Salesforce Continues to See Cloud Upside
NEW YORK (
) --
Salesforce.com
(CRM) - Get Report
is expected to announce strong third quarter results Thursday, thanks to demand for its core sales cloud business.
Analysts are anticipating a profit of 31 cents per share on revenue of $410.4 million.
Salesforce, which competes with
Oracle
(ORCL) - Get Report
,
Microsoft
(MSFT) - Get Report
and
SAP
(SAP) - Get Report
, specializes in cloud computing services, which run software applications on remote servers for clients. Proponents of cloud computing say it offers faster deployment time for applications without the need for businesses to make expensive hardware purchases.
Salesforce has also pushed into the enterprise social media and collaboration space via its Chatter application. Chatter, which provides a
-like experience for business customers, has seen widespread adoption since its launch last year.
Analysts say social media integration is a valuable part of Salesforce's strategy going forward, and they will be watching closely to see how the company can make money from the application.
"While Chatter is still emerging as a strategic differentiator, we believe that Salesforce is fully invested in Chatter and sees it as a critical element of its future growth strategy," Tom Roderick, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus wrote in an investor note.
Also, Jigsaw, the company's recently-purchased online business contact database, is expected to be a long-term growth driver.
Salesforce announced earlier this month that it had paid $278 million for land to build a new headquarters in San Francisco. Dreamforce, the company's annual user conference, kicks off next month, with former president Bill Clinton as its keynote speaker.
Shares of Salesforce have skyrocketed almost 55% since the beginning of the year, versus 11% for the entire Nasdaq.
Salesforce was trading up almost 5% to $5.47 Thursday morning in anticipation of earnings, which
TheStreet
will be covering in a tech-earnings live blog Thursday afternoon.
--Written by Olivia Oran in New York.
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