Salesforce Sees Revenue Gains Despite Early Worries
18 Mai 2017 - 11:02PM
Dow Jones News
By Jay Greene
Salesforce.com Inc. posted a 26% jump in deferred revenue for
its fiscal first quarter, easing concerns after the company
provided a lukewarm forecast for billings three months ago.
Since Salesforce relies on subscriptions of its web-based,
on-demand software used by business customers, deferred revenue is
a strong indicator of the company's prospects. Deferred revenue,
which consists primarily of billings received in advance for
subscription services, totaled $5.04 billion in the quarter.
The San Francisco-based business software company surprised Wall
Street three months ago, forecasting first-quarter deferred revenue
growth of 22% to 23%, a sign that billings growth wouldn't be as
robust as some analysts expected. In the year-earlier quarter,
deferred revenue grew 31%.
After the company announced first-quarter results Thursday,
shares fell 1% to $87 in recent after-hours trading.
Revenue from Sales Cloud, the company's sales-force automation
business, rose 15% to $829.6 million. Salesforce is facing
increased competition in the business from Microsoft, which some
analysts believe is luring small and midsize customers with
aggressive pricing.
Salesforce's Service Cloud business, which provides technology
to help businesses run customer-service operations, generated 651.2
million in revenue, a 21% gain. That business is facing increasing
competition from ServiceNow Inc.
And revenue from Marketing Cloud, the company's offering to
manage customers' email and advertising campaigns, which was
bolstered by the July acquisition of Demandware Inc., grew 56% to
$289 million.
Salesforce posted a loss of $9.2 million, or a penny a share,
for the quarter ended April 30, compared with a profit of $38.8
million, or 6 cents a share, a year ago.
Excluding the impact of items such as amortization and
stock-based compensation, adjusted earnings rose to 28 cents from
24 cents a year earlier. Revenue gained 25% to $2.39 billion.
Analysts surveyed by S&P Global Market Intelligence expected
Salesforce to report adjusted earnings of 26 cents a share on
revenue of $2.35 billion.
Write to Jay Greene at Jay.Greene@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 18, 2017 16:47 ET (20:47 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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