Salesforce Shares Surge 11% on AI Momentum and Anthropic Gains

Marc Benioff, chief executive officer of Salesforce Inc., spoke at the 2024 Dreamforce conference in San Francisco on Sept. 19.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Salesforce shares surged 11% in after‑hours trading Wednesday after the cloud software vendor reported quarterly results and guidance that topped analyst expectations.

Key financial highlights compared with LSEG consensus were:

• Adjusted earnings per share: $5.90
• Revenue: $11.35 billion vs. $11.32 billion expected

In the fiscal second quarter, which ended July 31, Salesforce’s revenue grew 11% year over year to $11.35 billion, while net income rose 87% to $3.53 billion, or $4.29 per share.

The company recorded a $2.6 billion gain from its strategic stake in artificial‑intelligence startup Anthropic. In May, Anthropic secured funding that valued the firm at $965 billion.

For the fiscal third quarter, Salesforce forecast adjusted earnings of $3.42‑$3.44 per share and revenue of $11.42‑$11.50 billion, exceeding LSEG expectations of $3.38 EPS and $11.41 billion in revenue.

Full‑year guidance was raised to an adjusted EPS range of $16.67‑$16.71 on revenue of $46.1‑$46.4 billion, implying roughly 11% growth. This compares with earlier fiscal‑2027 guidance of $14.06‑$14.12 EPS on $45.9‑$46.2 billion in revenue.

Salesforce also launched Claudeforce, a plugin for Anthropic’s Claude that composes emails for salespeople, supplies relevant information, and updates records through chat.

During the quarter, the company secured a $1.6 billion contract from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and announced the acquisition of customer‑service startup Fin for $3.6 billion.

Annualized revenue from Agentforce AI products reached $1.5 billion, up 240% year over year, following a prior quarter’s growth of over 200%.

Salesforce reported $33.5 billion in current remaining performance obligations, slightly above the $33.22 billion projected by StreetAccount analysts.

Even with the strong performance, Salesforce shares were down 22% year to date as of Wednesday’s close, underperforming the S&P 500’s 12% gain. Investor opinions continue to differ on how generative AI will affect traditional software providers.

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