WDAY

Salesforce’s Growth Story Continues

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Image Shown: Salesforce Inc expects its impressive revenue growth story will continue at a brisk pace going forward. Image Source: Salesforce Inc – Company IR Presentation By Callum Turcan On December 1, Salesforce Inc (CRM) reported third quarter earnings for fiscal 2021 (period ended October 31, 2020) that saw the Software-as-a-Service (‘SaaS’) giant beat both consensus top- and bottom-line estimates. While Salesforce has historically focused on growing its core customer relationship management (‘CRM’) offerings, the firm more recently has been expanding into new and adjacent areas to extend its impressive growth runway. Acquisitions For instance, Salesforce announced it was acquiring Slack Technologies Inc (WORK) at the start of December for ~$27.7 billion in a cash-and-stock deal. This acquisition will significantly … Read more

June Dividend Growth Newsletter & Intrinsic Value Investing

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“But how, you will ask, does one decide what [stocks are] “attractive”? Most analysts feel they must choose between two approaches customarily thought to be in opposition: “value” and “growth,”…We view that as fuzzy thinking…Growth is always a component of value [and] the very term “value investing” is redundant.“  —                — Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway annual report, 1992 — By Brian Nelson, CFA — To add our new options commentary to your membership, please register here ($500/year). — Hi everyone!  — We remain unequivocally bullish on the markets and intrinsic value investing. We believe value today rests within companies that have strong net cash positions (all cash less short- and long-term debt) and solid expected future free cash flows … Read more

Oracle Remains Confident on Transition to Cloud

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Image Source: Peter Kaminski By Kris Rosemann Oracle (ORCL) is still working to transform its operations to a cloud-based business model, but it is already selling more new software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) annually recurring cloud revenue than any other company in the world, including key competitors Salesforce.com (CRM) and Workday (WDAY). Oracle competes in large SaaS markets that Salesforce.com does not, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Human Capital Management (HCM). After many years of developing the most complete ERP suite in the cloud, Oracle Fusion ERP is the overall market leader in the enterprise cloud ERP market. The firm has more than 10 times the number of ERP customers than Workday, … Read more

Oracle’s Cloud Performance Leaves a Hazy Overall Outlook

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After reporting fourth quarter and full year results for fiscal 2015 on June 17, Oracle (ORCL) shares took a significant hit. It is easy to see the effect foreign exchange rates had on the quarterly results, but there is more to the miss than meets the eye. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015, Oracle reported revenue of ~$10.7 billion, a decrease of 5% as reported, or an increase of 3% on a constant currency basis. Driving the top line lower was a decrease in software and cloud revenue, more specifically new software licenses, where sales dropped 17%; new software licenses make up more than 20% of total revenue. Attempting to offset this significant drop was strong 29% growth in … 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 Has Room to Run

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Image Source: Salesforce Inc – Fourth Quarter of Fiscal 2022 IR Earnings Presentation By Callum Turcan Salesforce Inc (CRM) was founded in 1999 as software-as-a-service (‘SaaS’) company built around customer relationship management (‘CRM’) software, initially a version created by its co-founders Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Frank Dominguez, and Dave Moellenhoff. The firm is headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company offers software that assists its customers with marketing, customer service, sales, digital commerce, business development, collaboration, analytics, recruitment, and numerous other activities. These offerings aim to improve workplace productivity by streamlining certain functions and automating others. Salesforce provides a comprehensive suite of software solutions designed for businesses and government entities across its Customer 360 platform, while using analytics and AI … Read more

Our Thoughts on Rackspace and Zoom Video Communications

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Image Source: Rackspace Technology Inc – Second Quarter of 2020 IR Earnings Presentation The appeal of the SaaS space is that these types of companies are asset-light and are light on capital expenditures, potentially allowing for meaningful free cash flows if scale is achieved. Secular growth tailwinds underpin their free cash flow growth trajectories, and the pandemic has accelerated changes that were already underway long before COVID-19 came into the picture. We appreciate that Rackspace is beginning to pay down its net debt load, though more work needs to be done on that front. Zoom Video Communications posted truly impressive results; however, we caution that there are many competitors in the live online video chat arena and staying on top … Read more

Stock Market Outlook for 2021

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By Valuentum Analysts February 8, 2021 2020 was one for the history books. We covered our thoughts and reflections on the past year in our “2020 Won’t Soon Be Forgotten” article (link here), and now we are looking towards the future. Global health authorities should be able to bring an end to the ongoing coronavirus (‘COVID-19’) pandemic sooner than many had expected as several vaccines have already been improved for emergency use and several others appear increasingly likely to get approved. Global vaccine distribution activities are currently underway, and this should allow the world to slowly return to pre-pandemic activities. Before then, immense stimulus measures launched primarily in developed nations should support global economic activities until the public health crisis … Read more