Latest news with #RishiJaluria
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Why Salesforce (CRM) Stock Is Trading Lower Today
Shares of customer relationship management software maker Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) fell 6.4% in the afternoon session after the company reported underwhelming first-quarter 2025 results (fiscal 2026), with high expectations heading into the quarter, suggesting markets wanted a more resounding beat, as sales, earnings, and operating profits all came in mostly in line the Wall Street's estimates. On a more positive note, Salesforce beat analysts' billings expectations by a more convincing margin, and its full-year EPS guidance was raised and slightly exceeded Wall Street's estimates. Some Wall Street analysts weren't impressed at all with the results, raising concerns, including weak RPO growth, acquisition-related issues, and macro uncertainty. For example, RBC Capital analyst Rishi Jaluria downgraded the stock to Sector Perform from Outperform and reduced their price target on the stock to $275 from $420. The analysts added "Stepping back, while we like the margin expansion story at Salesforce and the valuation is undemanding, deal risk with Informatica has tipped the scales for us." Lastly, some investors may be skeptical of Salesforce's $8 billion acquisition of Informatica. The company's historical large acquisitions (Tableau, Slack) were met with some uneven results and skepticism over strategic rationale. Because of that, Salesforce has been focused on organic growth and margin expansion in the last few years. This latest deal could be a change of tone, and some are not happy about that prospect. The stock market overreacts to news, and big price drops can present good opportunities to buy high-quality stocks. Is now the time to buy Salesforce? Access our full analysis report here, it's free. Salesforce's shares are not very volatile and have only had 9 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today's move indicates the market considers this news meaningful, although it might not be something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business. The biggest move we wrote about over the last year was 12 months ago when the stock dropped 20.2% on the news that the company reported first quarter earnings results with key top line metrics including revenue and billings falling below expectations. The company experienced softer bookings in the quarter due to elongated deal cycles, deal compression, and high levels of budget scrutiny. It called out continuing pressure in the professional services business and also observed some volatility in the Licensing segment. Looking ahead, management expects the measured buying behavior observed in Q1 to continue throughout the fiscal year, which points to a challenging sales environment. As a result, it gave revenue guidance for the next quarter, which missed analysts' expectations. Full year subscription revenue guidance was also lowered. While the company maintained its revenue guidance for the full fiscal year, the expected growth rate of 8% to 9% is relatively modest compared to previous years. Lastly, the company expected stock-based compensation to be slightly above 8% of revenue, a modest increase from prior guidance. Overall, this was a bad quarter for Salesforce, as investors are likely to tame their optimism following the weak performance and guidance. Salesforce is down 21.3% since the beginning of the year, and at $260.23 per share, it is trading 29.3% below its 52-week high of $367.87 from December 2024. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Salesforce's shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $1,489. Here at StockStory, we certainly understand the potential of thematic investing. Diverse winners from Microsoft (MSFT) to Alphabet (GOOG), Coca-Cola (KO) to Monster Beverage (MNST) could all have been identified as promising growth stories with a megatrend driving the growth. So, in that spirit, we've identified a relatively under-the-radar profitable growth stock benefiting from the rise of AI, available to you FREE via this link. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Box price target raised to $24 from $21 at RBC Capital
RBC Capital analyst Rishi Jaluria raised the firm's price target on Box (BOX) to $24 from $21 and keeps an Underperform rating on the shares. The company reported good Q1 results, with revenue that was slightly above consensus thanks to stronger billings and better than expected guidance, the analyst tells investors in a research note. Growth acceleration continues to rest on EA SKU upgrades however, which could be significant, though the firm continues to believe that the timing for impacts to reach estimates remains unclear, RBC added. Easily unpack a company's performance with TipRanks' new KPI Data for smart investment decisions Receive undervalued, market resilient stocks right to your inbox with TipRanks' Smart Value Newsletter Published first on TheFly – the ultimate source for real-time, market-moving breaking financial news. Try Now>> See today's best-performing stocks on TipRanks >> Read More on BOX: Disclaimer & DisclosureReport an Issue Box price target raised to $45 from $40 at DA Davidson Box Inc. Hold Rating: Balancing Strong Demand and AI Innovations Against Decelerating Growth and Market Uncertainties Box price target raised to $42 from $38 at Raymond James Box price target raised to $39 from $37 at JPMorgan Box price target raised to $38 from $35 at Morgan Stanley
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Salesforce earnings are 'better than feared': AI impact in focus
Salesforce (CRM) stock is popping in extended trading after the company reported strong first quarter results, had better-than-expected sales, and lifted its full-year outlook. RBC Capital Markets software equity analyst Rishi Jaluria joins Market Domination with Julie Hyman and Josh Lipton to share his instant reaction to the earnings print. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination Overtime here. Rishi, always good to see you on the show. So, Salesforce reports, at least initially here, Rishi, investors like what they see. But let me get your, your instant reaction to these results. What do you make of them? Yeah, absolutely. And Josh, always a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. Look, I, I think the, the numbers are better than feared, right? That is, I think the right way that I would think about it. Obviously there was kind of the concern with the Informatica deal that, are they buying growth? Are they trying to hide or slow down? But, you know, you saw a, a slight beat, you saw CRPO coming ahead of expectations, you know, the guide seems completely fine. And so that's kind of what, what I think is going on here. Why you're seeing the stock up. Now I think what's going to be really important on the earnings call itself, is defending this Informatica deal, you know, why it's necessary for them to own the asset and own the full data stack. Rishi, I'm gonna take a brief pause here to ask you to do a little jargon busting. CRPO, current remaining performance obligations, for people who are not intimately familiar with this company as you are, what does that mean? And why is it important? Absolutely. So thanks so much for keeping me honest. I, I get caught up in the Silicon Valley and Wall Street bubble, but at the end of the day, the thing is with all these SaaS companies, right, it's on a subscription model. And so you bill upfront for a year or, or however long, and then the revenue is recognized, you know, basically on a daily basis over the course of the contract. And so because of that, revenue is actually a backwards looking indicator to the point that in any given quarter, about 80% of your revenue was already booked ahead of time. It's not new business. And so current remaining performance obligations is a more forward looking indicator. It's what is kind of future business that's expected to be recognized. And that's the thing is with all these companies, you want to think about what's happening in the future, not what's happened in the past. And that's why we look more towards metrics like CRPO or billings or whatever have you, rather than just the reported revenue number. Rishi, listen, Salesforce is acquiring Informatica for about $8 billion. In your opinion, Rishi, is that a smart move by Mr. Benioff strategically and financially? I'm a little skeptical on it. Uh, you know, and I've wrote about this publicly. I think there's, there's a couple concerns I have. Number one is, you know, Informatica has gone through a little bit of a rough patch of their own. And yeah, they're getting it at a cheaper price, but it also feels like a different financial profile than what they were talking about a year ago. Number two is, I don't know that they need to own it. I, I get the thesis around, you know, having Informatica plus data cloud and MuleSoft, and what does that do to Agent Force, but what does this tell us about how the technology at Data, uh, Data Cloud is going if they felt that they needed to own Informatica? And maybe lastly, you know, unfortunately, Salesforce's recent track record with acquisitions hasn't been that strong. If we think about Slack and Tableau, you know, sure, a decade ago, when they were buying ExactTarget and Demandware, they've done well with those acquisitions. So I think there's just too many open questions on my mind right now to get fully behind the acquisition. I would love to be proven wrong. Rishi, I mentioned agentic AI as something that they obviously with Agent Force and everything else, they really are emphasizing here. How much of their business is related to that at this point? And then looking out, if you look a year from now, five years from now, how much of their business will be related to that? Yeah. So today, they gave a metric that somewhere near a billion dollars of ARR is coming from the entire AI and data solutions. So that would include Data Cloud, that would include some of their co-pilots, everything like that. Agent Force today is a de minimus part of revenue, right, as a standalone. And that's not surprising. One point that we've always said is as, even though we're huge bulls on generative AI and agentic AI, it is going to take years before this translates into real revenue. Right now we're all going through use case discovery, trying to figure out how to get the most value out of this, what efficiency does it drive? What cost savings do we have? But also what new revenue can we generate as a result of this? And so the hope is if Agent Force is as successful as our friend Mark wants it to be, it can be a meaningful part of the business. Like we could be talking double digits percent part of the business. And it should have indirect benefits on the rest of Salesforce as well, you know, including competitive win rates, expansions and customers. So altogether, that should, if it works as planned, lead to a better growth outlook and brighter growth algorithm than what we're seeing today. Rishi, always great to see you and to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Salesforce earnings are 'better than feared': AI impact in focus
Salesforce (CRM) stock is popping in extended trading after the company reported strong first quarter results, had better-than-expected sales, and lifted its full-year outlook. RBC Capital Markets software equity analyst Rishi Jaluria joins Market Domination with Julie Hyman and Josh Lipton to share his instant reaction to the earnings print. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination Overtime here.
Globe and Mail
3 days ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Salesforce (CRM): New Buy Recommendation for This Technology Giant
RBC Capital analyst Rishi Jaluria maintained a Buy rating on Salesforce (CRM – Research Report) today and set a price target of $420.00. The company's shares closed last Friday at $273.13. Confident Investing Starts Here: Easily unpack a company's performance with TipRanks' new KPI Data for smart investment decisions Receive undervalued, market resilient stocks right to your inbox with TipRanks' Smart Value Newsletter Jaluria covers the Technology sector, focusing on stocks such as Microsoft, Clearwater Analytics Holdings, and NICE. According to TipRanks, Jaluria has an average return of -9.7% and a 47.31% success rate on recommended stocks. Currently, the analyst consensus on Salesforce is a Moderate Buy with an average price target of $346.63, representing a 26.91% upside. In a report released today, Goldman Sachs also reiterated a Buy rating on the stock with a $340.00 price target. CRM market cap is currently $262.1B and has a P/E ratio of 42.93. Based on the recent corporate insider activity of 233 insiders, corporate insider sentiment is negative on the stock. This means that over the past quarter there has been an increase of insiders selling their shares of CRM in relation to earlier this year. Last month, R DAVID SCHMAIER, the Chief Product & Impact Officer of CRM sold 6,959.00 shares for a total of $1,762,714.70.
