Remote work “will be a much bigger part of the working world,” said Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield on a fiscal Q1 investor call Thursday evening. Business leaders are “beginning to realize” the benefits of “offering a more fluid work environment, blending offices and remote work,” he said. COVID-19's “all-at-once shift” to work-from-home mandates “concentrated multiple quarters of Slack adoption into a few weeks,” he said. Revenue grew 50% from the year-earlier quarter, said Chief Financial Officer Allen Shim. “The transition to work-from-home was obviously a major tailwind this quarter and we expect net new customer additions to moderate through the remainder of the year.” There are “potential headwinds for our business,” the CFO said. Slack draws about 25% of its business from companies with fewer than 100 employees, he said. Within that base, “we saw churn trend a bit higher than historical norms in March and April,” he said. The stock closed 14% lower Friday at $32.56.
Store closures and supply chain disruptions sent Fossil Group down 16% for Q1 ended April 4. The pandemic diverted traffic to Fossil’s e-commerce sites where visits soared 150% in April and 200% in May compared with 2019, said CEO Kosta Kartsotis on a Wednesday call. Fossil expects its direct-to-consumer channel will be nearly 60% of its global sales in the second half of its fiscal year. E-commerce was about 10% of sales in Q1 and is expected to exceed 30% this quarter, he said. Connected watch sales declined by high-single digits in Q1, said Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey Boyer. The company expects Q2 sales will decline 60%-70% with “the majority of our global business effectively closed during April and May,” said Boyer. “Ongoing strength” in e-commerce will “partially offset” brick-and-mortar declines, he said. The stock closed up 14% Thursday at $4.36.
Half the readers participating in a poll by technology consultant Shelly Palmer Thursday said it’s “too early to tell” if they will attend CES 2021 “physically or virtually.” Twenty-one percent would go to the Jan. 6-9 Las Vegas and 19% would do so online. Seventy-seven percent back wearing face masks on the show floor. Eighty percent still fear COVID-19 as a health threat, disagreeing with the statement: “I feel safe enough now and do not need to worry about masks or social distancing at a trade show.” CES 2021 is proceeding as planned with masks, social distancing, wider aisles and “options to expand the show digitally" (see 2004210057).
Fifteen percent of U.S. broadband households said they used more telehealth or remote doctor services due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a Parks Associates survey fielded March 8-April 3 found. Parks’ Connected Health Summit, originally scheduled for Sept. 1-3 in San Diego, will now be a virtual event.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services should consider whether its expanded reimbursement of telehealth services during COVID-19, including audio-only telehealth, should be made permanent, FTC staff said in comments posted to docket CMS-2020-0032 Tuesday. "Doing so could benefit patients, practitioners, and the health care system as a whole."
Global smartphone shipments are expected to decline 11.9% this year to 1.2 billion, reported IDC Wednesday. It follows the largest year-over-year Q1 decline in the product's history, it said. “Smartphone shipments are now expected to decline 18.2% in 2020's first half of the year as the macroeconomic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect consumer spending.” IDC doesn’t expect the global market to return to unit growth until after Q1 2021.
A slow economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic could combine with rising U.S.-China trade tensions to pose a big risk to U.S. investment-grade tech companies, S&P Global Ratings reported Wednesday. “Unprecedented measures from the U.S. government and Federal Reserve will be sure to mitigate the effects of the sharp decline in economic activity due to COVID-19,” said the debt ratings firm. “But the path to recovery remains uncertain both in terms of timing and trajectory.” Until there’s an effective COVID-19 treatment or vaccine, “significant uncertainties surround the resolution of the pandemic and its effects,” said S&P. The “near-term risk” to the semiconductor industry would be “manageable” amid heightened U.S.-China trade friction, said the report. But it “adds incremental pressure on an industry that we already forecast will shrink by 7% in 2020.”
ABI Research slashed its 2020 wearables forecast by 27 million. The researcher cited a falloff in consumer demand for nonessential devices in Q1 due to the pandemic and supply chain issues. Shipments of smartwatches and activity trackers -- representing more than half of wearable shipments -- were 26.5 million in Q1, emailed analyst Stephanie Tomsett. For the year, ABI now forecasts wearables shipments of 254 million. That’s 5% over 2019 vs. the previously forecast 17% rise. Wearables shipments grew 23% in 2019.
Israeli printed circuit board supplier Eltek sees opportunity to grow its U.S. business “due to the worsening of the relationship between the U.S. and China,” said CEO Eli Yaffe on a fiscal Q1 call Tuesday. “The impact of any trade war between the U.S. and China will also impact the Israeli market.” Any heightened tension would likely accompany increased “U.S. pressure on the Israeli government to reduce the Israel-China trade activity,” he said. The company's Q1 ended March 31. Trump administration officials say punitive tariffs against China are being considered. COVID-19 “created new operational and business challenges” for Eltek, said the CEO. The stock closed 13.5% lower Tuesday at $4.05.
Sensory developed a face and voice biometric platform to recognize users wearing masks, it said Tuesday: With the “new normal” requiring people to wear masks to avoid spreading the coronavirus, many smartphones’ facial recognition systems can’t detect the user’s face.