WeWork executive chairman Marcelo Claure said the SoftBank-controlled American shared work-space company is working towards becoming profitable by 2021.

In an exclusive interaction with CNBC, the company's executive chairman Marcelo Claure spoke about WeWork's plan to become profitable and adding that the company hopes to have a billion dollars of free cash by 2024.

Speaking about the controversy over payments to ousted CEO Adam Neumann, Marcelo Claure said it's 'totally false' to say that Neumann left with a billion dollars.

Claure said: "WeWork is a sustainable business. Over the course of the last 100 days we have put together a 5-year plan that includes basically looking at every single building and putting the financial forecast for rebuilding."

He further added: "Firstly it is an enormous market, commercial real estate business is large. Secondly, we have a fully funded plan which is quite important. We will have in excess of $2.5-3 billion in excess liquidity and we have a great new leader. Our plan calls for us to be profitable by 2021, EBITDA profitable, cashflow positive by 2022 and approximately USD 1 billion of free cash by 2024. So, we have a plan and now it comes down to execution."

On Adam Neumann, he said Adam is very excited that the business is transitioning from high-growth to a more disciplined business with accountability and with a more mature leadership.

He further added that Adam Neumann hasn't walked away with over $1 billion.

"There is a tender ongoing right now in which Adam will have the right to participate as other shareholders. Adam is a large shareholder of the company, he was the founder and as we have tendered to buy shares from other shareholders, he is going to have the same opportunity as any other shareholder. However to say that Adam has walked away with over $1 billion is totally false."

First Published:Feb 10, 2020 11:35 PM IST