Catch Up Quick

• Joe Biden will finalize his VP selection next week

• China lags the U.S. import pace needed to meet the terms of the phase 1 trade deal

• Senate Republicans released their proposal for a fifth coronavirus relief bill

• The U.S. dollar index fell to its weakest level since June 2018 on Monday

• S&P 500 companies are resuming guidance forecasts during earnings reports

• J.C. Penney says liquidation is “not in the cards”

Thought of the Day

• Last week, Slack ($WORK) filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft ($MSFT) in the European Union

• Microsoft’s Teams platform, which competes directly with Slack, is a component of its Office suite

• Since Outlook, Word, Excel, PPT, etc are universally used in the workforce across industry, Teams is essentially free for most businesses to adopt

• This makes the choice between Slack and Teams very simple for unserved customers looking to minimize expenses

• Why pay for Slack when Teams comes included in Microsoft Office?

• Furthermore, I don’t think Slack has an apparent upper hand in its recently ignited legal battle

• I opine this aires more on the side of effective cross selling than the illegal stifling of competition, further highlighting the synergies of a robust product suite

The Bottom Lines

• With that said, Slack ($WORK) still offers a solid product bearing pandemic expedited demand

• Given this and the fact that its stock has not necessarily kept up with its tech neighbors recently, I think they are currently an interesting acquisition target
  There are many buyers that would benefit from having Slack’s product in their suite
  Not to mention, with high technology valuations come high P/E ratios, in which stock deals become very attractive from the perspective of accretion (EPS)

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