The takeover remains conditional on approval by Slack shareholders, albeit holders representing 55% of the company have already backed the deal. Investors are set to receive US$26.79 in cash and 0.0776 Salesforce shares for each Slack share they own.
“The Zooms, the Slacks, the Microsoft Teams, that’s going to be a new part of the Inc ( NYSE:CRM) has struck a US$27.7bn deal to acquire Slack Technologies Inc ( NYSE:WORK) in a cash plus stock transaction. “I think the pandemic’s played a massive role” in paving the way for the deal, Ives said. She said the need for customer-relations agents and other Salesforce users to swarm around a topic and collaborate remotely has only grown with the coronavirus pandemic that has sent so many office workers home and got many hooked on new online tools. “Microsoft Teams is eating Slack’s lunch.”īut Leggett said it’s also “really good for Salesforce” to add a popular collaboration tool to its own software suite, which is focused on managing customer relationships for businesses and government agencies. “This is a stellar exit strategy for Slack,” said Kate Leggett, an analyst at Forrester Research. Before news reports of a potential deal with Salesforce surfaced last week, Slack’s stock was still hovering around its initial listing price of $26 when the company went public nearly 18 months ago. Slack, on the other hand, hasn’t proven as popular with investors, even though its service that publicly launched in 2014 is being increasingly used by companies and government agencies looking for more nimble alternatives than email. Salesforce was also among the companies bidding to buy LinkedIn in 2016 before Microsoft snapped it up. Last year, the company bought data analytics specialist Tableau Software for $15.7bn. Salesforce has been building on its success in recent years to diversify into other fields, largely through a series of acquisitions. “It’s just clear Microsoft is moving further and further away from Salesforce when it comes to the cloud wars.” “For Benioff, this is all about Microsoft,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives. Microsoft also has been posing a threat to Salesforce’s main products, a lineup of tools that help other companies manage their customer relationships.
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