Excessive Salesforce

“At a time when capital is precious, big-ticket software purchases just don’t make sense.” Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff coughed up that oyster of a sound bite back in February, and judging from the company’s latest financials, it’s at least partly accurate. Salesforce posted a sizable increase in fiscal fourth-quarter profit on sales that rose 34 percent. Net income for the period was $18.4 million, or 15 cents a share, up from $9.6 million, or eight cents a share last year. Revenue rose 23 percent to $304.9 million. Quite a bit better than the 11 cents a share on $304.7 million in revenue analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had predicted.

However…

Looking ahead, Salesforce (CRM) said its current quarter would miss analysts’ estimates, and it reduced its full-year revenue outlook, saying sales will fall between $1.25 billion and $1.27 billion. The Street, which had been looking for $1.3 billion, was not at all happy with that and promptly sent the company’s shares down 7.6 percent.