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Salesforce.com has released the financial report for its fourth fiscal quarter, and the results beat Wall Street analyst’s expectations. CEO Mark Benioff said the software as a service firm plans to acquire some marketing firms in the coming year.
All Things D’s Arik Hesseldahl reported, “Salesforce.com just announced earnings that beat the expectations of the Street, and its shares are soaring in after-hours trading. Sales were $835 million, up 32 percent over the year-ago period, and were well ahead of the $831 million that had been the consensus expectation of Wall Street analysts. Earnings per share on a non-GAAP basis were 51 cents, 11 cents above the consensus of 40 cents. On an old-school GAAP basis, like most cloud companies, Salesforce lost $20.8 million, or 14 cents a share. Salesforce shares rose by more than $6, or nearly 4 percent, in after-hours trading.”
ZDNet’s Larry Dignan added, “As for the outlook for the first quarter, Salesforce’s guidance was largely in line to better than expectations. The company said first quarter revenue will be between $882 million and $887 million with a net loss of 44 cents a share to 42 cents a share. Non-GAAP earnings in the first quarter will be 40 cents a share to 42 cents a share. Wall Street was expecting first quarter non-GAAP earnings of 42 cents a share on revenue of $886 million.”
Investor’s Business Daily quoted Wunderlich Securities analyst Richard Baldry, who said, “Salesforce has a very cohesive strategy and it’s still by far the revenue leader in the SaaS space by multiples higher than anyone else. They are the category killer.”
InformationWeek’s Doug Henschen noted, “Salesforce has already spent more than $1 billion acquiring Radian6 and Buddy Media, the key components of its Marketing Cloud. But with sales, service and marketing initiatives blurring and marketing spending on the rise, Benioff admitted Salesforce.com needs to do more. ‘We’re trying to build a muscle at Salesforce that will enable us to talk comfortably with chief marketing officers and have a holistic conversation about how they’re connecting with their customers,’ Benioff said. ‘We need to buy more marketing companies, honestly, because there’s more for us to do.'”
