was worth after its most recent funding round.

The sources cautioned that the final valuation may end up being on the lower end of the range. An insider who spoke to CNBC shed more light on the situation, revealing that investor demand “is not there” for the IPO even at a proposed $25 billion market capitalization.

A lower valuation may make it harder for WeWork to raise the $3 billion or more it hopes to secure through the listing. That, in turn, would leave the company with less capital to invest in growth. There’s especially much at stake because WeWork hopes to take out up to $6 billion in credit on top of the IPO proceeds and the loan is contingent on the offering raising at least $3 billion.

According to the Journal, WeWork Chief Executive Officer Adam Neumann met with SoftBank Group Corp. counterpart Masayoshi Son in Tokyo last week to discuss their options. SoftBank is the co-working company’s biggest backer, with more than $10 billion invested to date. The Japanese carrier is said to be looking at providing yet another capital injection that would allow WeWork to push back the IPO until 2020.

Another option, according to the tipsters, is for SoftBank to become an anchor investor in the offering and buy a significant portion of the shares to be sold.

WeWork’s road to the stock market might have been somewhat easier if not for the disappointing IPOs of Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. earlier this year. The two companies are in a similar position as WeWork, with respectable revenue growth but mounting losses. Uber went public at $45 a share and is now hovering around $32, while Lyft’s stock is down over 35% from its opening price.

Other tech firms have had more success. Zoom Video Communications Inc.’s share price is about 250% higher than it was at the time of the company’s listing, partly thanks to a strong post-IPO earnings report that showed revenues more than doubling, to $122 million.

Still, WeWork apparently isn’t alone among companies hoping to go public and running into investor resistance to going public. Today, Bloomberg reported that Palantir Technologies Inc. is in talks to raise “significant funding” in a move that would delay its planned IPO from next year to as late as 2023.

Photo: WeWork