Salesforce.com 'Cooling Off' After Times Article

Updated from 5:26 p.m. EDT

Salesforce.com offered new details Friday about regulators' concerns over comments from CEO Marc Benioff. The company wants to defuse potential criticism that Benioff has touted its stock in advance of its upcoming IPO.

The trouble stems from a story profiling Salesforce that appeared in The New York Times on May 9, a story for which Benioff allowed a reporter to follow him for most of the day. Four days later, Salesforce said it had temporarily shelved its IPO, though executives declined to give a reason.

In a Friday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, however, Salesforce suggested that the delay had occurred because the article had "presented statements about our company in isolation and did not disclose many of the related risks and uncertainties" described in the prospectus. The company said it held off on its IPO to allow a "cooling off" period so that investors would rely less on the Times article.

An analyst at Renaissance Capital, Kathleen Smith, noted at the time that the offending article revealed that CEO Marc Benioff and other insiders had sold millions of shares in Salesforce.com, a fact that was left out of the prospectus because it occurred some time ago.

John Gavin, president of the research firm SEC Insight, said on Friday he'd like to know whether Salesforce is also being investigated for reasons not mentioned in the latest filing. At times, he said, companies will hint that regulators are scrutinizing one area of their businesses, but investors will later realize it was only one of many areas under investigation.

"One of our ongoing disappointments with the SEC is that companies can be under investigation and not required to disclose it, or even if they do disclose it, they may not disclose the nature of the investigation or details," he said.