Salesforce.com, Interpublic: S&P Gainers

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Salesforce.com (CRM) and Interpublic Group (IPG) were among the best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 Friday.

The S&P 500 rose 2.28 points, or 0.17%, to close at 1,365.74 on Friday.

Shares of Salesforce.com rose 9.01% to $143.64. After Thursday's closing bell, the cloud computing company reported fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of $61.6 million, or 43 cents a share, on revenue of $632 million. Analysts were expecting profit of 40 cents a share on revenue of $624 million.

The company also said it anticipates revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2013 of between $673 million and $678 million, an increase of about 33% year over year.

Think Equity analysts raised their rating on Salesforce.com to buy from hold and have a price target of $165 on the stock.

"Our contacts suggest competitor distractions (via recent-acquisitions) are accentuating CRM's disruptive market-positioning, leading to larger, multi-element deals," Think Equity analysts wrote in the report Friday.

The analysts added, "Despite our concerns around Enterprisewide data integration limitations, we think CRM has an attractive 6 to 12-month window to accelerate share-gains as the larger ERPs play catch-up with their Cloud strategies."

Thirty-three of the 42 analysts who cover Salesforce.com rate it at buy. Five analysts give it a hold rating and four rate it a sell.

Salesforce.com has an estimated price-to-earnings ratio for next year of 66.8; the average for software companies is 28.58. For comparison, Adobe Systems (ADBE) and Citrix Systems (CTXS) both have lower forward P/Es of 12.38 and 24, respectively.

TheStreet Ratings gives Salesforce.com a C grade and a hold rating. The stock has risen 41.75% year to date.

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