Salesforce to pick up Slack for USD 27.7 bn

San Francisco

If completed, the acquisition will end Slack’s brief run as an independent publicly traded firm — it went public in mid-2019 — and cap an acquisitive streak by Salesforce with its largest deal since it was founded 21 years ago.

The deal is the biggest bet among a recent spate of acquisitions made by tech companies to capitalise on the shift to remote work. Adobe said last month it planned to acquire the work force management software firm Workfront for $1.5 bn. In July, Atlassian, which sells tools for developers and project management, said it would buy the enterprise services business Mindville for an undisclosed amount.

Other firms focused on workplace collaboration products, including Airtable, Asana, Box, DocuSign, Dropbox and Smartsheet, may also be potential targets as highly valued software companies look to roll up the fragmented market for collaboration tools.

The Salesforce deal for Slack shows how competitive the software market has become, said Logan Purk, a senior analyst with financial advisory firm Edward Jones. Without a “game-changing product” and a lot of capital, he said, “you’re going to get swallowed up or you’re going to fail.” Shareholders will get $26.79 in cash and 0.0776 shares of Salesforce stock in exchange for each share of Slack, as per deal announcement.

Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, was effusive about the combination, calling it “a match made in heaven.” In a conference call, he said Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s chief executive, and Bret Taylor, Salesforce’s president, had presented him with the deal. Butterfield will continue leading Slack, which will become an operating unit of Salesforce.

—NYT