Atlassian Expands Social Task Management Portfolio With Trello Acquisition

Collaboration software company Atlassian Corp., maker of popular apps Jira and HipChat, has agreed to acquire Trello, a project management app, for $425 million — $360 million in cash and $65 million in restricted stock and options. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the first quarter of 2017.

According to Trello, its app boasts more than 17 million users, including employees at Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL and Adobe Systems Incorporated ADBE, among numerous other companies of all sizes. The simple software consists of a digital blackboard, so to speak, where users can create projects, to-do lists and assignments, and even appoint other users to each task.

Competing products in the social task management space include Microsoft Corporation MSFT’s Planner, Asana, Wrike, Workfront and Planview.

“With the purchase of Trello, Atlassian continues its efforts to broaden its customer base beyond technical teams to also include general business teams,” Rachel King wrote in a Wall Street Journal article.

"We are a perfect home for them, because we are a company that stands for the same thing that they also care about, which is teams," Atlassian President Jay Simons declared. "From our perspective, what's exciting about them is it's a breakout product that's been incredibly successful."

The Expert View

After the acquisition of Trello was announced, William Blair issued a note pointing out that “this acquisition, although dilutive to earnings per share in the short term, provides Atlassian with a strong focus on nontechnical teams and will help the company accelerate its progression outside of software development use-cases.”

“Trello's sticky-note system of organizing to-dos and tasks is targeted more for business users on computers and mobile devices rather than software developers, which has historically been Atlassian's area of focus,” the analysts added. Consequently, they believe the purchase will help the company speed up its entry into the nontechnical arena, while driving cross-sell opportunities and ARPU.