If last week's rumor had it that Salesforce was considering buying Slack Technologies, the rumors came true this week.
Salesforce will pay more than $27 billion for Slack, marking the former's most significant payment in its two decades of existence and one of the largest in the software industry. The largest so far was completed by IBM in 2018 when it paid $34 billion for Red Hat. It was followed by Microsoft's LinkedIn purchase in 2016 for $27 billion. Also, the London Stock Exchange will pay $27 billion for Refinitiv once the deal gets clearance from the European regulators.
In recent years, Salesforce has taken the software industry by surprise and expanded significantly, becoming more valuable than legacy tech companies such as Cisco, Intel, Oracle, and SAP. Now, the acquisition will facilitate access to the chat service business.
Along with the purchasing news came Salesforce's Q3 2020 earnings. The company had an adjusted EPS of $1.74 on revenues of $5.42 billion in the past quarter. Both figures topped the consensus of $0.75 per share, and $5.25 billion, respectively.
For Q4, Salesforce expects the revenue to reach a high of $5.68 billion, while the market is looking for $5.51 billion. For the whole year, the EPS is expected to reach $4.63 on revenues of $21.11 billion tops.
After the news hit the wire, Salesforce's stock price fell 1.70%, while Slack went up 2.24%.
Read here all about the deal between the two companies!
Sources: thestreet.com, finance.yahoo.com, cnbc.com