Salesforce shares jumped 18% on Thursday following the company’s release of fiscal second-quarter results and forward guidance that exceeded Wall Street expectations. The cloud software vendor reported revenue growth of 11% from the prior year for the quarter ended July 31, alongside net income of $3.53 billion, or $4.29 per share, representing an 87% increase compared to $1.96 per share in the year-ago period.
A significant driver of the company’s earnings performance was a $2.6 billion gain attributable to strategic investments, primarily from Salesforce’s stake in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic. The company also demonstrated strong free cash flow generation, with the metric rising 81% to $1.10 billion, exceeding analyst consensus estimates by a substantial margin. For the upcoming fiscal third quarter, Salesforce projected adjusted earnings per share of $3.42 to $3.44 and revenue between $11.42 billion and $11.50 billion, both surpassing LSEG consensus expectations.
On a full-year basis, Salesforce raised its revenue guidance to a range of $46.1 billion to $46.4 billion, implying 11% growth at the midpoint and slightly exceeding analyst expectations. The company’s Agentforce AI products generated annualized revenue exceeding $1.5 billion, representing 240% year-over-year growth. During the quarter, the company also announced a partnership with Anthropic to develop a plugin for Claude that would enable salespeople to compose emails and update records through chat functionality.
Additional business developments included a $1.6 billion contract with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and an agreement to acquire customer service startup Fin for $3.6 billion, expected to close ahead of schedule. The company reported current remaining performance obligation of $33.5 billion, exceeding analyst expectations. Co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff addressed concerns about artificial intelligence’s potential threat to traditional software companies, stating that predictions about generative AI displacing software solutions had not materialized for Salesforce.
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