Shares of Slack Technologies Inc. WORK, +37.59% spiked up 27.6% in midday trading Wednesday, after The Wall Street Journal reported that the business communications software company has held talks to be acquired by Salesforce.com Inc. CRM, -5.37%.
Citing people familiar with the situation, the WSJ report said any deal would likely value Slack at more than its current market capitalization, which was about $17 billion prior to the stock’s jump on the buyout-talks report. Slack and Salesforce were not immediately available for comment. Slack’s current market cap is $21.5 billion. Salesforce’s stock took a dive after the WSJ report, and was recently down 3.2% after being up about 1.1% before the report. Salesforce’s market cap was $229.9 billion. Over the past three months, Slack shares have rallied 32.1% and Salesforce shares have advanced 16.9%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.57% has gained 5.7%.