Salesforce, the Godfather of the Software-as-a-Service revolution, is set to deliver its quarterly results later this week and analysts and shareholders are expecting nothing less than another stellar quarter.
As eCRM Guide reports, the on-demand CRM and business application vendor has set the bar extremely high over the past few years and investors have flocked to the stock.
So far investors’ optimism has been well placed. Salesforce carved out a market for itself by being early to the cloud computing revolution, and the company has continued to innovate with offerings like its Chatter collaboration service. The company even scored a big CRM deal with Facebook this quarter.
Software as a service (SaaS) sales already account for a quarter of the CRM market, according to a recent report by Gartner.
From 2007 to 2009, Salesforce increased its CRM market share from 8.3 percent to 12.5 percent, according to Gartner. Over the same time, SAP saw its market share decline from 25.5 percent to 20.2 percent, while Oracle remained steady at around 16 percent.
Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) will report its quarterly results later this week, and investors will be looking for the cloud CRM leader to deliver another strong quarter.
Since going public in 2004, Salesforce’s shares have soared more than 500 percent and currently trade around $100 a share. Over the same time, the S&P 500 has lost 2 percent and endured its worst bear market since the Great Depression. It’s no wonder Salesforce is a darling of some of the smartest investors and hedge fund managers on the planet.
The stock is also expensive, however. It trades at 65 times next year’s earnings, compared to multiples of just over 10 for top CRM rivals Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) and SAP (NYSE: SAP). But Salesforce is also delivering a steady growth rate of around 20 percent a year; Oracle and SAP are expected to grow at a little more than half that rate.