Salesforce reports earnings and potentially Slack acquisition
Salesforce is reporting FY21 Q3 earnings tonight after the US market close and expectations are strong earnings per share of $0.75 up from $-0.13 a year ago. Analysts are expecting revenue of $5.3bn up 16% y/y a significant slowdown from a year ago when revenue growth was at 33% y/y. Maybe that is the reason why Salesforce is likely to announce the acquisition of Slack Technologies together with its earnings release. While Slack’s quarterly revenue figure is only 5% of Salesforce it is growing around 33% y/y and many potential synergies can maybe be achieved by Salesforce.
DoorDash is valued at $32bn
A flood of consumer-oriented companies from DoorDash, the largest US food delivery company, to Airbnb are planning to go public before year-end. DoorDash is indicating in filings yesterday to raise as much as $2.8bn in an IPO valuing the company at $32bn taking all outstanding shares and stock options into consideration after the IPO. The indications suggest DoorDash will set the IPO price on 8 December and start trading the following day. Given the strong Q3 results from Chinese based Meituan which is China’s largest food delivery company we expect a strong IPO for DoorDash. We wrote about Meituan’s earnings in yesterday’s equity update.
Data is the oil of the information age
Yesterday, S&P Global announced the acquisition of IHS Market in a deal valuing IHS Markit at $44bn and with IHS Markit shareholders owning 32.3% of the combined company. The acquisition is the second largest deal this year and will create a financial data powerhouse with combined revenue of $11.6bn and EBITDA of $5.8bn underscoring the profitability of delivering and owning data in the information age. It is what oil was to the industrialization of the world.