Slack Closes in on IPO

By Chris Lange Updated Jan 6, 4:11AM EST · Published May 31, 12:55PM EDT

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Slack Technologies has filed an amended S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its initial public offering (IPO). No pricing details were given in the filing, in part because there are no underwriters. The company intends to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol WORK.

The company made no mention of underwriters in the filing because registered stockholders are offering all of its Class A common stock. The registered stockholders may, or may not, elect to sell their shares of Class A common stock covered by the prospectus and such sales, if any, will be made through brokerage transactions on the NYSE. The firm expects to come public on or around June 20.

Slack is a new layer of the business technology stack that brings together people, applications and data. This company is best known for its online chat application.

It also has more than 1,500 apps in its own directory and integration partnerships with companies including Google, Workday, Salesforce, ServiceNow and Atlassian. The company claims to have hundreds of thousands of customer-created custom Slack applications and integrations in active use.

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Around the world, over 600,000 organizations in over 150 countries have turned to Slack as the place to communicate, collaborate and get work done. Over 10 million people inside those organizations collectively spend more than 50 million hours in active use of Slack in a typical week, on either a free or paid subscription plan.

In the filing, the company described its finances as follows:

Our revenue was $105.2 million, $220.5 million, and $400.6 million in fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively, representing annual growth of 110% and 82%, respectively. Our growth is global with international revenue representing 34%, 34%, and 36% of total revenue in fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively. We continue to invest in growing our business to capitalize on our market opportunity. As a result, we incurred net losses of $146.9 million, $140.1 million, and $138.9 million in fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively. Our net losses have been decreasing as a percentage of revenue over time as revenue growth has outpaced the growth in operating expenses.

The company will not receive any proceeds from this offering. Instead, the selling shareholders will.

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About the Author Chris Lange →

Chris Lange is a writer for 24/7 Wall St., based in Houston. He has covered financial markets over the past decade with an emphasis on healthcare, tech, and IPOs. During this time, he has published thousands of articles with insightful analysis across these complex fields. Currently, Lange's focus is on military and geopolitical topics.

Lange's work has been quoted or mentioned in Forbes, The New York Times, Business Insider, USA Today, MSN, Yahoo, The Verge, Vice, The Intelligencer, Quartz, Nasdaq, The Motley Fool, Fox Business, International Business Times, The Street, Seeking Alpha, Barron’s, Benzinga, and many other major publications.

A graduate of Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, Lange majored in business with a particular focus on investments. He has previous experience in the banking industry and startups.