Salesforce.com crushes Q2 with revenues up 24pc to US$1.6bn

21 Aug 2015

Salesforce.com founder and CEO Marc Benioff

Online CRM player Salesforce.com surpassed its own targets after reporting second quarter revenues of US$1.6bn, up 24pc on last year.

The company even passed out Wall Street analyst expectations on earnings per share, coming in at 19 cents instead of 18 cents.

The results come months after speculation that Salesforce.com was the target of merger or acquisition by Microsoft. Apparently talks fell through because neither company could agree on a price.

The strong results have encouraged Salesforce.com to increase its forecast for the full year.

“Salesforce has now blown past the US$6.5bn annual revenue run rate faster than any other enterprise software company, and we are once again raising our fiscal year 2016 revenue guidance to US$6.625bn at the high end of our range,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce.

“That puts us on pace to reach a US$7bn run rate later this year, and our goal is to be the fastest to reach US$10bn in annual revenue.”

Total Q2 revenue was US$1.63bn, an increase of 24pc year-over-year, and 28pc in constant currency.

Subscription and support revenues were US$1.52bn, an increase of 23pc year-over-year.

Professional services and other revenues were US$113m, an increase of 32pc year-over-year.

“In addition to delivering outstanding top-line growth in the second quarter, we also expanded our year-over-year non-GAAP operating margin for the fifth consecutive quarter,” said Mark Hawkins, CFO, Salesforce.

“We also delivered more than US$1bn in operating cash flow in the first half of the year, an increase of 44pc over last year.”

Marc Benioff image via Creative Commons/Flickr

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com