Salesforce Stock Soars 8% After Earnings Beat, Analyst Says Not as Bad as Feared By Investing.com

By Senad Karaahmetovic

Salesforce (NYSE:) hiked its adjusted EPS guidance for the full year, topping the analyst expectations.

The company a Q1 adjusted EPS of 98c, compared to $1.21 in the year-ago period and above the consensus projection of 95c per share. Revenue stood at $7.41 billion in the period, up 24% YoY and above the consensus estimates of $7.38 billion.

CRM reported an adjusted operating margin of 17.6% in the quarter, compared to 20.2% in the year-ago period and in line with the analyst expectations.

For Q1, Salesforce expects adjusted EPS in the range of $1.01 to $1.02, well below the estimated $1.14 per share. The company expects Q2 revenue in the range of $7.69 billion to $7.70 billion, also below the expectations of $7.77 billion.

On a full-year basis, Salesforce forecasts adjusted EPS in the range of $4.74 to $4.76, up from previous guidance of $4.62 to $4.64, beating the consensus estimates of $4.68 per share. CRM expects revenue in the range of $31.7 billion to $31.8 billion, down from the previous forecast of $32 billion to $32.1 billion, while analysts were looking for $32.08 billion.

Roth Capital Partners analyst Richard Baldry said CRM delivered results that were “not as bad as feared.”

“While we view a recession as a likely scenario, and we expect global instability to continue for the foreseeable future, we believe CRM, like many of the Cloud-centric SaaS vendors we cover, offers a compelling value proposition for its clients in terms of enabling greater revenue growth and/or cost-cutting,” Baldry said in a client note.

Mizuho analyst Gregg Moskowitz echoed Baldry’s thoughts.

“We wouldn’t classify this as an impressive performance, but with CRM a little over 4x CY23 revenue, it should be more than enough. We reiterate that CRM remains very well-situated to help its vast customer base manage revenue and process optimization via digital transformation,” Moskowitz told clients.