Slack stock tanks because no one is impressed with its growth
Changing status to "Snoozing"... Slack reported expectations-beating earnings, but investors yawned at the results. Slack's quarterly sales growth came in at 49% — just about the same as the previous two quarters. Investors think it's slacking on growth, so they plunged the stock 14% Wednesday.
The difference between a #channel and a DM... is almost as big as the difference between Slack and Zoom's pandemic growth. Zoom's sales more than quadrupled compared to the same quarter last year and quarterly profit soared 3,300%. They're both WFH winners, so why is Zoom crushing it? Slack has:
- A longer buying process: Companies that want to switch to Slack are going through the whole buying/negotiation/pricing process with salespeople. Zoom is more plug-and-play — just figure out how to unmute and choose a tropical background.
- A steeper learning curve: Employees have to learn about channels, pings, bots, DMs, threads, GIFs, emojis, and Slack etiquette. After 2 months Bill is still asking about VPN issues in the #General channel, and Cheryl still never responds in the thread.
- TLDR: Adding Zoom is like buying a new freezer — adding Slack is like remodeling the whole kitchen.
Slack is the corona-conomy winner that wasn’t... Because of the WFH shift, everyone was expecting Slack to be a major pandemic success story. The stock soared 135% from mid-March to June — now it's back at March levels. Investors corrected for the "expectation vs. reality" disconnect, bringing the stock back to basically pre-pandemic levels.