Salesforce is in Advanced Discussions to Buy Slack

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Salesforce is rumored to be in talks to acquire international software company Slack.

If this happens it would be the largest acquisition for Salesforce to date.

According to a personal familiar with the matter, a deal could be announced as early as next week. Salesforce is also scheduled to release its fiscal third-quarter earnings next week.

Shares of Slack were exploding in Wednesday’s trading session after Wall Street digested the news. The stock soared nearly 38%. Salesforce on the other hand closed down 5%.

There has been no clear number given on how much Salesforce could be paying for Slack but the company has not been shy to spend billions on its acquisitions. In 2018 the company purchased MuleSoft for $6.5 billion. In 2019 it spent over twice that to acquire data visualization company Tableau.

The Independent has said that the deal would likely value Slack above its market capitalization of $17 billion.

“This would be a game changer move for Benioff & Co. to further build out its collaboration engine and product footprint as cloud spending ramps across the enterprise,” Wedbush Securities’ Dan Ives said to CNBC, referring to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.

Sales of Microsoft were also slightly lower after the WSJ report. The tech giant competes with Salesforce in software for tracking customers.

“Our primary competitor is currently Microsoft Corporation,” Slack said in 2019.
There is no guarantee that any deal will be announced or go through.

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.