Salesforce Stock Up 7% After Record-Setting Q2 Earnings

Salesforce.com, which is diversifying beyond customer relationship management (CRM) and into deeper layers of analytics, saw its stock soar 7% in after hours trading to $158.70 after a record-setting fiscal second quarter.

It also increased its revenue forecast for the full-year to between $16.75 billion and $16.9 billion from $16.25 billion in the previous guidance. The company had a market cap of $128.9 billion as of Thursday.

Salesforce reported Q2 revenue of $4 billion compared to the $3.95 billion expected by analysts polled by Refinitiv. Revenue jumped 22% year-on-year.

Sales Cloud, Saleforce’s leading product, generated $1.13 billion in revenue, up 13%. On the other hand, the Service Cloud division saw revenues expand 22% to $1.09 billion.

Subscription and support revenues stood at $3.75 billion, a rise of 22% year-on-year. Professional services and other revenues posted sales of $252 million, an increase of 14% year-on-year.

Cash generated from operations came to $436 million, a drop of 5% year-on-year. Total cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities ended Q2 at $6.04 billion

Earnings came to $0.66 per share (excluding certain items) as against the $0.47 per share expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.

"Following an outstanding quarter, we're raising our FY20 revenue guidance to $16.9 billion at the high-end of the range," said chairman and co-CEO Marc Benioff.

"With our Customer 360 vision, Einstein AI and the millions of Trailblazers innovating on our platform, Salesforce has never been better positioned for the future."

Highlight of the quarter was Salesforce’s acquisition in June of Tableau Software Inc., an interactive data visualization software company. Salesforce bought Tableau for $15.7 billion in an all-stock deal, which has been approved by the boards of both companies.

The deal will allow Salesforce to diversify into the type of deep analytics provided by Tableau. The deal will also help Salesforce extend its engagement and data intelligence for its current customers.

Benioff said the deal brings together the world’s #1 CRM with the #1 analytics platform.

“Tableau helps people see and understand data, and Salesforce helps people engage and understand customers,” said Benioff.

In 2018, Salesforce bought MuleSoft LLC for $6.5 billion. This acquisition put Salesforce into the business of data integration, more of a back-end technology. Based in San Francisco, MuleSoft is a software company that provides integration software for connecting applications, data and devices.

For fiscal Q3, Salesforce expects revenue of $4.44 billion to $4.45 billion, or a huge 31% growth year-on-year.