Salesforce Expected To Announce Slack Acquisition Deal Tuesday

Market watchers are expecting Salesforce to announce a deal to buy business communication platform Slack after market close on Tuesday (Dec. 1), according to CNBC.

Sources told CNBC they expect the deal to be half cash, half stock, and that it will price Slack at a premium. Slack’s current market cap is around $24 billion, the report said.

The deal announcement would come on the same day Slack is scheduled to release its quarterly earnings report.

Shares of Slack were up 4 percent in midday trading Monday (Nov. 30), whiles shares of Salesforce were down 4 percent. Slack’s stock shot up about 24 percent last week, fueled by speculation of an acquisition.

The deal would the third major acquisition by Salesforce in recent years. The company acquired data visualization company Tableau in August 2019 in a deal valued at around $15. 3 billion, and MuleSoft in 2018 for $6.5 billion, according to CNBC.

A Slack acquisition by Salesforce could spell increased competition for Microsoft, which owns corporate communication product Teams. Up until this point, Teams has had an edge by offering videoconferencing, which Slack lacks. Slack filed a complaint against Microsoft over anticompetitive behavior with the European Commission in July.

Slack has also been haunted by Zoom, which has seen tremendous sales growth over the past year as millions of workers were forced to work at home amid the ongoing pandemic.

In June, Slack reported that its Q1 sales had grown nearly 50 percent year over year, slightly higher than its pre-pandemic rate. Zoom, meanwhile, reported Q1 revenue growth of 169 percent.

Shares of both Microsoft and Zoom were down 1 percent midday on Monday.

CNBC noted that a Salesforce-Slack merger would likely be one of the largest in tech history. Two of the sector’s biggest deals have been IBM’s takeover of Red Hat in 2019 for $34 billion, and Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016 for $27 billion.