Salesforce.com, rumored as a buyout target, showed why late Wednesday as the cloud CRM specialist reported another quarter of growth that easily outpaced larger rivals SAP and Oracle. The customer relationship management software maker’s Q1 earnings per share minus items rose 45% vs. a year earlier, to 16 cents. That beat the analyst consensus of 14 cents, though it was a big slowdown from Q4’s 100% jump. Revenue grew 23%, to $1.51
Shopify (SHOP) drew enthusiastic investors to its initial public offering, which priced at 17 late Wednesday, raising $131 million. The Ottawa, Canada-based company provides a cloud-based platform that businesses use to manage their stores across multiple sales channels, including Web, mobile, social media and brick-and-mortar locations. The 7.7 million shares offered at 17 each exceeded an expected range of 14 to 16, revised from a previous range
The desktop software industry group was the best performer Wednesday, with a gain of more than 2%. But it was due mainly to the performance of a single, hardly noticed IPO that has soared. That company, Code Rebel (CDRB), a so-far profitless Hawaii-based software maker, came public with an offering price of 5 and closed its first day of trading at 15.85. Shares traded as high as 26 Wednesday. Even with that boost, its market cap stands at little