Salesforce beats quarterly estimates on cloud demand, says CFO to step down

By Zaheer Kachwala

(Reuters) - Salesforce beat Wall Street expectations for second-quarter revenue and profit on Wednesday, benefiting from higher spending on its enterprise cloud products, sending its shares up around 3% in extended trading.

Salesforce also said finance chief Amy Weaver will step down from the role. The company veteran, who was appointed CFO in 2021, will remain in the position until a successor is appointed.

Salesforce reported revenue of $9.33 billion for the quarter, while analysts on average had expected $9.23 billion, according to LSEG data.

"Results were slightly ahead of Street expectations, which was welcomed by investors as concerns of a tough macro environment persist," said Parker Snook, senior research analyst at M Science.

The firm also raised its annual profit forecast to a range of $10.03 to $10.11 per share, from $9.86 to $9.94.

However, the firm forecast third-quarter revenue below estimates, signaling that a full recovery in cloud spending is still yet to come.

The software-as-a-service pioneer, which battles competition from rising industry players like ServiceNow, expects third-quarter revenue between $9.31 billion and $9.36 billion, compared with the average analyst estimate of $9.41 billion.

Salesforce's revenue grew around 8% the second quarter, its slowest pace in over a decade.

"We do not expect AI to become a meaningful contributor to growth any time soon. On the contrary, AI seems to be distracting Salesforce's customers and preventing some of them from making long-term commitments," D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria said.

AI remains a top priority for the company as it pours hundreds of millions into deploying its own GPT and Copilot, integrating them into its business suite of products and platforms like Slack.

The company reported second-quarter adjusted operating margin of 33.7%, while analysts polled by Visible Alpha expected 32%.

Salesforce reported an adjusted profit per share of $2.56 for the second quarter, beating estimates of $2.36.

(Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)

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