In spite of a positive quarter with record revenue that beat analysts’ estimates, Salesforce stock was taking a hit today because of lighter guidance. Wall Street is a tough audience.
The stock was down $8.29/share, or 4.58%, as of 2:15 pm ET.
The guidance, which was a projection for next quarter’s earnings, was lighter than what the analysts on Wall Street expected. While Salesforce was projecting revenue for next quarter in the range of $4.89 to $4.90 billion, according to CNBC, analysts had expected $5.03 billion.
When analysts see a future that is a bit worse than what they expected, it usually results in a lower stock price, and that’s what we are seeing today. It’s worth noting that Salesforce is operating in the same economy as everyone else, and being a bit lighter on your projections in the middle of a pandemic seems entirely understandable.
In yesterday’s report, CEO Marc Benioff indicated that the company has been offering some customers some flexibility around payment as they navigate the economic fallout of COVID-19, and the company’s operating cash took a bit of a hit because of this.
“Operating cash flow was $1.86 billion, which was largely impacted by delayed payments from customers while sheltering in place and some temporary financial flexibility that we granted to certain customers that were most affected by the COVID pandemic,” president and CFO Mark Hawkins explained in the analyst call.
Still, the company reported revenue of $4.87 billion for the quarter, putting it on a run rate of $19.48 billion.
In a statement, David Hynes, Jr. of Canaccord Genuity remained high on Salesforce. “If you step back and think about what Salesforce is actually providing, tools that help businesses get closer to their customers are perhaps more important than ever in a slower-growth, socially distanced world. We have long reserved a spot for CRM among our top names in large cap, and we feel no differently about that view after what we heard last night. This is a high-quality firm with many levers to growth, and as such, we believe CRM is a good way to get a bit of defensive exposure to the favorable trends at play in software.”
The company is, after all, still firmly on the path to $20 billion in revenue. As Hynes points out, overall the kinds of tools that Salesforce offers should remain in demand as companies look for ways to digitally transform much more rapidly in our current situation, and look to companies like Salesforce for help.
