"Clearest economic model"? They're losing almost 2 BILLION dollars a year (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/business/dealbook/wework-...)
a) buy or rent commercial real estate
b) rent that same real estate out to people who want office space
As long as the money coming in from b is sufficiently greater than the money being spent on a, you should be good.
As far as profitability, the company is making investments now that will pay back over time. Since they are growing quickly, you'd expect them to take a loss since they have to make upfront investments in new offices (and on real estate, which they seem to be getting into the business of purchasing outright rather than taking out long term leases).
EDIT: I don't have an opinion one way or another on whether WeWork is a good business to invest in or not, but it's definitely a straightforward and easy to understand business, as opposed to say, a bank or a biotech company.
The problem with this model is that when demand for real estate falls (e.g. because of economic cycles, trends/tastes, etc.) the revenues will evaporate and the costs will remain.
If WeWork can't pay the lease on 29,000 square feet of office space, WeWork has a problem. If they can't pay the lease on 2.9 million square feet of office space, the owners have a problem.
One fairly big serviced offices company pulled the "separate entities" trick in one of the previous recessions, and some of the major landlords in that country still to this day, more than a decade later, refuse to do business with them.
I used to work at company that rented from WeWork. And we were in their awful glass cubicles, like working in a Borg ship, and we wanted some privacy, so we asked about putting up some removal decals.
They said no, it violated their brand guidelines.
Clarity, always clarity.