Shares of Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE: CRM) rose sharply on Friday after the technology giant reported better than expected earnings and raised its forecast for the year. The quarterly report was the company’s first since acquiring Tableau Software in a monster deal worth $15.3 billion.
Q2 Earnings Summary
- Earnings: $0.66 per share
- Revenue: $4 billion
Salesforce generated $4 billion in revenue for its fiscal second quarter, an increase of 22% over year-ago levels. Excluding certain items, earnings were $0.66 per share. Analysts in a median estimate called for per-share earnings of $0.47 on revenue of $3.95 billion.
GAAP earnings came in at $0.11 per share, confounding expectations of a $0.07 decline.
The company’s cloud computing divisions continued to drive most of the gains. Sales Cloud, the company’s largest product, posted a revenue increase of 13% to $1.13 billion. Service Cloud revenues rose 22% to $1.09 billion.
For its fiscal third quarter, Salesforce is forecasting revenue of $4.44 billion to $4.45 billion, representing a 31% increase year-over-year. For the full year, the company expects to generate between $16.75 billion and $16.9 billion in revenue, up from its previous estimate of $16.25 billion.
Despite maintaining a strong cloud-focus, Salesforce is broadening its business model following a series of major acquisitions. In addition to Tableau Software, the company acquired MuleSoft last year for $6.5 billion. According to data from Crunchbase, Salesforce has acquired 60 organizations, with the latest being ClickSoftware Technologies for $1.4 billion.
CRM Stock Surges
Salesforce’s stock price opened sharply higher on Friday, gaining as much as 6.6% in New York trading. The stock saw an upsurge in bullish bets ahead of Thursday’s earnings call. As Bloomberg reports, the options market implied a 6% price move at the start of Friday trading.
CRM is currently trading at its highest level in three weeks but has underperformed the broader U.S. stock market this year. The stock is up around 14% for 2019.
On Friday, CRM closed at $151.57, up 2.3% for the session. By comparison, the large-cap S&P 500 Index plunged 2.6% and the technology-focused Nasdaq sold off 3%.
At current values, Salesforce has a total market capitalization of $137.7 billion.
Conclusion
Salesforce still has a lot of work to do convincing investors that its buying spree will translate into a more profitable business. There’s some concern that the company’s growth isn’t nearly as impressive if we strip away all the high-profile acquisitions. As The Street points out, management still needs to deliver operating leverage and a stronger bottom line.
Disclaimer: Author holds no investment position in Salesforce at the time of writing.
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