Earlier this week, the quarterly results of public cybersecurity companies left us wondering why there isn’t more venture capital investing in security startups. In an environment where revenue is hard to grow, the tech standout sectors should surely ride with the wind if there is a lot of demonstrated demand?
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This morning, I want to broaden our perspective and use new quarterly results from a more diverse group of companies to state that things are not actually that bad for technology companies. New data from Salesforce, Zuora, Okta, Nutanix and Snowflake makes it clear that several tech industries are doing better than many people expected.
Understandably, this sent share prices higher for some key startup comparables and led to better vibes for tech valuations in general. Let’s talk about Turkey:
Salesforce
Salesforce reported revenue of $8.72 billion third quarter of fiscal 2024in line with analyst expectations. That led to an 11% gain for the SaaS giant, which isn’t an amazing figure, especially since the company expects to generate $9.18 billion to $9.23 billion in revenue in the current quarter, leading to roughly 10% growth.
So why is Salesforce stock up 9% this morning? It beat third-quarter earnings expectations, forecast fourth-quarter revenue broadly in line with estimates and boosted its full-year earnings forecast.
Salesforce may no longer be the growth juggernaut it used to be, but it’s a cash-generating machine that’s pouring its excess capital into share buybacks, and investors are digging its improving profitability.
