The Positives
+ Strong demand across all products. 3Q24 total revenue grew 11% YoY to US$8.7bn, in line with the top end of company guidance, driven by higher subscription and support revenues. Salesforce witnessed resilient demand from large enterprises for its core products with Sales Cloud and Service Cloud revenues growing 11% YoY and 12% YoY to US$1.9bn and US$2.1bn, respectively. Within Data Cloud segment, revenues for integration software MuleSoft grew 26% YoY, while revenues for data visualization tool Tableau grew 16% YoY.
+ cRPO growth continued to accelerate. Salesforce’s current remaining performance obligations (cRPO), a measure of contracted sales to be recognised in the next 12 months, jumped 14% YoY to US$23.9bn. The cRPO growth came above the 11% company guidance and was driven by strong early renewals and large customer wins. Management highlighted that the number of deals over US$1mn grew by 80% YoY. We expect large deals and multi-cloud adoption momentum to support near-term growth as it will lead to higher subscription sales.
+ Margins rise on cost discipline. In 3Q24, Salesforce’s operating expenses fell by 4% YoY to US$5.1bn resulting in an operating margin of 17.2% (vs. 5.9% in 3Q23). The improvement was mainly driven by a leaner cost structure after significant cost-cutting measures over the last 12 months, including job cuts and lower sales-related costs. Headcount was down -11% YoY.
The Negative
– NIL