WeWork is proof that the IPO market is in trouble

WeWork’s parent company pulled its disastrous initial public stock offering on Monday — the latest signal that Wall Street is losing its appetite for overhyped startups that continue to bleed cash.

Stock market analysts say investors are getting cold feet when it comes to buying up IPOs generally — and predict that the market for large but money-losing companies is likely to freeze up during the last quarter of the year.

“IPO buyers are going on strike,” Kathleen Smith, principal at Renaissance Capital, told The Post. “We’re projecting that it’s going to be a pretty slow end of the year.”

The We Company, which owns office subletter WeWork, withdrew its IPO after its board had purged partyboy chief executive Adam Neumann and about 20 other executives aligned with him, the company said in a regulatory filing.

Neumann’s high-flying rhetoric — coupled with $900 million in losses during the first half of the year and accusations of self-dealing — put a sour taste in the mouths of Wall Street investors.

“Adam wanted to ‘elevate the consciousness’ of the frickin’ world,” Barry Oxford, analyst at D.A. Davidson, told The Post. “If you really want to get me interested, talk to me [about] leasing space.”

At the start of 2019, investors had been eager to buy up shares of tech darlings like Uber and Lyft while overlooking their massive debt and unclear path to profits — with the hope that each would be the next Amazon of their industry.

That hasn’t panned out. Uber closed at its all-time low on Monday, at $30.47, well below its $45 IPO price. Lyft, too, fell to a low of $40.84 on Monday, about half of its value on its first day of public trading.

The freeze-up could be a bad sign for Wall Street banks, especially Jamie Dimon’s JPMorgan Chase and David Solomon’s Goldman Sachs, which stood to profit off these mega deals.

While the We Company’s IPO implosion likely won’t impact the banks’ third-quarter earnings, it could damper investment banking profits for the next six months or so, said analyst Dick Bove.

“In terms of impact on earnings, it could be significant,” Bove told The Post.

Other companies have also backed away from the IPO market. Ari Emanuel’s Endeavor Group, which owns the William Morris talent agency, pulled its IPO last week after it became clear that it would cost its top executives about $500 million, The Post exclusively reported last week.