Microsoft Teams Adds 12M Customers In A Week As Coronavirus Forces Remote Work Boom

Microsoft Corporation's MSFT workplace communications platform Teams added 12 million daily active users between March 11 and March 18, the company said, as reported by MarketWatch.

This is a stark increase in daily active users as it took about four months for Microsoft to add the previous 12 million users since November.

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Rival Slack Technologies Inc. WORK has only 12 million daily active users, for comparison.

The Canada-based company also reported an increase of 7,000 customers between February 1 and March 18 in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This is a significant rise in customers for the company that added 5,000 new customers each in the previous two quarters.

Why It Matters

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic globally has forced companies to ask employees to work remotely. As a result, companies enabling at-home services, including remote work, are seeing a rise in customers.

At press time, more than 244,523 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed globally, including 10,031 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Other companies enabling remote work, including Zoom Video Communications Inc. ZM and Cisco Systems Inc,'s CSCO Webex, have reported a similar surge.

Verizon Communications Inc. VZ CEO told CNBC on Thursday that among the company's customers, web traffic increased 20%, and gaming rose by 75%, among other surges in online services.

Price Action

Microsoft's shares closed 1.65% higher at $142.71 in the regular session on Thursday. The shares traded 0.64% lower at $141.8 in the after-hours session.

Slack shares closed 16.66% higher at $21.01 in the regular session and traded 0.33% lower in the after-hours.