Slack beat expectations in its second quarter earnings report, posting $145 million in sales after the bell on Wednesday. The company was expected to report $141.25 million in sales.
Slack’s stock, however, fell swiftly in after hours trading due to weaker-than-expected guidance for the third quarter. The earnings report was the company’s first release since going public in June under the ticker WORK on the New York Stock Exchange.
“We remain focused on expansion within existing customers and growing our large enterprise customer base,” Allen Shim, Slack’s chief financial officer, said in a statement. Shim added that the company’s revenue growth was 58 percent year-over-year increase.
The popular workplace messaging platform posted a net loss per share of $0.14, better than the expected loss of $0.18. Slack, however, said it expects a loss of $0.08 to $0.09 per share in the third quarter, slightly more than what analysts were expecting.
It also said revenue growth would slow from 58 percent to less than 48 percent, which seemed to worry investors after hours with shares falling more than 15 percent. Yet the drop comes after the stock gained more than an 8 percent during the trading day Wednesday.
Since its founding in 2014, Slack has grown to be used by over 600,000 organizations in 150 countries. The platform, which has free and paid subscription plans, is now used by an estimated 10 million people who send over 1 billion messages a week. Shim added that Slack also increased its paid customer base by 720 clients, which marked a 75 percent year-over-year jump.
Slack’s market debut earlier this summer followed several other major tech startups, such as Uber ($UBER) and Lyft ($LYFT), that went public this year.
Forgoing the traditional initial public offering process, Slack directly listed its shares on the market. The big difference between that and an IPO is that the company did not issue new shares, but instead, existing shareholders sold their stock to public investors. That means, unlike Uber and Lyft, Slack did not raise additional capital as part of the IPO.
The last major company to complete a direct listing was Spotify ($SPOT), which went public in April 2018.
“This is an entirely new category of software enabling a once-in-a-generation shift in the way people work together,” Stewart Butterfield, the company's CEO and co-founder, added in a statement. “We believe channel-based collaboration is so superior to email-based communication for work, that this shift is inevitable.”
The U.S. Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against Uber after it was discovered that disabled people were being disproportionately affected by extra “wait time” fees. Attorney Jonathan Bell joined Cheddar to discuss.
Things are expensive: both the important and the not-so-important stuff. October saw the largest year-to-year increase in the consumer price index in over 30 years. Inflation remains a top concern for the average American consumer as some stress over the price of everyday essentials like milk, beef, and gasoline.
But that doesn't seem to be affecting overall retail shopping.
U.S. retail sales rose by 1.7% in October, a sign that consumers are willing to spend more heading into the holidays despite rising inflation. The elevated spending levels suggest solid holiday sales this month and next. On top of that, major retailers like Target and Walmart have come out this week and said they're set to be fully stocked for the holiday season, easing any concerns customers might have about supply chain issues leaving empty shelves before the holidays.
Brittain Ladd, retail strategist and consultant, joins None of the Above to discuss.
Tanya Snyder, transportation reporter at Politico, joins None of the Above with J.D. Durkin to discuss the bipartisan infrastructure law, what it means for the electric vehicle industry and whether Democrats will be able to capitalize on the legislative victory ahead of the 2022 midterms.
Twitter announced a partnership with S&P Dow Jones Indices on Thursday to build the S&P 500 Sentiment Index for monitoring the performance of 200 S&P members based on tweets with company $cashtags. Jared Podnos, strategic market development lead at Twitter, and Peter Roffman, global head of innovation and strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices, joined Cheddar to provide some background on the partnership and to explain exactly how monitoring companies through public opinion will work. "[The S&P] taps into this conversation. They understand the real-time conversation as well as the historical trends, and then we can analyze that and understand the consumer sentiment and really build these innovative products around that conversation," Podnos added.
Cognitive healthcare platform BrainCheck recently raised $10 million in a Series B round. The platform offers neurologists a new way to detect and care for brain disorders like Alzeheimer's, and brain injuries like concussions. BrainCheck CEO Yael Katz joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Stocks closed mixed today, with the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq both notching record closing highs. Veronica Willis, investment strategy analyst at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss today's close, recent inflation data, rising oil prices, and more.
Jean-Denis Mariani, the chief digital officer at COTY, the parent company for major brands like Bottega Veneta, Burberry, and Kylie Skin, joined Cheddar to talk about the impact of the pandemic on the beauty industry and the rapid shift to e-commerce sales. "There is no digital strategy anymore, only strategy in a digital world," he said. Mariani also talked about personalized makeup selection for consumers as the beauty sector begins to incorporate technology like artificial intelligence.
Amid an ongoing global semiconductor chip shortage, American automaker Ford has decided to open up supply chains of its own. Karl Brauer, an executive analyst at iSeeCars.com, joined Cheddar to discuss Ford's new partnership with multinational semiconductor maker GlobalFoundries to build those chips domestically. Brauer praised Ford for the move both for ongoing supply woes and the future of automobile manufacturing. "It's not just the supply chain," he said. "It's not just about getting chips, but maybe getting chips that are more customized and specific to your needs."
Gerald Johnson, Executive VP, Global Manufacturing and Sustainability at General Motors, joins Cheddar News to break down what Factory ZERO signifies for GM's all-electric future and why the auto manufacturer will be a leader in the growing EV industry.
