💃 Salesforce 2023Q4 (FY2024Q4) Earnings Call 🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! Happy Leap Day to you all, enjoy your bonus 24 hours!

All of your Salesforce 2023Q4 (FY2024Q4) Earnings Call highlights wrapped into a 4 minute burrito 🌯. You’re welcome, please refer a friend 👇

Here’s a taste -

🤔 Q4 earnings were great, but the stock is down?

🗣️ “Data Cloud and AI are nirvana!” - Marc

😅 “The extra leap year day will have no impact on revenue .” - CFO Amy

Let’s get into The Good, The Bad, and The Wacky 👀 ⬇️

THE GOOD

Salesforce Wins

^Marc live-tweeted this during the call! 😎

🔥 Another Double Beat 🥊 

📈 Revenue | $9.29 billion actual vs $9.22 billion expected, and an 10.8% YoY increase

📈 Earnings | $2.29 per share vs $2.26 expected

The fourth reminder in a row, a double beat is when the top (revenue) and bottom (profit) lines beat analyst expectations 🎉 .

If you’re keeping score at home, 2023 (FY2024) was a double beat across the board, all 4 quarters.

🔥A Plethora of Sales

• Top-10 deals all included Sales and Service Cloud

• >$10MM deals grew by 80% YoY

• 25% of deals >$1MM included Data Cloud

• 15% of new logos purchased AI (Einstein 1)

• Tableau was sold in 20 of 25 top deals

• Mulesoft was sold in 8 of 10 top deals

• Slack was sold in nearly half of top-50 deals

One additional note - Professional Services revenue was down 9% YoY. This was caused by big clients “taking smaller bites of the apple.” Rather than massive changes all at once, clients are opting for small changes, let them simmer, then more changes. Sensible 😃.

🔥 You Get a Dividend! You Get a Dividend!

^Hopefully you read that in Oprah’s voice.

For the first time, Salesforce is issuing a dividend to shareholders. A dividend is a payment to shareholders just for owning the stock. Pretty sweet deal!

And where is this new generosity coming from? Great question! Scroll down to The Wacky section. Or, peep this tweet-

THE BAD

Salesforce Can Do Better

😬 No Succession Plan

Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch.

No mention of a succession plan in the 75 minute call.

At this point, it’s clear the analysts on the call are not being allowed to ask the elephant-in-the-room question 🤷🏻.

😬 Slack Executive Exodus

You knew about Lidiane Jones, the beloved Salesforce executive who was given the reigns to Slack, but then quickly moved on to take the Bumble CEO job.

But, less well known (shout out to Max Maeder for the scoop), is the gaggle of Slack executives that Lidiane took with her to Bumble.

While it’s not unheard of for a big tech company to have their executive pantries raided, it is highly concerning for Salesforce and Marc, who has no clear successor and is losing his top talent en masse.

😬 Data Cloud and AI

Almost exactly one year ago today, Marc sounded like a man who got 13 nuggets in his Chick-fil-a 12 count.

But in yesterday’s call, he sounded like he was trying to cash an expired free chicken sammich coupon.

Their was a manic conviction in his voice ^{(like the 14 second mark 👆)} that Data Cloud and AI are necessities of every Sales and Service Cloud stack. But is it kinda like ADHD meds, except humans lived 10,000 years without that medication and seemed to do ok?

THE WACKY

Interesting Salesforce Stuff

📉 Salesforce Stock Drops Afterhours

A double beat and Salesforce stock drops. So, what caused the afterhours dip after beating 2023 (FY2024) analyst expectations?

It’s because Salesforce’s 2024 (FY2025) forecast is single-digit growth. And in big-tech, single-digit growth is your NBA team that can’t even make the playoffs. UNACCEPTABLE!!!

You must remember, stock prices are “what are you going to do for me,” not “what have you done for me.” And with slower growth on the horizon, investors are picking higher growth stocks.

🤨 New Buzz Words

“Trapped data”

Salesforce, Marc especially, is pushing this new buzz word to promote Data Cloud. It was said at least 5x on the call.

You have trapped data. Data Cloud unleashes your trapped data….

🏝️ Marc Buys Hawaii in Bulk

Interesting timing that this news broke on earnings call day. As well, Marc is not the only tech billionaire snatching up prime Hawaiian real estate.

But alas, he was dragged through the Twitter-verse

Here and here and here and here and here and here…

🎬 Minority Report Writer aka Salesforce Exec

Color me outta the loop - I had no idea the writer of Minority Report and other great movies is a Salesforce executive.

Mark mentioned this when answering an analyst question in regards to industries who are, or need to be, using AI.

🤔🤔🤔

🤔🤔🤔

🎨 Salesforce Tower Lights aka Mona Lisa

The Salesforce Tower is no Vegas Sphere.

But did you know it has a dedicated team keeping the lights at the top interesting and artistic?

The story behind the Salesforce Tower moonlighting as an art exhibit.

🎸 Third Eye Blind Headlines TDX

Third Eye Blind is playing at TDX next week.

If you’re old enough to have seen Carson Daly intro this song on TRL, it might be time for a colonoscopy 👀.

SOUL FOOD

and now....Memes