Salesforce.com Revenue Climbs 28%, Meets Expectations

For its first quarter, Salesforce.com reported that revenues increased 28 percent, meeting Wall Street expectations. However, the company’s guidance for upcoming quarters was lower than analysts had anticipated, which sent the stock price down.

TechCrunch’s Alex Williams reported, “Salesforce.com met analyst expectations for its first quarter with non-GAAP earnings per share of 10 cents. Total first quarter revenues were $893 million, an increase of 28 percent on a year-over-year basis.”

Pete Barlas with Investor’s Business Daily added, “Shares of Salesforce.com (CRM) were down 7.5% in early trading Friday after the enterprise software company late Thursday gave guidance that just missed views and released fiscal Q1 earnings that just met expectations.”

InformationWeek’s Doug Henschen noted, “Measured by generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), Salesforce lost $67.7 million, or 12 cents per share, in the first quarter, compared to a net loss of $19.5 million, or 4 cents a share, in the same quarter last year. One reason Salesforce.com struggles with profitability is that it is making big bets that have yet to pay off.”

ZDNet’s Andrew Nusca observed, “Salesforce’s performance has been mostly positive over the last four years, and it beat investor expectations 11 of the last 15 quarters, with only one major miss. Historically, it has regularly posted strong growth numbers, thanks to increasing adoption of its Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud offerings. But that progress has been eroded by rising marketing and R&D costs as the company pushes into new areas of business, particularly for Marketing Cloud, which is positioned to address companies’ growing interest in marketing over social media channels.”