One of the few highlights in what has been one of the worst weeks for the Dow Jones Industrial Average so far this year was a three percent jump in the share price of Salesforce.com Inc. after the release of a predictably steller second quarter earnings report. Demand for its cloud services soared 24 percent from a year ago to generate $1.63 billion in revenue.

That’s even better than the round $1.6 billion that average analyst forecast projected, the fruit of a heavy investment in growth that has pushed Salesforce.com’s net income back down into the red to negative $852,000 after posting its first profit in six years the previous quarter. But the company did provide a fair warning of that during its May earnings call that helped cushion the blow.

As a matter of fact, the market expected its losses for the three-month period to come out slightly higher, which contributed to the increase in its share price. The company expects that momentum to carry into the rest of the fiscal year on the back of its continued efforts to increase the top-line and $3.03 billion upcoming payments due from ongoing subscriptions.

That’s a massive 29 percent increase over the deffered revenue that Salesforce.com had on the books the same time last year, which CEO Mark Benioff told shareholders during the earning calls puts his outfit on track to achieve an annual run-rate of $7 billion. That’s a major milestone towards the executive’s goal of helping his company become the fastest to achieve $10 billion in annual revenues.

But that’s still a long off. In the nearer future, Salesforce.com expects to rake in between $1.69 billion to $1.70 billion next quarter, which would represent a 23 and 24 percent year-over-year increase, respectively.

Photo via Geralt