Salesforce - Zacks Investment Research



|, Inc. |(CRM - NASDAQ) |$119.16 |

Note: All changes since the last report are highlighted.

Reason for Report: Target Price Change

Prev. Ed.: Mar 26, 2018; Target Price Change

Firms’ Recommendations: Positive: 96.9% (31 firms); Neutral: 3.1% (1); Negative:0.0% (0) Prev. Ed: 31;1;0

Firms’ Target Price: $134.43 (↑$2.20 from last edition; 30 firms) Firms’ Avg. Expected Return: 12.8%

Note: Although dated Apr 11, 2018, tables are as of Mar 14, 2018.

Note: The tables below (Revenues, Margins and Earnings per Share) contain material from fewer brokers than in the Valuation table. The extra figures in the Valuation table are taken from reports that did not have accompanying spreadsheet model.

Portfolio Manager Executive Summary

Headquartered in San Francisco, , Inc. (CRM) is an enterprise cloud computing company, which distributes business software on a subscription basis. Salesforce hosts the applications offsite and is best known for its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) products. The company also offers a technology platform for customers and developers to build and run business applications. Salesforce faces increased competition within the on-demand CRM market from Microsoft Corp., SAP, International Business Management and Oracle.

Firms’ Opinions: Of the 32 firms in the Digest group covering the stock, 96.9% (31 firms) had a positive stance, while the remaining 3.1% (one firm) were neutral. Target prices range from a low of $96.00 to a high of $152.00, with the average being $134.43.

Bullish (Buy or equivalent outlook) – 31 firms or 96.9% – These firms remain encouraged by the company’s secular shift to the software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, which will likely facilitate higher acceptance of its core products while the newer products gain momentum. The company has been expanding its presence in Europe. Some firms believe that the demand for data centers will help the company to expand its business in different geographic regions. The firms are bullish on the company’s solid reputation and its firm footing within the cloud computing industry. Notably, Salesforce’s partnership agreements with Amazon’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Alphabet, have been helping it to expand international operations. They further believe that the higher number of deal wins and the rapid adoption of Salesforce1 Customer Platform are positives. Also, the release of the latest IoT platform will help the company to gain additional market share going forward. Moreover, the firms believe that the ExactTarget acquisition and its recently introduced Salesforce1 Community Cloud and Salesforce Wave will strengthen its market position and boost revenues. Additionally, the firms believe that Salesforce backed by strong fundamentals is poised to gain from the expansion of SaaS and data analytics.

Cautious (Neutral or equivalent outlook) – 1 firm or 3.1% – Though the firm is positive about the company’s fundamentals and growth outlook, it remains concerned about intensifying competition in the cloud-based CRM market. The firm is also cautious about pricing pressure, and increasing sales and marketing expenses which may hurt margins.

Apr 11, 2018

Overview

Salesforce is a provider of on-demand Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, which enables organizations to manage critical operations in a better way, such as sales force automation, customer service and support, marketing automation, document management, analytics and custom application development. Founded in 1999, Salesforce began offering its on-demand application services on a subscription basis in Feb 2000. The company has leveraged its expertise in on-demand software to increase the scale of operations and also offers a technology platform for customers and developers to build and run business applications.

Salesforce derives revenues from two sources: (1) Subscription revenues, which comprise subscription fees from customers accessing enterprise cloud computing application service, as well as from those purchasing additional support beyond the standard support that is included in the basic subscription fee.

(2) Professional services and other revenues consisting primarily of training fees.

Key investment considerations as identified by the firms are as follows:

|Key Positive Arguments |Key Negative Arguments |

|The company is expected to benefit from the secular trend in on-demand |Increasing competition in the on-demand CRM, SaaS, and PaaS markets could |

|CRM applications. |impact renewal pricing of new products. |

|Salesforce broke through the $10-billion run rate and named itself the |Any potential service outage may result in client loss or reduced interest|

|first company in the history of enterprise cloud software industry to |by prospects. |

|have achieved this milestone so fast, including its closest rivals like |Ramp up in hiring could put margins under pressure. |

|Microsoft, Oracle and SAP SE. |Uncertainty and seasonality in billings. |

|Salesforce Chatter is expected to become a revenue earner. |Salesforce faces stiff competition from Microsoft Corp. and Oracle in the |

|The cloud service is easy to deploy, as clients do not need to spend |cloud-based CRM market. |

|time on procuring, installing or maintaining servers, storage, | |

|networking equipment, security products or other infrastructure, | |

|hardware and software. | |

For more information, please visit the company’s website

Note: Salesforce’s fiscal year ends on Jan 31.

Apr 11, 2018

Long-Term Growth

Salesforce is the world’s leading CRM company in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) enterprise application market. The company was the first to sign up large customer accounts, which enabled it to attain a strong market position.

Acquisitions have always been one of Salesforce’s key growth strategies. Over the last two years, the company has closed a number of takeovers worth more than $4 billion. In FY17 alone, the company inked as many as 13 takeover deals, including its biggest ever buyout – Demandware. Additionally, the company acquired one business in 2018. The firms believe that Salesforce’s sustained focus on expanding its business through strategic acquisitions and investments will drive growth over the long run.

In the last few years, Salesforce has invested heavily in Europe with acquiring several start-ups which is driving its revenues. Notably, in FY17, Salesforce’s revenues from Europe increased 18% y/y and accounted for 16% of total revenues. Firms believe expansion in Europe would enable Salesforce to diversify its international revenues, going forward.

Furthermore, Accenture’s partnership strategies have enabled it to enter newer markets, diversify and broaden the product portfolio and maintain a leading position. The firms believe that the company’s regular partnership agreements with the likes of Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce and SAP, will significantly contribute to the revenue stream.

The Salesforce Chatter platform is the enterprise social collaboration application platform introduced by the company after its Salesforce 2 platform. We believe that the free add-on offerings like Chatter will enable Salesforce to differentiate its core offerings, making them more attractive for customers This should therefore generate additional business volume. Some of its clients include Burberry, Comcast, Kelly Services, Charles Schwab, Chipotle, Bausch & Lomb, Dell, Kimberly-Clark, Unilever and Philips. Moreover, the company has also introduced Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud platform, which is part of the Salesforce1 Customer Platform that provides social, mobile and cloud networking features for building business applications, including data models and objects to manage data. It also helps application developers to build and deploy social and mobile applications. The rapid adoption of Salesforce platforms demonstrates its growing opportunities in the ever-growing cloud computing segment.

Apr 11, 2018

Target Price/Valuation

Provided below is a summary of valuations and ratings as compiled by Zacks Research Digest:

|Rating Distribution |

|Positive |96.9% |

|Neutral |3.1% |

|Negative |0.0% |

|Avg. Target Price |$134.43↑ |

|Digest High |$152.00↑ |

|Digest Low |$96.00 |

|No. of Brokers with Target Price/Total |30/32 |

Risks to the target price include big deal dependence, challenges managing growth, global economic pressure; integration of acquired entities, managing Wall Street expectations, potential pricing pressure, rich valuation, increased competition within the on-demand CRM market, lack of adoption of newer solutions and increasing customer churn rates.

Recent Events

On Apr 5, 2018, Salesforce issued $2.5 billion of senior notes, net proceeds of which will be used to fund its Mulesoft acquisition partly.

On Mar 20, 2018, Salesforce entered into a definitive agreement to buy Mulesoft for an enterprise value of approximately $6.5 billion.

On Mar 9, 2018, Salesforce announced a partnership with Dropbox aimed at enhancing customer experience for enterprises via deeper connections.

On Feb 28, 2018, Salesforce announced 4Q18 results. Highlights are as follows:

• Total revenues were $2.85 billion, up 24.3% from the year-ago quarter.

• Non-GAAP EPS was 35 cents, up 25% from 3Q18.

On Feb 8, 2018, Salesforce announced that it will invest around $2 billion in its Canadian business over the span of the next 5 years.

On Jan 8, 2018, Salesforce announced the acquisition of Attic Labs, a provider of an open-source decentralized database.

Revenue

Per the press release, revenues of $2.85 billion increased 24.3% y/y and surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2.81 billion. Furthermore, revenues came above the guided range of $2.80-$2.81 billion. Revenues grew 21% at constant currency (cc). The improvement can be primarily attributable to rapid adoption of the company’s cloud-based solutions.

Top-line Details

Now, coming to its business segments, revenues at Subscription and Support increased about 25.8% from the year-ago quarter to $2.66 billion. Professional Services and Other revenues climbed 6.9% to $193.7 million.

Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Platform and other and Marketing & Commerce Cloud grew 16%, 28%, 37% and 33%, respectively.

Geographically, the company witnessed revenue growth of 19%, 31% and 26% at constant currency (cc) in the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific, respectively, on a y/y basis.

Customer adoption improved in the quarter. Of the top 10 customers up for renewal in the quarter, eight expanded their relationship with Salesforce.

The number of deals worth more than $1 million grew 43% in the quarter. Average deal size continued to expand. Salesforce’s clientele also expanded with the addition of Siemens, ABB, Deutsche Bahn, and BBVA during the quarter.

Salesforce is also aggressively penetrating varied industries like financial services and healthcare. During the quarter, the company expanded relationships with TD Bank, Pacific Life, Mass Mutual, Anthem and Cancer Treatment Centers of America.

The company’s ecosystem continues to expand, with 55% of new business generated from partners like Dell, IBM and . The new strategic partnership with Google will connect Salesforce with Google Cloud and Google Analytics.

The partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been helping Salesforce expand its international operations in countries like Australia and Canada.

Earlier, the company used to run its software at its own data centers, which was curbing its growth potential. However, the company decided to utilize the AWS data center’s geographical reach to expand its international business. In addition, Salesforce plans to invest about $400 million on AWS’ cloud platform over the next four years.

Provided below is a summary of revenues as compiled by Zacks Digest:

|Revenues ($ in Million) |4Q17A |

|Copy Editor | |

|Content Ed. | |

|Reason for Update |Target Price Change |

|Lead Analyst |Anirudha Bhagat |

|QCA |Aniruddha Ganguly |

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April 11, 2018

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