On July 21, Salesforce.com (CRM -0.57%) finally completed its acquisition of Slack, which investors had been waiting for since last December. As major as that deal was and continues to be for the tech company, several other prior acquisitions have seen strong growth (and beyond) for Salesforce, as detailed in its recent investors day presentation.
In this episode of "Beat & Raise" on Motley Fool Live, recorded on Sept. 27, Fool.com contributors Clay Bruning and Brian Withers and Millionacres editor Deidre Woollard discuss how the company has made the most of its mergers and acquisitions strategy.
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Clay Bruning: Then this is another thing that specifically on our show the other week, we talked about how integration and executional risk on this massive Slack deal was a cause for concern or cause for pause to step back and think they've added 1,000 thus far in terms of integrating prior M&A. Can they continue? I think they just knock this slide out of the park here so you can see on the left-hand side, you have the name of the public acquisition they had, how much they paid, what the multiple they paid was and then on the right, on those white oval, if you will, they then show what they are currently running today, what that multiple is now how much they're growing, etc. Just reinforcing the incredible strategic M&A they've had and how much success they've had and this just gives me even more confidence seeing some of this, I wasn't aware of all of these deals. Having just started researching Salesforce about a year ago. But, man, it's incredible and to see that they've actually accelerated just about every single one of these companies growth years after the fact. I expect the same and they've already [inaudible] revenue and sales team is accelerating [inaudible] so just incredible execution, incredible leadership, and incredible management throughout the board here for sure.
Brian Withers: This is textbook M&A. This is the right way to do it.
Deidre Woollard: Speaking to that, I'm sorry go ahead.
Clay Bruning: No, go ahead.
Deidre Woollard: I was going to say that one of the things that they talked about that I thought was interesting was that they were asking Amy Weaver if Slack was the end of it. It sounds like they feel like they are not looking at any major acquisitions in the immediate future.
Clay Bruning: As someone [inaudible] the company that's definitely obvious because I think they have their hands full with Slack. I think they have so many different avenues where they can grow and increase the innovation and they talked a lot about the roadmap and how that all these things they want to get to and they're starting to rollout some out like clips and huddles that are increasingly trying to decrease the need for everyone on a team to be in a meeting. Whether different time zone, different country, or you simply just don't have time to jump on that 30 minute meeting. The digital HQ is certainly one of those trends that I saw increasingly important in. They actually said that Digital HQ is more important than the physical HQ for internally at Salesforce so really interesting to see how Slack continues to innovate here and I'm sure Salesforce is going to be able to accelerate some of that innovation to help drive incremental growth for Slack.
