The market has not been kind to Slack (NYSE: WORK) this year; its stock is down more than 45% from its high in June. With 20% of the available shares short, the company has its fair share of naysayers. But there are three reasons this software-as-a-service (SaaS) communications platform will succeed despite the naysayers and its high valuation.
Customers love Slack. That can be seen by the fact that existing customers spent 36% more for the product than they did a year ago. Also, the number of customers has grown to more than 100,000 paying users, up 37% from the previous year. Then there is the fact that daily active users topped 12 million, and they spend an average of 90 minutes a day using the tool.
The platform appeals to all types of organizations: families, nonprofits, tech companies like Splunk, or high-end-retailers like Cole Haan. Large customers seem to be especially attracted to the software's feature set despite the alternative of Microsoft Teams, which comes free when bundled with Office 365. Organizations spending more than $100K annually grew at a 75% rate last quarter over the previous year, and 65% of the Fortune 100 are paying customers. These growth stats have resulted in 58% year-over-year revenue growth last quarter and 51% projected revenue growth for the full year.