UPDATED 17:40 EDT / FEBRUARY 26 2025

CLOUD

Salesforce delivers strong AI growth but disappoints on fiscal 2026 forecast

Shares in Salesforce Inc. fell more than 3% in late trading today after the cloud-based software company fell short of expectations on revenue in its fiscal 2025 fourth quarter and issued disappointing first-quarter and full-year fiscal 2026 outlooks.

For the quarter that ended on Jan. 31, Salesforce reported adjusted earnings per share of $2.78, up from $2.29 per share in the same quarter of the previous fiscal year, on revenue of $9.99 billion, up 8% year-over-year. Analysts had been expecting $2.61 per share and revenue of $10.04 billion.

The majority of Salesforce’s revenue came from subscription and support, which came in at $9.45 billion in the quarter, up 8% year-over-year, while professional services and other rounded out the revenue total with $542 million, up less than 1%. Salesforce ended the quarter with current remaining performance obligations of $30.2 billion, up 9% year-over-year and total remaining performance obligations of $63.4 billion, up 11%.

Salesforce also ended the quarter with $900 million in data cloud and artificial intelligence recurring revenue, up 120% year-over-year, driven by customer growth. Some 5,000 Agentforce deals were signed since October, including over 3,000 paid.

Business highlights in the quarter included the December announcement of Agentforce 2.0, an improved version of Salesforce’s flagship AI product for enterprises with significantly improved features. Agentforce allows companies to build and customize generative AI agents, which augment the work of employees autonomously without the need for human supervision.

During a presentation for media and analysts in San Francisco on Dec. 17, Marc Benioff, chairman and chief executive officer of Salesforce, along with other Salesforce executives, emphasized the advantage of building and customizing generative AI agents will transform workflows across the enterprise. A key element in this approach will be the rise of digital labor, a trend at the core of the company’s strategy.

For its full fiscal year 2025, Salesforce reported adjusted earnings per share of $10.20, up from $8.22 in fiscal year 2024, on revenue of $34.9 billion, up 8.72% year-over-year.

“We had an incredible quarter and year, with strong performance across all our key metrics, including the highest cash flow in our company’s history and more than $60 billion in RPO,” Benioff said in the company’s earnings release. “No company is better positioned than Salesforce to lead customers through the digital labor revolution.”

Salesforce may be well set to lead a digital labor revolution, but its guidance fell short. For its fiscal 2026 first quarter, Salesforce expects revenue of $9.71 billion to $9.76 billion, short of the $9.91 billion analysts were expecting. It was a similar story with the full-year outlook, with Salesforce forecasting $40.5 billion to $40.9 billion versus the $41.46 billion expected by analysts.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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