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einen interessanten Artikel findet ihr hier:
www.barrons.com/articles/ipo-market-slack-stock-51569630125
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One 2019 debut that fits the bill is Slack Technologies (WORK). (Slack doesn’t quite qualify as an IPO, since the company became public through a direct listing.) The company’s product basically replaces email inside corporate offices.
As a hard-core Slack user, I can attest to how it’s improved intraoffice communication and document sharing. The more you use Slack, the more valuable it becomes. The service not only replaces email; its archive of messages and documents becomes a supercharged file cabinet. And once Slack gets ingrained in the corporate workflow, it’s nearly impossible to replace it, pointing to the company’s pricing power.
Marcelo Lima, a hedge fund manager at Heller House whose firm owns Slack shares, is bullish on the company, citing its customer engagement. Slack says the average paid user spends nine hours per working day connected to Slack with 90 minutes of active use.
“It’s rare that one can find a business that is founder-led, mission-driven, with very attractive economics, and an enormous market opportunity,” he says.
One major concern for Slack investors has been increasing competition from Microsoft ’s (MSFT) comparable product called Teams. But William Blair analyst Bhavan Suri plays down the competitive risk. According to his channel checks with customers, people are using Slack dramatically more than Teams, even when both are deployed.
“Microsoft is a fairly limited product set in terms of functionality compared with Slack,” he says. “The integrations are materially less.”
Unlike some members of the 2019 IPO class, Slack doesn’t face financing issues. The company has nearly $800 million in cash. It expects to burn through roughly $100 million in cash this fiscal year, but that includes one-time costs of $30 million related to the direct listing.
So where does the stock go from here?
In June, shortly before Slack went public, Barron’swrote positively about the company, noting its utility inside the newsroom. But we urged patience: “Replacing email is a huge, and welcome, opportunity, but it’s going to take time. Investors should wait for the hype to subside before jumping into Slack’s stock.” That time may be here.
After its direct listing on June 20, Slack’s first trade came at $38.50. It’s since fallen 43%, to a recent $22.06. Because a direct listing doesn’t involve raising new funds, insiders are not bound by any kind of lockup agreements. Much of the selling pressure on the stock has likely already been exhausted. That’s an important contrast from recent traditional IPOs, where lockups are in place for six months after the debut.
Earlier this month, Slack reported financial results above expectations. Sales grew 58% year over year in the fiscal second quarter, and the company now has 720 customers paying at least $100,000 a year. Slack shares sold off following the report, with some investors expecting an even larger beat. That view could prove shortsighted.
Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss says there are 350 million users paying for productivity suites worldwide. At a rate of about $100 per user, that’s a market of $35 billion a year. If Slack can attain 15% share of this market within 10 years, an assumption currently in Weiss’ financial model, it equates to about $5 billion in annual sales.
Wall Street expects the company to generate only $609 million in sales this year. Even if Weiss’ $5 billion estimate is too high, there’s huge opportunity ahead for Slack. “We think this is a business that can grow 50% to 60% sustainably over [each of] the next few years,” William Blair’s Suri says. “With a reasonable revenue multiple five years out, you’re probably more than triple the stock price today.”
Years ago, there were a couple of other category killers that went through a rough stretch in their early days as public companies. They were Facebook and Google.
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