Salesforce.com inc First Quarter Earnings

Salesforce.com inc (NYSE:CRM) announced its results for the most recent quarter on May 17, 2012. Salesforce.com is a cloud computing company, which provides customer relationship management (CRM) products to businesses. It offers a technology platform for Internet-based computing, storage, and connectivity solutions for customers and developers.

In most situations, when earnings do not meet analyst estimates, a business' stock price will tend to drop. On the other hand, when actual earnings beat estimates by a significant amount, the share price will likely surge. SEE: Everything Investors Need To Know About Earnings

The Numbers: Salesforce.com inc's revenues topped expectations, though the company's EPS fell short of predictions. The company's net loss for the quarter was $19.5 million.



Management Quote: "Salesforce.com continues to be the fastest growing software company of its size," said Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. "Last year we became the first enterprise cloud computing company to achieve $2 billion in revenue, and we're now poised to deliver the first ever $3 billion year in fiscal 2013."



A Look Back: Last quarter was the fifth in a row that the company saw shrinking gross margins, as they fell 1.4 percentage points from the year-earlier quarter to 78.2%. In that span, margins have contracted an average of 1.9 percentage points per quarter on a year-over-year basis.



Looking Ahead: The outlook for the company's results in the upcoming quarter is unfavorable. The average estimate for the second quarter is one cent per share, down from 9 cents 90 days ago. Decreasing earnings estimates is generally a negative sign as it suggests analyst believe future earnings to be weaker than previously anticipated. At 10 cents per share, the average estimate for the fiscal year has fallen from 41 cents 90 days ago.



(Company fundamentals provided by Xignite Financials. Earnings estimates provided by Zacks)