Sen. Ernst thanks everyone for coming out today. This is my 33rd town hall of this year. Been active and busy and out and about amongst our communities and constituencies. Thank you very much for taking the time to be here with us today. We do have a lot of national media. Thank you folks for coming out. It must be quiet on the president ial trail here in iowa today. You are absolutely welcome. Thank you for being here as well. The way our town halls work, we do have a number of cards filled out by folks who would like to ask questions. If you would like to fill out a card and you didnt when you came in, raise your hand. Staff will come by and will provide you with a card. You can fill that out and get your name thrown in there to be drawn as well. With that, we will go ahead and get started. I wont have an Opening Statement or anything. We want to get to as many questions as possible. If you have cards, send those up to the front here. Emily will go ahead and call a couple names out.
First, to our top story. Slack makes its public debut the at a direct listing on the new york stock exchange, opening 48 above its reference price. Valuing the software messenger at more than 20 billion, a big increase from the last private valuation. They raised money at a 70. 1 billion valuation. I caught up with slack right before shares began trading. At this point it has been working exactly the way it is supposed to work and ultimately, we will open and have a high and low. The same thing will happen tomorrow and we are very much focused on the longterm. Emily you are still paying large fees to bankers. You raise a lot of money. So what problem are you really solving by doing a direct listing versus a traditional ipo . The first is there is no need to raise primary capital. We came into the process with 300 million on the balance sheet. Dilution to existing shareholders would have been tough. We did get a little more freedom with how we tell the story. Instead of only having a ro
First, to our top story. Slack makes its public debut the at a direct listing on the new york stock exchange, opening 48 above its reference price. Valuing the software messenger at more than 20 billion, a big increase from the last private valuation. They raised money at a 70. 1 7. 1 billion valuation. I caught up with slack right before shares began trading. At this point it has been working exactly the way it is supposed to work and ultimately, we will open and have a high and low. The same thing will happen tomorrow and we are very much focused on the longterm. Emily you are still paying large fees to bankers. You raise a lot of money. So what problem are you really solving by doing a direct listing versus a traditional ipo . The first is there is no need to raise primary capital. We came into the process with 300 million on the balance sheet. Dilution to existing shareholders would have been tough. We did get a little more freedom with how we tell the story. Instead of only having
Sandberg response to the controversy in facebook two years of bad news. First, the top story, slack makes its public debut but not by the usual path. Slack makes its public debut the at a direct listing on the new york stock exchange, opening 48 above its reference price. Valuing the software messenger at more than 20 billion, a big increase from the last private valuation. They raised money at a 7. 1 billion dollar valuation. I caught up with slack right before shares began trading. At this point it has been working exactly the way it is supposed to work and ultimately, we will open and have a high and low. The same thing will happen tomorrow and we are very much focused on the longterm. Emily you are still paying large fees to bankers. You raise a lot of money. So what problem are you really solving by doing a direct listing versus a traditional ipo . The first is there is no need to raise primary capital. We came into the process with 300 million on the balance sheet. Dilution to ex
Flax makes its public debut. Itses opening above reference price, valuing the software messenger add more than 20 million. Icon up with the cfo. At this point it has been working exactly the way it is supposed to work. We are very much focused on you are still paying large fees to bankers and you still the public on market. What problem are you solving . The first one is, no need to raise primary capital. A little bit more freedom in how we tell the story. Instead of only having a roadshow, we were able to do an investor day, livestream it and make the video available to everyone. Emily black is still profitable. Our primary focus is to invest in growth. This is the drive toward the national breakeven. We can still invest very aggressively. Emily how much of a priority is profitability . I dont want to get technical but there are a lot of deferred revenues. In outside investors is great because it allows us to control our own destiny. We try to find new ways to continue to invest. We d