Salesforce.com Inc. beat revenue forecasts, matched earnings-per-share estimates and raised its full-year 2018 revenue guidance, but all that wasn’t enough to please picky investors.

The provider of customer relationship manager services saw shares decline about 1.5 percent in after-hours trading. The issue appeared to be somewhat softer guidance the company issued for the current fiscal quarter, though that has historically been the company’s weakest. Update: On March 1, shares were up 2 percent, on a day in which the Dow rose more than 300 points, or about 1.5 percent.

Chief Financial Officer Mark Hawkins said results will strengthen as the year goes along and confidently forecast that the company would break the $10 billion revenue mark in fiscal 2018.

By nearly every other metric, Salesforce.com had a fantastic quarter, with significant increases across its multiple clouds, a growing average deal size and major new customers. “CRM is the fastest-growing enterprise market, we are the market leader and we’re growing share,” Keith Block, president and chief operating officer, said in summing up an ebullient earnings call.

Compared with 2014, the company has three times the number of $10 million-plus relationships with customers and five times the number of $20 million-plus relationships, said Chief Financial Officer Mark Hawkins. The company has doubled in size over the last three years while still increasing operating margins by 1.5 percent.

That, in turn, drove record cash flow of $2.1 billion, up 29 percent. “Given that cash flow is our No. 1 priority, I’m thrilled with these results against the headwinds of multiple acquisitions,” Hawkins said.

Executives said eight of the top 10 deals in the quarter included multiple clouds. “I think we’re executing cross-cloud strategies better than ever,” said Chief Executive Marc Benioff (pictured).

Salesforce.com has battled persistent perceptions that it’s a one-trick pony, but the latest figures should help boost its diversification case. Although its Sales Cloud remained the cash cow at $804.9 million in the quarter — up 14 percent over last year — Service Cloud revenues saw healthy 22 percent growth, to $615.3 million. “Sales Cloud is one of largest software services in the entire industry; it’s bigger than Oracle’s entire cloud business,” crowed Benioff. “It’s rare to see a revenue line that’s so large growing like this.”

Salesforce.com continues to straddle the line between growth and profitability. The company closed 10 acquisitions last year, including a $2.8 billion deal for Demandware Inc. Despite those costs, operating cash flow for the full year grew nearly 30 percent and full-year operating income jumped 33 percent. The company added 5,000 employees in the year, bringing its total employment to 25,000.

Executives were particularly enthused about Einstein, an artificial intelligence technology that can help sales and marketing professionals better forecast customer decisions and better focus their energies. Einstein is “the only CRM platform that has this deep intelligence available and it is going to accelerate this year in customer use,” Benioff said. Einstein is now embedded in Salesforce.com’s Sales, Marketing, Service and Commerce clouds. Salesforce.com promised to highlight a number of customer applications of Einstein on a global webcast next Tuesday in San Francisco.

There appears to be plenty of room for growth. While most large software companies generate half or more of their business outside the U.S., Salesforce.com reported that three-quarters of its revenue comes from the Americas. Its fastest-growing geographic region in the most recent quarter was Asia/Pacific, and growth there has been accelerating.

Photo by Robert Hof