Slack Technologies Inc (NYSE:WORK) may, in a way, have suffered from what we saw out of Zoom (ZM) a few days earlier, as expectations were ratcheted up in preparation for another pandemic technology blow-out. But the report failed to measure up, and shares of WORK cratered.
Billings growth slowed to 38% from 47% in Q4 but still beat estimates. Normalized for COVID headwinds (SMB churn, shorter duration, payment concessions), billings would have grown 49%. The company also pulled its billings guidance for the year (previously +27-31% to ~$1B) citing macro uncertainty from the pandemic.
Slack raised FY21 revenue guidance, but it was only in-line with consensus. Paid user growth accelerated to 28% but the 12K adds was a little disappointing after the company preannounced strong metrics in late March. Management warned that paid user growth will moderate going forward.
The CEO had already made it clear that the company was benefiting from the work from home trend and that led to too much investor enthusiasm into the print. A surge in free users means the company's pipeline is healthy, but the rescinded billings outlook speaks to the uncertainty regarding conversion in paid users. Engagement accelerated and shared channel grew 28% sequentially to 41K, which increases stickiness and bodes well long term.
In addition, Amazon Web Services and Slack Technologies announced a new multi-year agreement to deliver solutions for enhanced enterprise workforce collaboration. Slack and AWS will strategically partner to help distributed development teams communicate and become more efficient and agile in managing their AWS resources from inside Slack.
According to the announcement, “Slack will migrate its Slack Calls capability for all voice and video calling to Amazon Chime, AWS's communications service that lets users meet, chat, and place business calls. Slack is also leveraging AWS's global infrastructure to support enterprise customers' rapid adoption of its platform and to offer them data residency -- the ability to choose which country or region their data is stored at rest in while fulfilling compliance requirements. Slack continues to rely on AWS as its preferred cloud provider and will use a range of AWS services to develop new collaboration features. Additionally, AWS has agreed to use Slack to simplify the way teams at AWS communicate and work together.”
Slack Technologies Inc (NYSE:WORK) bills itself as a business technology software platform in the United States and internationally.
Its platform brings together people, applications, and data, as well as sells its offering under a software-as-a-service model.
Our WORK Earnings Summary:
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Slack beats by $0.04, beats on revs; guides JulQ EPS above consensus, revs above consensus; guides FY21 EPS above consensus, guides revs in-line; withdraws FY21 billings guidance
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Reports Q1 (Apr) loss of $(0.02) per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.04 better than the S&P Capital IQ Consensus of ($0.06); revenues rose 49.6% year/year to $201.65 mln vs the $188.12 mln S&P Capital IQ Consensus.
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Calculated Billings was $206.0 million, an increase of 38% year-over-year.
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Co issues upside guidance for Q2 (Jul), sees EPS of $(0.04)-(0.03), excluding non-recurring items, vs. ($0.06) S&P Capital IQ Consensus; sees Q2 revs of $206-209 mln vs. $199.86 mln S&P Capital IQ Consensus.
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Co issues guidance for FY21, sees EPS of $(0.19)-(0.17), excluding non-recurring items, vs. ($0.20) S&P Capital IQ Consensus; sees FY21 revs of $855-870 mln vs. $861.3 mln S&P Capital IQ Consensus.
Our WORK Research and Conference Call Notes:
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Co withdraws guidance for FY21 Calculated Billings.
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"We believe the long-term impact the three months and counting of working from home will have on the way we work is of generational magnitude. This will continue to catalyze adoption for the new category of channel-based messaging platforms we created and for which we are still the only enterprise-grade offering."
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Monness Crespi & Hardt downgrades WORK to Neutral from Buy. Analyst Brian White said, "Slack reported strong 1Q:FY21 results, served up a solid 2Q:FY21 outlook and adjusted its FY:21 guidance. Given the strong uptick in the stock, we believe valuation has become less compelling in this new economic reality and we are downgrading Slack to Neutral from Buy."