Slack Makes its Debut and Has Third Largest Initial Trade in the United States

Workplace messaging software company Slack made its debut in the stock market on Thursday and had the third largest initial trade in the U.S.

The company, which trades under the ticker symbol WORK, had an opening trade size for shares that totaled $1.75 billion.

The stock opened at a price of $38.50 with an opening volume of 45.5 million shares.

Only two other companies had opening trades of this size and that was Facebook and Alibaba according to the NYSE. The former had an opening trade size of $3.2 billion in 2012 and Alibaba had an opening trade size of $4.5 billion in 2014.

While both Facebook and Alibaba went public in route of an IPO, Slack had a direct listing instead. This may have helped the stock see a larger opening trade volume.

According to the NYSE, Spotify (SPOT) also had a direct listing to go public and had experienced the fifth largest opening trade by dollar volume last year.

With a direct listing, unlike an IPO, banks do not underwrite the offering, and no new shares are sold, so the company does not receive any additional money for operations.

In an interview with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin ahead of the stock’s debut, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield said, “Everyone will choose this,” of the company, which provides a platform for public and private messaging channels.

Butterfield owns an 8.6% stake of the company.

Analysts are already all over the company with Atlantic Equities initiating an ‘overweight’ rating.

“We initiate on Slack with an Overweight recommendation and $37 price target. The adoption of Slack within enterprises is proving as viral as WhatsApp amongst consumers and we see a long runway for growth as messaging fully penetrates the workplace. This in turn is creating the potential for Slack to leverage its integration capabilities and monetise its user base by becoming the main hub used to access all applications, as WeChat has done so successfully in China,” said the firm.

Disclaimer: We have no position in Slack Technologies Inc. (NYSE: WORK) and have not been compensated for this article.