CRM

Valuentum Economic Castleâ„¢ Rating Update

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Read: Keeping the Horse Before the Cart: Valuentum’s Economic Castle™ Rating The Economic Castle Focuses on the Magnitude of Economic Value Creation The Valuentum Economic Castle™ rating is an enhancement of the competitive advantage framework (commonly known as economic moat analysis) that has become widespread and ubiquitous within the investing world. Whereas an economic moat framework evaluates a firm on the basis of the sustainability and durability of its competitive advantages, Valuentum’s Economic Castle™ rating evaluates a firm on the basis of the firm’s future economic profit spread (return on invested capital less its weighted average cost of capital). The companies with the strongest Valuentum Economic Castle™ ratings are poised to generate the most economic value for shareholders in the … Read more

Software: Adobe Keeps Rolling; Oracle Hit by Venezuela Forex Issues

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On Thursday, Adobe (ADBE) put up better-than-expected fiscal first-quarter performance and issued a strong outlook, while Oracle’s (ORCL) fiscal third-quarter results faced currency challenges and its forward guidance came in about as expected. Adobe achieved revenue of $1 billion, at the high end of the targeted range (and above consensus), and exited the fiscal first quarter with an impressive 1.84 million paid Creative Cloud subscriptions, an increase of 405,000 on a sequential basis. Adobe Marketing Cloud quarterly revenue jumped 24% during the period, to $267 million, a nice showing. Diluted earnings per share on a non-GAAP basis came in at $0.30, beating the consensus figure by $0.05. The fiscal first-quarter results were solid, but the company’s outlook was even better. … Read more

Oracle Steals the Headlines

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Last week was a busy week for Oracle (ORCL). On December 18, the tech giant reported fiscal second-quarter results that showed non-GAAP revenue advance 2% (up 3%, excluding the impact from the strengthening US dollar). Non-GAAP new software licenses and cloud software subscription revenues fell modestly (though it annualized a high-teens growth rate in the year-ago period), while non-GAAP new software license updates and product support revenues jumped 6%. Hardware Systems revenues, including hardware systems products and hardware systems support, were essentially unchanged. Non-GAAP operating income fell modestly on a still-very-healthy non-GAAP operating margin of 46%. Non-GAAP net income nudged 1% higher, but share buybacks bolstered non-GAAP earnings per share expansion to 9%, excluding the impact from a strengthening US … Read more

Salesforce.com Continues Rapid Revenue Expansion; Targets $5 Billion+ in Revenue for Fiscal 2015

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On Monday, Salesforce.com (CRM), one of the largest firms in enterprise cloud computing, reported excellent fiscal 2014 third quarter results. Revenue surged 36% year-over-year, while deferred revenue expansion largely kept pace (up 34% year-over-year). Unbilled deferred revenue, or business that is contracted but unbilled and off balance sheet, was $4.2 billion, up 40% from the same period a year-ago. Though non-GAAP earnings per share came in at a meager $0.09 during the period, the firm posted operating cash flow of $138 million, which was up 30% on a year-over-year basis. Capital expenditures jumped to $74 million from $51 million in the year-ago period, resulting in free cash flow of $64 million (or about 6% of sales). Salesforce.com ended the quarter … Read more

Oracle Posts a Weak Quarter to End Its Fiscal Year

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Enterprise hardware and software maker Oracle (click ticker for report: ) ended its fourth quarter with the same lackluster revenue and earnings growth that it posted in the previous quarter. Revenue was flat year-over-year at $11 billion, falling short of consensus estimates. Earnings also fell short of consensus expectations, but grew 5% year-over-year to $0.87 per share on a non-GAAP basis. Earnings per share were helped by management repurchasing $2.8 billion worth of shares during the fourth quarter. Even though top- and bottom-line numbers were weak, Oracle remains a cash machine, generating $13.6 billion in free cash flow for fiscal year 2013—this is 36.6% of annual revenue of $37.2 billion! Yet again, the issue with Oracle remains its hardware and … Read more

Salesforce.com: Completing the Package

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Earlier this week, leading SaaS firm Salesforce.com (click ticker for report: ) made headlines acquiring cloud marketing platform ExactTarget (ET) for $2.5 billion in cash ($33.75/share). The move comes as Salesforce.com hopes to round out its product offering, and adding a company largely known for its email marketing platform helps the firm move toward this goal. Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, excited about the transaction, explained that the landscape is changing, saying on the firm’s conference call about the deal: “There is no doubt our whole industry is changing, and the opportunity to create solutions in sales and service and marketing that are unified, that are mobile, that are social, that are in the cloud, that this combination of these two … Read more

Why We Continue to Like Apple and Microsoft

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In yet another negative blow to the PC market, Gartner reports that PC shipments fell 13.8% year-over-year during the third quarter. The big losers, yet again, were the PC giants Dell (click ticker for report: ), HP (click ticker for report: ), and Toshiba. Of course, the shocking loser was Apple (click ticker for report: ), which saw shipments fall 6% (considerably lower than the 25%+ drops of competitors), though market share increased 110 basis points to 13.6%. With the entire industry slumping, who’s to blame? Not surprisingly, we’re labeling Apple as the major disrupter in the PC market. Since the inception of the iPhone and subsequent iPad releases, computing has shifted more and more toward mobile consumption, with the … Read more