Evolution of key metrics and key financial figures of the Belgian coworking or flex office market

1. fin POWER
Presentation at the Belgian Workspace Association, 2025
Available on ‘SlideShare’ for every-one
The flex office market in Belgium
Update on the coworking sector and its operators in Belgium
B.W.A. Conference, 10 October 2025
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Draft version – final
version to be presented
at the BWA-conference

2. I. History and evolution of flexible workspaces
II. Evolution within the Belgian Office market
III. The flexible office market : actual situation
IV. Key financials of the flexible offices in Belgium
V. Topic of the year: management - contracts
VI. Conclusions
INTRODUCTION
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3.  Flexible office market in Belgium :
 Slides available on internet
 Was it a business or a coworking-center ?
 Was ‘fundamentally’ different in 2015 : business centers were ‘bricks and morter’, selling
workplaces – coworking was based upon community-building, selling memberships.
 Actually, all of them evolving towards ‘flexible offices’ – covering both models.
 Since 2025, we do not make a distinction between those two types.
 Flexible offices = offices with full time reception services or community-manager
 Used figures :
 Own data-base of active centers
 Published financial data (Belgian National Bank)
INTRODUCTION
“Definitions and limitations”
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4. I. HISTORY
“A fast-growing market with a rich history”
• Market has not grown from 1990 until 2012 – less
than 100 business centres in Belgium in 2005
– Then came Wework ‘the coworking movement’
• From 2012 on: exponential growth (> 10-15 %/year)
– higher in number of locations then in m²
– Due to the growth of smaller ‘coworking-locations’
• Covid en energy-crisis have ‘stopped’ our market
growth from 2021 untill 2024 !
• In 2025: growth > 10 % !
– Faster growth in m² than in number of locations
–  locations become ‘bigger’  more profitable…
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5. II. BELGIAN OFFICE MARKET
Market share of ‘coworking’
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 Office-stock in Belgium
 Stable/decreasing volume with appr. 25 Mio office space
 Market of ‘larger cities’ very well documented
 Estimate of regional cities and total market in
collaboration with CBRE.
 Total ca. 25 Mio m², accommodation for > 1 Mio
collaborators (employees + civil servants in office
environments)
 Business center & coworking – locations :
 More than 500 locations in Belgium, average of 1,750 m²
surface
 Both account for nearly 4 % of the total office space in
Belgium
The flexible office-market covers nearly 4 %
of the total office market in Belgium.
Offices (x 1,000 m²) 2025
Brussel 12.464.546
CBD - Central business district 8.153.670
Decentral 2.179.068
Periferie 2.131.808
Antwerp 2.175.000
Gent 1.550.000
4 other 'office' - cities 2.050.000
(Liège, Mechelen, Leuven, Namur)
15 'regional cities' 150 - 350,000
(f.ex. Kortrijk, Roeselare, Brugge, St. Niklaas, Aalst, )
30 'small' cities
(25-60,000 inhabitants) 50 - 100,000
Total 24.239.546
# Flex offices (in m²)
Number : 544
Average surface : 1.745
Total surface occupied : 949.532
% m² 'serviced offices' 3,92%

6. II. BELGIAN OFFICE MARKET
Evolution of office and coworking
market’
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The office market is shifting towards the ‘serviced offices’
Flexible Office market
Flexible contracts (month/year/…)
Focus on services and community
Office market
‘long term contracts’
Limited flexibility
Limited services (facilities)
 Decreasing demand due to NWOW
Decreasing market
Increasing market

7. II. BELGIAN OFFICE MARKET
Expected evolution 2025 – 2035
Office-market : stable evolution or a
decrease of 1 % pro year ?
• After growth of 1-2 % from 90-2010 and stable
evolution from 2010 on.
Serviced office market : increase of
10 or 15 % pro year ?
• A fast growth market or a new hype ?
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8.  Total > 500 “serviced office
locations” in Belgium :
 IWG is the biggest ‘operator’ with
more than 100,000 m², followed
by Silversquare and Officenter.
 > 20 operators have 3 or more
centers  increasing
professionality.
 > 50 % of the market remain
‘stand-alone initiatives
In Belgium, we have a relatively fragmented market, where less then
50% of the centers is operated by or within a ‘group’.
III. FLEXIBLE OFFICES IN BELGIUM
3.1. Operators of flex offices
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Group Numberoflocations Numberofm²
(leeg) 279 384.287
IWG(Regus&Spaces) 45 105.135
Silversquare 11 54.037
Officenter 14 45.909
BCGroup(Bedrijvencentra) 18 37.631
MeetDistrict 5 30.000
KUL 2 20.000
MundoLab 6 19.800
LRM 7 18.100
Brucenter 8 13.254
VanoImmo 2 13.200
Interoffices 5 12.845
Clockwise 3 11.635
Workways 2 10.000
Fosbury 2 9.550
MCSquare 4 9.150

9. IV. FINANCIAL DATA OF COWORKING MARKET
4.1 Turnover and profitability evolution 2020 - 2024
• In 2023-24, our market has
regained profitably– from a > 10
Mio loss in 2020.
– Turnover growth of > 10 % pro year
– The total EBITDA increases with 20 % to
nearly 80 Mio
• The EBITDA margin increases towards 20 %
• We can expect for the coming years a further
turnover growth and a return to ‘substantial’
profitability of our market by 2024-2025
– Although the start-up costs of new locations will always limited
the total profitability of our market
– As long as the growth rate with new laoctions will reamine
high.
Our market has been hit hard in 2020 – 2022, but the figures of 2024
prove that we have recovered our and 2023 give us good hope that
our market will return to profitability the following years. 9
2021 2022 2023 2024
Totalturnover 265.063 299.486 335.402 400.152
Turnovergrowth 10% 13% 12% 19%
Operationalcash-flow(EBITDA) 37.807 50.038 59.406 75.878
in%ofturnover 14% 17% 18% 19%
Operationalprofit(EBIT) -7.815 -3.689 2.912 12.771
in%ofturnover -3% -1% 1% 3%

10. IV. FINANCIAL DATA OF COWORKING MARKET
4.2. Turnover evolution
• Turnover
– Total market turnover has reached 400 Mio
in 2024, a growth of 19 % from 2023
• The turnover grows faster then the number of
locations – which indicates an increase in occupancy
and/or increase in prices.
• This turnover growth is the multiplicator of the
number of m² and the increase in pricing in our
market.
• Growth rhythm
– The ‘market’ growth in turnover has been
fluctuating between 10 and 20 % from 2007
on.
– Covid has paused this growth rate, but since
2022 we see a return to an double digit
growth – increasing to appr. 20 % in 2024
It seems that our market has fully recovered from the ‘covid’-effect
and is returning to its exponential growth path of 15-25 % pro year ! 10

11. IV. FINANCIAL DATA OF COWORKING MARKET
4.3 Operational profit (EBIT and EBITDA)
• Our market had limited profit in its ‘expansive’
years 2013-2019, due to the start-up costs of
new locations
• In 2020 and 2021, covid has hit our market very
hard, with > 15 Mio ‘losses’ in 2020
• Since 2023, the market has become profitable
again, where we are now able to absorb the
high start-up costs of all the new centers with
the > 10-20 % profitability of the mature
locations.
– In 2024, we realized mor EBITDA than the turnover of
our market in 2012 !
We see a return to profit of our market in 2024 – but the high start-up
costs of new locations keeps the total profitability limited. 11

12. V. Topic of the year
Towards management contracts ?
• The ‘rental model’ is too
expensive and too risky for
operators
• A management contract
could make an operator 20
% more competitive, where
the net rent for the landlord
will only be 10 % lower.
– Mainly due to the win-win by
combining and not ‘adding’
management costs and
occupancy-risks
Flex-operatormodel
Rental
modal
M
ana-
gement
fee
Basic m²cost/operator 160 132,5 20%morecompetitive
90%occupancy 15
Commercialcost 10 5
Managementcost 15 7,5
NetRent 120 120
Commercialandmanagement-
costs 15 12,5 - combinedwithoperator
NetOperatingincome 105 107,5
105 96,75 at90%occupancy
10%less rentalrevenu 12

13. Conclusions
• The business and coworking market are ‘integrating’ more towards a service-office
market, occupying nearly 4 % of the Belgian office market
• Our market is regaining its fast-growing expectations – with growth rates of > 10-20 %:
– The number of locations has grown in 2025 from 500 to more than 550 in 2025 (+ 10%)
– The turnover of the market is growing faster, with a peak-growth in 2024 of nearly 20 %
– As a result, our market has regained its normal profitability – which remains low due to the high start-
up costs of new locations.
• We expect this market-growth will continue to exceed 10-15 % yearly the following
years, where we stimulate that this will be realized in ‘collaboration’ models with the
landlords/investors
– Using management-contracts and franchising formulae and other risk-sharing models.
– To share the remaining high occupancy-rate risk
• And to avoid ‘gambling models’ from both sides
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14. Annexes
1. Advantages of scale in our market
2. Penetration of flex offices pro city
3. Different ‘business models’ pro segment
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15. Annex 1 : Advantages of scale in our market
• There are clearly a lot of advantages of scale in
the business center market
– Commercially (website, referrals, …)
– Purchasing power, also on management-level
– Strategically and ‘best practices’
• But, the medium turnover of a business center
is declining ….
– And, we have not included the coworking-centers in this
comparison …
• We have put the ‘profitability’ of a center compared with the ‘size’ of each
center.
– Profitability = profit margin on turnover
– Size = turnover by center
• The ‘regression-line’ clearly demonstrates
– The substantial losses that a business center makes in his 1-2 starting years
(between 100 and 500 k€)
– A ‘break-even’ level of a ‘median’ center around 500 k€ turnover
– Above 600-700 k€ turnover, most of the business centers are profitable.
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16.  Medium ‘penetration’ is 3,5% in
Belgium
 Brussels has with 2,5 % a ‘low’
penetration of BC/CW-centers
 Most cities have between 3 and 5 %
of ‘service offices’ (incl. Antwerp,
Gent, Brugge, Aalst and Leuven)
 Hasselt, Turnhout, Geel and Nivelles
have a more then 5 % market
penetration of serviced offices
 Namur, Roeselare and Kortrijk are
cities with still less then 2 % of their
offices operational as serviced
offices.
The local presence of BC/CW is very different for the main cities in
Belgium, due to some strong, local initiatives (or the absence of… )
Annex 2 : Flexible offices by location
Sources: CBRE, Finpower
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17. Annex 3 : Different financial models in our market
• Asset – efficiency of ‘International market’ is very high – no investment in ‘own’ buildings
– Private and public sector operators mostly have invested in the building
• Financial leverage of public sector very limited (cash > loan volume)
The ‘international’ operators focus optimizing their financial
leverage with ‘renting’ their buildings, the private (partially) and
public sector (mainly) focus on owning the real-estate.
Turn-
over
Fixed
Assets
Assets/
Turnover
Own
Funds
Own
Funds/
Assets
Own
funds/
Turnover
International 26.295 5.480 0,2 -8.223 -1,5 -0,3
Private 45.944 132.465 2,9 63.353 0,5 1,4
Semi-public 25.241 112.922 4,5 107.489 1,0 4,3
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