Slack Has Big Tailwind Amid Work-From-Home Shift, Cowen Says

The shift to the work-from-home model amid the pandemic has given a boost to Slack Technologies Inc’s (NYSE:WORK) value proposition and market opportunity, according to Cowen.

The Slack Analyst

Cowen’s Derrick Wood initiated coverage of Slack with an Outperform rating and a price target of $45.

The Slack Thesis

The remote work trend is likely to have “some level of permanency,” which boosts Slack’s total addressable market and enhances the value proposition of its software from nice-to-have to a must-have, Wood said in the note.

He added that the market seems to be underappreciating Slack’s potential, focusing too much on the threat from Microsoft Corporation’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) competing Teams product.

The analyst believes that as digital collaboration becomes increasingly strategic and mission critical for companies working in a distributed workforce environment, demand will “gravitate toward best-of-breed.”

Slack has a “low-touch, self-service” model for generating most of its new customers, which is supported by a direct sales team to drive expansion and by customer success teams to drive use-case expansion from the installed base. As a result, the company enjoys retention rates of over 130%, Wood noted.

He expects a re-rating of the stock following strong results, which are scheduled to be released Thursday.

WORK Price Action

Shares of Slack were trading higher by 1.8% to $37.84 at the time of publication Tuesday.

Related Links:

13 Technology Stocks Moving In Tuesday's Pre-Market Session

Slack, Zoom, And The "Stay At Home" Economy—Q1 Earnings Preview