Atlassian (TEAM -1.06%) has built a $2 billion business with its team-collaboration software by innovating organically and buying tuck-in acquisitions. Recently, it added another software-company purchase to its roster. In this video from Motley Fool Live, recorded on July 14, Fool.com contributors Brian Feroldi and Brian Withers discuss its purchase of ThinkTilt and why investors should like its acquisition approach.
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Brian Withers: Moving on to Atlassian, ticker symbol T-E-A-M. It's interesting that their ticker is TEAM because their mission is "to help unleash the potential of every team" and they are really focused on team collaborative software. They have an umbrella, a suite of products across the gamut that focuses on team productivity and collaboration.
The company announced another acquisition in April. This time, it's a company called ThinkTilt, all one word, ThinkTilt, which makes customizable forms for the Jira service management module. This move, strengthens the company's IT service management product, which is essentially, think of it competing against ServiceNow, basically, like IT service tickets and user issue tracking through an enterprise.
The company has made over 30 acquisitions in the last decade, investing more than a billion dollars, which has really helped accelerate its product roadmap and acquire talent. As part of its investor day recently, it highlighted the fact that acquisitions will continue to be a piece of its strategy ongoing.
I like this latest move, the service management product vertical is actually fairly new and it came into Atlassian with the acquisition of Halp last May. Adding more bulk and more capability, that tool, I think, is something that investors should like.
Brian Feroldi: I have stupidly never invested in Atlassian, even though it's been a phenomenal company and it checks just about every box for me. But one thing I will note about this company is they've grown by acquisition. Not completely obviously, their organic growth has been very strong, but the companies have a history of making acquisitions. Do you like it when companies do that?
Brian Withers: I don't particularly like when companies really bet the farm on acquisitions and making it so that, that's a key part of their revenue. But there's three things that I really like about Atlassian's approach that makes this a little different.
First, they focus on usually a smaller niche company with a specific thing that they're trying to acquire. This ThinkTilt was a customizable forms for a particular module that Atlassian had. It was adding on capability to a module that they had.
Two, the company's already often a partner with Atlassian and certainly knows the company's products and its customers well, again, ThinkTilt same deal. Third, not only is it a product focus buy, but this is a talent grab, so getting talented software specialists or engineers who know your products and customers is hard. These acquisitions help accelerate their growth of top talent across the enterprise.
