Business software company Salesforce Inc. (CRM) is set to report quarterly earnings on Thursday, with analysts bullish about the company amid higher demand for cloud-based solutions.
Revenues at the San Francisco-based firm, led by chief executive Marc Benioff (pictured), are expected to come in at $4.85bn during the first three months of the year, a 30% rise on 12 months before, boosted by higher sales from its customer relationship software.
RBC Capital analyst Alex Zukin said: “We are positive on CRM [Salesforce] ahead of the company’s F1Q [first-quarter] report, and while the company is not immune to global demand trends, we see Service Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Healthcare, FinServ and Contact Tracing driving bookings momentum”.
He added: “Specific to the quarter, we heard of solid wins in HC (healthcare) and Fins (financials) with no evidence of desperation or material discounting at the end of the quarter”.
Meanwhile, earnings per share are forecasted to end up the quarter at $0.70, in line with the company’s recent guidance, a 31% increase in the company’s bottom-line compared to the previous year, as firms rely more on computer networking during the coronavirus pandemic.
Salesforce shares have recovered most of the losses they took after the February sell-off, trading only 8% below their year-to-date peak of $193.36. So far this year, the stock has delivered a solid 6% gain, which is double the 2.7% gained by the Nasdaq Composite over the same period.
Shares of the cloud-based computing software company are up 1.4% in pre-market trading on Wednesday at $178.
The results for this first fiscal quarter follow a strong fourth-quarter earnings report where the company dazzled investors with a 35% revenue jump, even though the software giant also reported losses for the quarter as a result of various accounting charges.
Salesforce, a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) software developer was recently named the #1 CRM for the seventh consecutive year during the Worldwide Semiannual Software Tracker event hosted by International Data Corporation.
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