Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff on Tuesday broke down the enterprise software giant’s latest financial results, telling CNBC’s Jim Cramer it was “maybe the best quarter we’ve ever had.”
Shares of Salesforce, which have struggled mightily over the past three months, jumped 3% in extended trading Tuesday, as Wall Street reacted to the company’s fourth-quarter figures. Both revenue and per-share earnings topped estimates, while full-year outlook for fiscal 2023 also is better than analysts expected.
“This was an extraordinary quarter, maybe the best quarter we’ve ever had, and you can really see it not just in the quarterly guidance, but where we’re looking for next fiscal year,” Benioff said, noting San Francisco-based Salesforce is expecting revenues between $32 billion and $32.1 billion in fiscal 2023.
That’s above the $31.78 billion that analysts surveyed by Refinitiv had projected.
Salesforce saw revenues of $26.49 billion in fiscal 2022, so the high end of its revenue 2023 guidance would represent an increase of just over 21% year-over-year.
“We’re leaving the $20 billions behind, and the $30 billions are now ahead of us,” said Benioff, who co-founded Salesforce in 1999.
He said Salesforce’s next leg of growth continues to be propelled by the digital transformation and its customers needing a broad range of tools to support their own clients. That’s why Salesforce has worked to stitch together all of its recent acquisitions, Benioff said, pointing to data analytics firm Tableau, integration software provider MuleSoft and chat app Slack.
Benioff also said he’s pleased with Salesforce’s operating cash-flow performance and projections. The company reported $6 billion for fiscal 2022, up 25% year over year, and with expectations of 21% to 22% growth in fiscal 2023.
Dow-component Salesforce shares are up 7% over the past five sessions, but they remain down nearly 27% over the past three months as investors have rotated away from growth-oriented technology companies toward more defensive parts of the market.
Disclosure: Cramer’s charitable trust owns shares of Salesforce (CRM).
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Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/01/salesforce-co-ceo-marc-benioff-touts-strong-sales-guidance-says-30-billions-are-now-ahead-of-us.html