Shares in Salesfor.com Inc. surged in after-hours trading today after the company topped analysts’ expectations in its fiscal first-quarter earnings report.

Salesforce reported revenue rose 23% from a year ago, to $5.96 billion for the quarter ended April 30. Net income in the quarter came in at $469 million or 50 cents a share, way up from $99 million or 11 cents per share in the same quarter last year.

Adjusted profit before costs such as stock compensation came in at $1.21 per share, up from 70 cents per share a year ago. Analysts had predicted an adjusted profit of 88 cents per share on revenue of $5.89 billion.

“We had the best first quarter in our company’s history,” Marc Benioff, chief executive officer of Salesforce, said in a statement. “We believe our Customer 360 platform is proving to be the most relevant technology for companies accelerating out of the pandemic.”

Looking forward, Salesforce raised its guidance in its second quarter to between $6.22 billion and $6.23 billion, with the full-year guidance increased to $25.9 billion to $26 billion. Adjusted profit per share is estimated in the second quarter to be between 91 and 92 cents and for the full fiscal year between $3.79 and $3.81.

“Salesforce’s Q1 earnings come on the heels of the one year anniversary of the pandemic — a time when organizations were forced to quickly adapt to remote working and accelerate their plans for digital transformation,” Tim Horoho, former senior vice president of engineering at Salesforce and current chief technology officer of enterprise software-as-a-service management platform Zylo Inc. told SiliconANGLE. “Many turned to SaaS tools, like Salesforce and Slack, to keep their teams connected and productive.”

Melanie Fellay, co-founder and chief executive of Salesforce AppExchange partner Spekit Inc., noted that “Salesforce is becoming increasingly crucial to all tech-based companies, from hospitals to financial institutions. “Across industries, businesses everywhere are building on top of the Salesforce platform,” Fellay added.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller was somewhat skeptical, noting that “Salesforce’s revenue mix quality has declined, but it is remarkable it managed to grow its professional services revenue by almost 50%.”

“Salesforce is now a platform company, with platform revenue almost double marketing revenue and leading the next-strongest contributor, service revenue, now by almost $250 million,” Mueller explained. “Platforms grow faster than anything at Salesforce.”

Mueller also noted that Europe grew the strongest, which he found notable since the region is still battling COVID more than North America.

Salesforce’s share price was up more than 4% in after-hours trading as of 8 p.m. EDT.

Photo: Medullaoblongata Projekt/Wikimedia Commons