💃 Calling It Early - Salesforce 2023Q1 is a Financial Success🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! The Salesforce Q1 earnings call isn’t until May 31, but you can feel the 💰💰💰 in the air!

After a rough back-half of 2022, Marc authoritatively took the power back in the 2022Q4 earnings call 💪.

But it was not all sunshine 🌞 and rainbows 🌈 .

Fast forward to today, we predict 2023Q1 results, 2 weeks early 🔮.

These predictions were developed through guessing, intuition, and tarot cards 👀. No interviews or research were conducted. 😉 

The prediction is - Financials are great! But at what cost?

But first, please be sure to refer your fellow Salesforce professionals! It's easy to do. It's fun. It's good for your skin. All you gotta do is copy/paste the below referral link, then send to your friend!

Agenda for today includes

• Calling It Early - Salesforce 2023Q1 is a Financial Success

• Daily Principle

• All the Memes

Calling It Early - Salesforce 2023Q1 is a Financial Success

Unicorns 🦄 and Fondue 🫕 

From a financial perspective, let’s look at 3 of the good things that happened in Q1-

1) Stock Price

Salesforce (ticker: CRM) stock price rose 32% in Q1 📈📈📈.

Investors clearly have exceptional confidence in Salesforce’s financial execution, especially in this high-inflation, relatively stagnant market.

For comparison, the S&P500 is up 5.5% and the tech-heavy NASDAQ is up 14.8% over the same Q1 period. The Dow was down 0.9% 😳.

2) Leverage. Leverage Everywhere.

• More with less - With the layoffs, the remaining Salesforce employees are doing more with less. More responsibilities and more sales. With less people to do them.

• Pricing - Salesforce has traditionally been very lax with new pricing and contractual price increases. Anecdotally, this is becoming less lax. Shareholders don’t like seeing “free” money left on the table.

• Less “Sweetheart” Deals - related to the above, Salesforce AE’s had been open to making deals. Free EAC licenses, heavily discounted first-year Marketing Cloud subscriptions, etc. This is becoming exceptional, rather than norm it was.

3) Put It All Together -

Put those first 2 points together and you have a money printer 💰💰💰.

Less expenses (payroll) and more revenue on existing products and clients. It’s the wettest investor scenario. 😅 

Spiderwebs 🕸 and Wet Blankets

Not saying this is a zero-sum game, but winners AND losers abound.

1) Current and Laid-Off Salesforce Employees

The current workforce is doing more. With less. Likely working longer hours. Expected to hit higher quotas. And all the fun pressures that come with that.

Laid off employees became out of a job. Some may have quickly gotten a new role, but others are still looking, 5 months later 😟.

Some of these current and ex-employees may also be shareholders through RSUs and 401k plans. Mixed feelings, for sure.

2) Salesforce Customers

New and existing Salesforce customers are absorbing Salesforce’s pricing “diligence” initiatives.

Remember those leverage points? Yeah, it’s Salesforce’s customers who are paying into the products and services that are enriching the shareholders.

AND

Remember those Salesforce AE’s who are doing more? With less? Yeah, it’s Salesforce’s customers who are experiencing the newly-very-busy AE’s.

Increased invoice amounts + increased response times = 😡🤬 

3) Salesforce Ohana Culture

Yup. Salesforce is currently in the “break” phase.

After decades of nurturing one of the most unique and enviable company cultures, a new perspective of the company is taking root.

Takeaway

If the financials are as good as expected, that will be the focus of the earnings call.

The analysts only care about the financials.

And the Salesforce execs are not going acknowledge culture issues on a high-profile call, especially after dragged through the mud by the press for most of 2022.

But what happens to the soul of the company?

Daily Principle

and now....Your Daily Memes