![Atlassian co-founders Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes after the company listed on the Nasdaq in December 2015.](/content/dam/images/g/t/e/7/4/6/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.gtv6d6.png/1484890389393.jpg)
Atlassian co-chief executives Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar are "bullish" about the firm's new acquisition Trello, confident that it will attract a new group of customers to Atlassian.
Speaking to analysts after the workplace collaboration software company's second quarter financial results, Mr Farquhar said the company recognised that no two teams worked the same way. Trello was better suited to teams working in an "unstructured" manner, typically in smaller firms, he said, while JIRA Core, one of Atlassian's flagship products, was suited to more structured projects.
"It's important that JIRA Core and Trello have different purposes. They will work well together, and are complementary," Mr Farquhar said.
"We believe it will help us attract users that previously hadn't been using Atlassian. Atlassian products traditionally provide more value when you are a larger team. Trello allows us to acquire users earlier in their life cycle and in more ad hoc use cases."
In the latest quarter Atlassian increased its revenue by 36 per cent from the previous corresponding period to $US148.9 million ($196.6 million), beating analyst estimates of $US144.1 million.
For the same period the company posted a net loss of $US1.7 million, compared to a $5.6 million profit for the second quarter of 2016.
The loss did not come as a surprise since the company had flagged in its previous results that it was investing more in research and development, to ensure the company was strongly positioned for the future.
The figures were released 10 days after the $US425 million Trello acquisition, which was the 18th for the business and the largest to date.
As part of its results announcement, the company forecast that Trello would bring in $US1 million of revenue in the current quarter, and will have added $4 million to the business by June 30.
"We're bullish about the potential for Trello as a standalone product, and it's not going to be folded into other products we have," Mr Cannon-Brookes said.
"This expands our reach into business teams. You can see from Trello's reach and momentum, with 19 million users in 100 countries, that it has a large geographic spread. It also sells into home teams, people are using it to plan a wedding, or in renovating a house."
Atlassian, which was founded in Sydney in 2002 and listed on the NASDAQ at $US21 in December 2015, traded flat after its results were released on Friday morning local time, ending the day up just under 1 per cent at $US27.42.
The company is predicting third quarter revenue of $156 million and earning per share of US6¢, excluding one-off items - slightly behind analyst estimates of US8¢.
For the full year it upped its earnings guidance, increasing the range from $US592-602 million to $611-615 million.
Despite the increased competition in the workplace communications market with companies like Slack and Fleep, Mr Farquhar and Mr Cannon-Brookes said the business was still bullish on HipChat, its office messaging product, and also said they were confident that competitors would not be able to compete with Atlassian on both price and value.
"It's one thing to say you have low prices, but you need an organisation to be built up around a high volume, low touch model," Mr Farquhar said.
"You can certainly see people copying our messaging and things over time, and they can do what they want to do, we're used to that after 14 years," Mr Cannon-Brookes added.
"What is hard to copy is the business model and the synergies we have between the product, level of R&D; investment, focusing on the customer and the pricing model and the way the sales machine works. Those three and the way they tie together is incredibly hard to copy."