Salesforce.com Q1 Beats, Hikes Revenue Outlook, Stock Rises

By | May 18, 2016

Scalper1 News

Salesforce.com ( CRM )  late Wednesday reported Q1 earnings and revenue that topped expectations and raised its full-year revenue guidance, sending the business software provider’s stock up 6% in after-hours trading. Salesforce, the leading provider of customer relationship software, said Q1 profit jumped 50% to 24 cents per share minus items. Revenue in the three months ended April 30 rose 27% to $1.92 billion, the company said.  Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had modeled 23 cents and $1.89 billion. In the current quarter, Saleforce forecast earnings ex items of 24 cents to 25 cents per share, up from 19 cents in the year-ago quarter, and revenue of $2.005 billion to $2.015 billion, up 23%. Analysts had estimated 25 cents and $1.98 billion. Salesforce increased its full-year revenue guidance to $8.2 billion from $8.16 billion, “given the strong response to our Customer Success Platform,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in the earnings release. San Francisco-based Salesforce  garners mainly subscription revenue from on-demand software delivered via the Internet, or cloud. “Salesforce’s  increased penetration of very large organizations and vertical-focused strategy, led by President and COO Keith Block, may mark the beginning of a trend of consistency in enterprise sales execution,” Jefferies analyst John DiFucci said in a pre-earnings research report. Salesforce has a strong IBD Composite Rating of 95, putting it among the top 5% of all stocks on key metrics such as sales and earnings growth. Its Computer Software-Enterprise group, though, ranks just No. 138 out of 197 industry groups tracked by IBD. Salesforce competes with Microsoft ( MSFT ), SAP ( SAP ), Oracle ( ORCL ), ServiceNow ( NOW ) and others. Salesforce last week said it would offer a new “Internet of Things” service using AWS, the cloud computing business of  Amazon.com ( AMZN ). Salesforce’s service, expected to launch this fall, collects data from Web-connected devices. AWS is the No. 1 cloud services provider. Scalper1 News

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