Tuesday, 02 January 2024 12:17 GMT

Salesforce Stock Rises After-Hours: Retail Traders Cheer Positive Long-Term Outlook


(MENAFN- AsiaNet News)

Salesforce, Inc. (CRM) stock rose more than 3.5% in Wednesday's extended trading after the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered customer relationship management company provided an upbeat long-term forecast at its Dreamforce annual conference that was held in San Francisco.

The San Francisco, California-based company guided revenue of over $60 billion for 2030, exceeding the consensus estimate of $58.37 billion. The company clarified that the revenue outlook exceeded contributions from Informatica, which it has agreed to acquire in an $8 billion deal. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter or in the company's fiscal year 2027.

COO and CFO Robin Washington reportedly suggested at the conference that the company's growth might be picking up pace.“We have had some lower-stage growth for a while,” she said.“That is reaccelerating.” She guided year-over-year (YoY) organic revenue growth to over 10% in each of the fiscal years between now and 2030 from the sub-10% rate seen since 2024.

Commenting on the concern that AI services would threaten software companies, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said,“There's a certain amount of, let's just say, nonsense that's out there. Like, for example, that these products are writing all the software, and that is not what's happening.”

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment toward Salesforce stock shifted to 'extremely bullish' by late Wednesday from 'bullish' the day before. The message volume on the stream also rose to 'extremely high' levels.

CRM sentiment and message volume as of 9:45 p.m. ET, Oct. 15 | source: Stocktwits

Salesforce expects a 50% increase in stock buybacks in the second half of fiscal year 2026 compared to the first half, even as it focuses on reducing stock-based compensation. CFO Washington reportedly said the company expects to buy back another $7 billion in shares in the next six months.

Ahead of the conference, Salesforce announced a slew of AI partnerships with AI startups such as OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as with payment processing firm Stripe and retailer Williams-Sonoma. 

Even as the company sounded an upbeat tone at the Dreamforce event, its stock received a downgrade from Northland on Tuesday. According to a summary of the note provided by The Fly, the firm downgraded the stock to 'Market Perform' from 'Outperform' and issued a price target of $264. 

The firm attributed the downgrade to the non-materialization of its expectations that agentic AI would enable App software makers to charge multiples of their current ARPU and that Salesforce's AgentForce positioned Salesforce to participate in the projected acceleration. The firm noted that over the past year, the company's constant currency cRPO growth, a key user metric, has been rangebound between 10% and 11%.

Salesforce stock is down about 29% this year.

For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.

MENAFN16102025007385015968ID1110203521



Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.