Salesforce Beats Q2 Estimates, Shares Rise

Shares of

gained over 3 percent in after-hours trading after the company reported better-than-expected earnings for the second quarter. The San Francisco, California-based company reported a quarterly loss of $852,000, or less than $0.01 per share, versus a year-ago loss of $61.1 million, or $0.10 per share. Excluding items, the company's earnings came in at $0.19 per share. Its sales climbed 24 percent year-over-year to $1.63 billion. However, analysts were estimating a profit of $0.18 per share on revenue of $1.6 billion. The average estimate among 65 Estimize users was for earnings of $0.18 per share and revenue of $1.61 billion. Subscription and support revenue surged 23 percent to $1.52 billion, while professional services and other revenue jumped 32 percent to $113 million. The company ended the quarter with $2.07 billion in total cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. As of July 31, 2015, deferred revenue rose 29 percent year-over-year to $3.03 billion. "Salesforce has now blown past the $6.5 billion annual revenue run rate faster than any other enterprise software company, and we are once again raising our fiscal year 2016 revenue guidance to $6.625 billion at the high end of our range," said Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, Salesforce. "That puts us on pace to reach a $7 billion run rate later this year, and our goal is to be the fastest to reach $10 billion in annual revenue." For the third quarter, the company expects adjusted earnings of $0.18 to $0.19 per share, on revenue of $1.69 billion to $1.70 billion. The company now expects full fiscal-year 2016 adjusted earnings of $0.70 to $0.72 per share, on revenue of $6.60 billion to $6.625 billion. salesforce.com shares gained 3.16 percent to $69.96 in the after-hours trading session.