Salesforce revenue rose 24% to $7.4 billion in quarterly results that investors were watching closely for clues about the direction of corporate technology spending amid concerns about the direction of the global economy.
“So far, we’re just not seeing any material impact from the broader economic world that all of you are in,” said Marc Benioff, the Salesforce founder and co-CEO, on a conference call discussing the company’s fiscal first quarter, ended April 30. “Our demand environment remains very strong.”
Salesforce shares rose more than 7% in after-hours trading.
Seattle-based data visualization company Tableau Software generated $464 million as part of Salesforce for the quarter, up about 18% from the same quarter a year ago, according to a Salesforce investor presentation.
New customers landed by Tableau in the quarter included ADT, Bose, and Lookers Motor Group in the U.K., said Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor on the call.
Tableau was acquired by Salesforce in 2019 for $15.7 billion. Salesforce employees in the Seattle region now number about 4,000, including Tableau employees, a spokesperson said recently.
At its recent annual conference, Tableau showed new technologies including a storytelling feature that automatically explains data from Tableau dashboards in plain language, and integrations with Salesforce’s Einstein AI technology.
San Francisco-based Salesforce posted overall quarterly earnings of 98 cents per share on an adjusted basis, down from $1.21 per share per year earlier, but ahead of the 94 cents per share expected by analysts surveyed in advance.
Net income fell to $28 million from $469 million in the same quarter a year ago.
Salesforce reduced its revenue guidance for the full fiscal year to a range of $31.7 billion to $31.8 billion, from $32 billion to $32.1 billion previously, citing unfavorable fluctuations in foreign exchange rates. However, it raised its guidance for earnings per share to a range of $4.74 to $4.76, from $4.62 to $4.64 previously.
Revenue guidance for the current fiscal year includes about $1.5 billion from Slack, according to a footnote in the investor presentation. Salesforce acquired the communication and collaboration platform last year for $27.7 billion.
In conjunction with the earnings report, Salesforce named Mike Spencer, Microsoft’s former general manager of investor relations, as its new investor relations leader. Spencer, who was most recently chief financial officer for Honeywell, will remain based in Atlanta, Benioff said on the conference call.
