After Salesforce (CRM) reported revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2025 that missed analysts’ estimates and offered weaker-than-expected guidance for the second quarter, executives joined the customer relationship management (CRM) company’s earnings call to discuss the buying environment, its revenue outlook, its role in the artificial intelligence (AI) era, and its mergers and acquisitions (M&A) strategy.
‘Measured Buying Behavior’
Salesforce Chief Operating Officer (COO) Brian Millham said the company continues to see “measured buying behavior,” noting that stronger bookings momentum recorded in the fourth quarter has moderated as the company “saw elongated deal cycles, deal compression, and high levels of budget scrutiny” in the first quarter.
Milliham added that during the quarter there were some “intentional changes” to “drive long-term productivity and create better customer experiences, which also played a role in the softer bookings performance.”
Still ‘Confident’ in Meeting Fiscal 2025 Guidance
Salesforce provided weaker-than-expected guidance for the second quarter, but maintained its outlook for the full 2025 fiscal year.
When asked why the company didn’t lower its full-year guidance to make expectations more conservative, Salesforce Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Amy Weaver said “we do feel confident that we will be within our guidance range.”
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff added that the company could be poised to gain from the “AI transformation” as its enterprise customers build AI-powered tools.
Data Is ‘Gold’ For Companies Wanting To Build Enterprise AI Tools
“The one thing that every enterprise needs to make AI work is their customer data, as well as the metadata that describes the data,” Benioff said, highlighting Salesforce’s position to benefit amid the AI boom.
He called data “the new gold for these enterprises” wanting to leverage AI across their businesses, and said Salesforce represents one of the “largest repositories of front office enterprise data and metadata in the world.”
Benioff called out Microsoft-backed (MSFT) OpenAI, saying the company has “incredible engineering” and great user interface for its AI offerings, but said that the early AI leader “stole data” to do so.
Several media outlets such as The New York Times (NYT) have filed lawsuits against OpenAI alleging the company trained its AI models using their content without permission. OpenAI has since inked several deals with companies including Reddit (RDDT) and News Corp (NWSA) to license their content to use for training purposes.
Benioff said that unlike the consumer side, enterprise AI systems are dependent on internal data, and Salesforce helps connect its enterprise customers with this data.
Open to M&A Opportunities
When asked about the company’s strategy when it comes to M&A, Benioff said Salesforce is open to M&A opportunities that will be additive to its offerings.
Salesforce “continue[s] to look at those opportunities and look we’re not going to shy away from M&A for any one particular reason if it’s within our framework,” Benioff said, adding that if an M&A opportunity is outside its framework, the company is “going to be extremely cautious.”
In April, reports came out that Salesforce was in advanced talks with Informatica to buy the data-management software provider. Informatica later said that the company was not being acquired by Salesforce.
Weaver said Salesforce is “always going to be opportunistic” and will prioritize data and driving shareholder value.
Salesforce shares were down nearly 16% at $229.05 in extended trading Wednesday as of 7:20 p.m. ET following the company’s earnings call.