It was barely a week ago when Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff held court at the foot of the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco to mark the 1,070-foot-high skyscraper's grand opening.
On Wednesday, Benioff's company reached another new height, as Salesforce shares hit an all-time high during the day's stock-trading session as investors threw their weight behind the cloud-based software giant following its better-than-expected quarterly report and outlook.
At one point during the day, Salesforce shares climbed to a record of $132.55 due to reaction to the company reporting a fiscal first-quarter profit of 74 cents a share, excluding one-time items, on revenue of $3.01 billion. During the same period a year ago, Salesforce earned 29 cents a share on $2.4 billion in sales. Salesforce also beat the estimates of Wall Street analysts, who had forecast the company to earn 46 cents a share on revenue of $2.94 billion.
By the time the market closed, Salesforce shares had pulled back from their lofty intra-day high, but still ended the day with a gain of almost 2 percent, at $129.30.
Salesforce's performance in the quarter was highlighted by the $2.81 billion it took in from subscription and support sales. That total rose by 27 percent from the first quarter of 2017.
The company also said that for its second quarter it expects to earn 46 cents to 47 cents a share, on revenue between $3.22 billion and $3.23 billion, and for the entire year, Salesforce estimates it will earn $2.29 to $2.31 a share on revenue of $13.08 billion to $13.13 billion. Salesforce is looking at the completion of its recent $6.5 billion acquisition of Mulesoft to add to its earnings and sales and keep it on track for its goal of reaching at least $13 billion in revenue this year.
