Ritholtz Wealth Management's Josh Brown calls in to CNBC's "Halftime Report" to discuss news that Salesforce has been in talks with Slack for an acquisition, which was reported by The Wall Street Journal. Brown used to own Slack shares. For access to live and exclusive video from CNBC subscribe to CNBC PRO: https://cnb.cx/2NGeIvi Salesforce is in talks to acquire Slack, and a deal could be announced as soon as next week, according to a person familiar with the matter. Shares of Slack rose as much as 32% Wednesday after the Wall Street Journal first reported that Salesforce held talks to buy the company. Salesforce stock dropped around 4% on the news. The company is also scheduled to release its third-quarter earnings next week on Dec. 1. It’s unclear how much the deal would be worth, but Slack’s market cap ballooned to more than $20 billion following the WSJ’s original report. Salesforce has been on an acquisition spree, taking advantage of its market cap growth in recent years to buy growing companies. It acquired MuleSoft for $6.5 billion in 2018, the company’s biggest deal ever at the time, to help connect cloud applications. The following year it spent more than twice that amount on Tableau, acquiring the data visualization company for $15.3 billion. Slack would be one of the biggest software deals ever for the industry. It would rank among IBM’s $34 billion purchase of Red Hat in 2019, Microsoft’s $27 billion purchase of LinkedIn in 2016 and Facebook’s $19 billion purchase of WhatsApp in 2014. “This would be a game changer move for Benioff & Co. to further build out its collaboration engine and product footprint as cloud spending ramps across the enterprise,” Wedbush Securities’ Dan Ives told CNBC, referring to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Shares of Microsoft, which competes with Slack through its Teams offering, also dipped slightly on the report. Microsoft already competes with Salesforce in software for tracking customers. Microsoft reportedly looked at buying Salesforce but no deal came about. Later, Microsoft launched the Teams communication app. “Our primary competitor is currently Microsoft Corporation,” Slack said when it sought to become a public company in 2019. Microsoft has a large customer base it has been able to convert to Teams, and Salesforce could give Slack a similar benefit. Slack last said in October 2019 that it had more than 12 million daily active users. Spokespeople for Salesforce and Slack were not immediately available to comment. » Subscribe to CNBC TV: https://cnb.cx/SubscribeCNBCtelevision » Subscribe to CNBC: https://cnb.cx/SubscribeCNBC » Subscribe to CNBC Classic: https://cnb.cx/SubscribeCNBCclassic Turn to CNBC TV for the latest stock market news and analysis. From market futures to live price updates CNBC is the leader in business news worldwide. The News with Shepard Smith is CNBC’s daily news podcast providing deep, non-partisan coverage and perspective on the day’s most important stories. Available to listen by 8:30pm ET / 5:30pm PT daily beginning September 30: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/the-news-with-shepard-smith-podcast.html?__source=youtube%7Cshepsmith%7Cpodcast Connect with CNBC News Online Get the latest news: http://www.cnbc.com/ Follow CNBC on LinkedIn: https://cnb.cx/LinkedInCNBC Follow CNBC News on Facebook: https://cnb.cx/LikeCNBC Follow CNBC News on Twitter: https://cnb.cx/FollowCNBC Follow CNBC News on Instagram: https://cnb.cx/InstagramCNBC https://www.cnbc.com/select/best-credit-cards/ #CNBC #CNBCTV