Not many companies can boast of doubling sales every two to three years, but Salesforce.com, the leading customer relationship management software vendor, continues its relentless streak of strong revenue growth.Growing at healthy double-digit rates since 2007, the company continues to grow unabated.
The main reason behind its growth is Chairman Marc Benioff’s foresight to expand its portfolio beyond CRM to various Cloud services (sales, marketing, analytics, apps and services), has paid off in a big way with double-digit year on year growth every quarter.
Talking about its revenue, Mr. Benioff sold 12,500 shares of Salesforce.com stock in a transaction on October 27th. The shares were sold at an average price of $75.15, for a total value of $939,375.00. Post sale, the chairman now directly owns 34,846,900 shares in the company, valued at approximately $2,618,744,535.
The firm’s 200-day moving average price is $77.64. For the quarter which ended in August 2016, the firm had revenue of $2.04 billion, and reported $0.24 earnings per share. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm posted $0.19 earnings per share. The company’s revenue grew by 25.0% on a year-over-year basis.
The market is pleased with Salesforce.com as long as it keeps its top line growth intact and investors are happy as they are being rewarded with growing share price. But with increasing competition, like Oracle joining the cloud wagon, the company needs to continuously strategize to maintain these good times.
The company is gradually stepping up its expansion to international markets like Europe and Asia Pacific, yet its focus undoubtedly remains in North America.
Market watchdogs suggest Salesforce.com to be cautious, as it spends half its revenue on marketing and sales, and the cost of customer acquisition is still too high.