If there is one area in which Salesforce is the technology industry’s undisputed leader, it is superlatives. Quarterly results on Wednesday were described within six sentences as “spectacular”, “unprecedented”, “tremendous” and “outstanding”.
You might expect a side dish of profits with that main course of braggadocio, especially since another boast was “top and bottom line excellence”. You would be disappointed. Salesforce made a net loss of $25m on revenues of $1.8bn in the fourth quarter. Yet investors were content to embrace the hype: shares in the enterprise software company rose 9 per cent in after-hours trading.
Relief is understandable. In the first five weeks of the year, Salesforce’s stock fell more than 30 per cent amid a sudden crisis of confidence in the prospects of “software as a service” — or SaaS — companies. The sell-off was premature. Some companies, such as Tableau Software, have indeed earned a lower multiple with weaker guidance. But any widespread collapse in IT budgets is not evident.