FBR Capital Maintains Bullish View on salesforce (CRM) Following Strong Q3
salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) revenue of $1.71B beat consensus of $1.70B. Billings of $1.52B beat consensus of $1.49B and grew 21% YOY. Billings of $1.52 billion beat consensus of $1.49 billion and grew 21% year over year. Operating margin of 13.3% beat consensus of 12.1%. Pro forma EPS of $0.21 beat consensus of $0.19.
For F4Q, the company guided for revenue of $1.78B to $1.79B (consensus: $1.78B) and pro forma EPS of $0.18 to $0.19 (consensus: $0.19). The company guided for FY17 revenue in the range of $8.0B to $8.1B, or 20% to 22% YOY growth.
In F3Q, CRM inked the largest Marketing Cloud deal in its history with a large retailer. Analyst believe this should continue to be a benefit and help Marketing Cloud sustain the high-20s revenue growth experienced in FY16.
FBR Capital analyst, Samad Samana, believes that one of the key competitive differentiators for salesforce.com is its ability to attract top-level talent in the technology industry. The company has struck again, luring away Bob Stutz from Microsoft, where he served as the head of Dynamics CRM. Mr. Stutz will serve as the chief analytics officer, and we believe this should further benefit the company's ambitions to grow the Analytics Cloud.
No change to Outperform rating or $88 PT.
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Shares of salesforce.com closed at $77.35 yesterday.