Any deal would likely appreciate Slack more than Wednesday’s previous $ 17 billion market capitalization, the Journal writes. The report also notes that there is no guarantee that the negotiations will result in a deal. By Wednesday afternoon, Slack’s stock price had exceeded $ 36 and its market limit had risen to nearly $ 21 billion.
Neither Loose (WORK) sem Sales force (CRM) responded immediately to the comments.
Slack is a workplace communication tool that has long been popular with technology companies, media companies and retailers Amazon (AMZN), IBM (IBM), TD Ameritrade (AMTD) and others (including CNN).
The pandemic has accelerated Slack’s growth as many companies struggle to manage remote teams. Shack shares have risen more than 59% since early 2020. In its latest quarterly earnings report for September, the company said it has more than 130,000 paid customers, up 30% from the previous year.
However, the company must be in fierce competition in the remote collaboration space, including: Microsoft (MSFT). And it hasn’t profited since last year’s public offering.
Acquiring Slack by Salesforce can be a sensible combination. Like Slack, Salesforce is a software company dedicated to improving business. It sells cloud-based customer relationship management software as well as other enterprise applications for services such as marketing and data analytics.
The deal with the acquisition of Slack would probably be the largest acquisition of Salesforce ever. Salesforce acquired data analytics firm Tableau Software last year for $ 15.7 billion to help companies better visualize and use data. In 2018, it acquired software company Mulesoft for $ 6.5 billion to help connect different systems.
“This deal would be a significant shot with Microsoft’s promise as the company’s teams offer a direct messaging competitor against Slack, which is a clear barrier to growth, and there would now be two horse races between Microsoft and Salesforce,” said Dan Ives, Wedbush analyst. in the note to investors. “For Microsoft, this would change the landscape competitively and make Salesforce even more competitive.”
Ives added that the agreement between Slack and Salesforce could lay the groundwork for further mergers and acquisitions in cloud software in 2021.
