Slack, a workplace messaging app used by companies such as IBM, Lyft and CNN, has seen its shares plunge 15% in after-hours trading following the company’s first earning report as a public company. The stock decline happened even as Slack boosted its outlook for the year.
The company’s sales growth has slowed considerably and is expected to continue its descent. Slack reported revenue of $145 Million in the quarter, an increase of 58% from a year earlier. That was slower than the 67% growth it generated in the first three months of its fiscal year. As of now, the company is projecting increase from 51% to 52%, a notable decline from last year when revenue grew 82%.
Its revenue in its most-recent completed quarter would have been even higher if not for some lengthy service outages. Slack said that its results were hurt by $8.2 Million worth of credits from the service disruptions during the quarter.
The workplace messaging app made its Wall Street debut in June after choosing to list its existing shares directly on a stock exchange rather than going through a traditional public offering.
Like many of its tech peers, Slacks revenue is steadily growing despite remaing unprofitable. The company posted a net loss of $0.14 per share in the July quarter which was better than what Wall Street analysts had predicted. However, Slack also said it now expects to lose between $0.40 and $0.42 per share for the year making it worse than what analysts had estimated.
On Wednesday, chief financial officer Allen Shim said on a call with analysts that the yearly loss will be due in part to an increase in sales and marketing expenses. The company plans to spend more than 50% of its revenue on sales and marketing in the coming quarters as it works to win over larger, paying business customers.
Slack now has more than 720 business customers who pay more than $100,000 each year for the service, an increase of 75% from the prior year.
Slack shares had ended on Wednesday up 8% ahead of earning report.
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