The News: Salesforce reported on November 29 its Fiscal Q3 2024 earnings with the quarter ending on October 31, 2023. Revenue reached $8.72 billion, which was up 11% on a year-over-year (YoY) basis and up 10% in constant currency. Adjusted earnings-per-share (EPS) came in at $2.11, beating the consensus estimate of $2.06. Read the Salesforce FY Q2 2024 earnings release for more information.
Salesforce shares rose more than 8% in extended trading on Wednesday upon the release of the solid earnings report.
Salesforce Q3 FY 2024 Revenue Hits $8.72B, Up 11% Year-over-Year
Analyst Take: Salesforce reported its Fiscal Q3 2024 earnings, posting revenue of $8.72 billion, which was up 11% on a YoY basis, and up 10% on a constant currency basis. While revenue narrowly exceeded the analyst consensus estimate of $8.71 billion, Salesforce’s adjusted EPS of $2.11 handily beat the LSEG consensus estimate of $2.06. The company is also doing a good job managing its expenses; the company posted a non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) operating margin of 31.2%, up more than 850 basis points YoY.
Here are the Salesforce Q3 FY 2024 results by the numbers:
- Salesforce Q3 FY 2024 revenue of $8.72 billion, up 11% YoY, and up 10% in constant currency
- Subscription and Support revenues were $8.14 billion, up 13% YoY
- Professional services and other revenues were $0.58 billion, down 4% YoY
- Non-GAAP operating margin of 31.2%, up more than 850 basis points YoY
- Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $2.11
- Q3 remaining performance obligation was $48.3 billion, up 21% YoY
- Current remaining performance obligation ended at $23.9 billion, up 14% YoY, and up 13% in constant currency
Salesforce posted another strong quarter, which CEO Marc Benioff noted was driven by three factors. First, the company posted 80% growth in deals of more than $1 million, which Benioff said was due to customers seeking out a range of applications and solutions from within the company’s portfolio, with particularly strong performance from MuleSoft, the company’s iPaaS (integration platform-as-a-service) offering.
Second, during Q3, Benioff said that the company added 1,000 new Data Cloud customers, which he attributed to customers’ desire to continue to adopt and incorporate AI, which requires the use of customer data platform technology. He also noted that customers are using Data Cloud extensively, with the product ingesting 6.4 trillion records across all customers in Q3, a YoY increase of 140%.
Finally, in the same vein, Benioff noted that in the company’s most recent quarter, 17% of the Fortune 100 are now Einstein GPT Copilot customers. This is particularly impressive, given that Copilot is a relatively new product, and as Benioff highlighted, one year ago, very few customers or vendors had any real knowledge or experience with generative AI.
Although macroeconomic headwinds are still impacting certain parts of the company’s business, especially in the company’s professional services business and Slack self-service business, Salesforce nonetheless noted that Slack was included in seven of its top 10 deals during the quarter.
Continued Strength in Multicloud Deals, Public Sector, and the APAC Region
Another area of strength for Salesforce during Q3 was in deals where customers contracted for more than one Data Cloud product. According to Benioff, 9 out of the 10 largest deals completed in the quarter included six or more Data Clouds, reflecting the desire of customers to standardize on Salesforce as a core technology platform.
From an industry perspective, Salesforce saw a strong performance from the public sector, and geographically, the APAC region performed well, with YoY revenue growth of 18%, or 21% in constant currency. The company noted strong new business growth in Brazil and Japan, and in parts of India, as well.
Perhaps even more encouraging is the company’s shift to focus on cutting sales costs; in addition to cutting headcount earlier in the year, Salesforce is moving to offer many of its most popular products as self-service purchases available through AWS. As a result, the company is already seeing benefits from these moves, posting a Q3 non-GAAP operating margin of 31.2%, up 850 basis points YoY.
Fiscal Q4 2024 and Full-Year Guidance
For its Q4 FY 2024 guidance, Salesforce expects its non-GAAP EPS to be in the range of $1.26 to $1.27, while it expects its fiscal full-year non-GAAP EPS to be in the range of $3.99 to $4.00.
On a revenue basis, Salesforce said that revenue for the fiscal fourth quarter will increase about 10% to between $9.18 billion and $9.23 billion, with full-year 2024 revenue guidance to come in at $34.75 billion to $34.8 billion.
Salesforce Poised for a Strong FY 2024 Finish
Many pundits were wondering whether Salesforce would be able to leverage the excitement and momentum coming out of Dreamforce event, where the company tried to position itself among the leading SaaS vendors that were leaning into generative AI. Based on this quarter’s results, it is clear that the message is resonating with customers.
The company’s strong momentum in multi-cloud deals, as well as the Fortune 100 adoption of Einstein GPT, is strong evidence that customers are buying into the Salesforce’s core messaging: AI can and will transform businesses, data is the key to powering AI, and Salesforce has the right mix of performance and responsible-use guardrails in place to serve as the core platform to deliver these benefits.
Despite the challenging economic headwinds that continue to impact SaaS buying cycles, we expect that Salesforce can continue to capitalize on this messaging, as well as the growing trend of organizations seeking to consolidate and connect their tech stacks. One only needs to look at the strong sales momentum exhibited by MuleSoft, and the large percentage of multi-cloud and large, >$1MM deals completed in the quarter.
Daniel Newman and his co-host of The Six Five Webcast, Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights and Strategy discussed Salesforce’s earnings in their latest episode. Check it out here and be sure to subscribe to The Six Five Webcast so you never miss an episode.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Author Information
Daniel is the CEO of The Futurum Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise.
From the leading edge of AI to global technology policy, Daniel makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology investments. Daniel is a top 5 globally ranked industry analyst and his ideas are regularly cited or shared in television appearances by CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and hundreds of other sites around the world.
A 7x Best-Selling Author including his most recent book “Human/Machine.” Daniel is also a Forbes and MarketWatch (Dow Jones) contributor.
An MBA and Former Graduate Adjunct Faculty, Daniel is an Austin Texas transplant after 40 years in Chicago. His speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.
Keith Kirkpatrick is VP & Research Director, Enterprise Software & Digital Workflows for The Futurum Group. Keith has over 25 years of experience in research, marketing, and consulting-based fields.
He has authored in-depth reports and market forecast studies covering artificial intelligence, biometrics, data analytics, robotics, high performance computing, and quantum computing, with a specific focus on the use of these technologies within large enterprise organizations and SMBs. He has also established strong working relationships with the international technology vendor community and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events.
In his career as a financial and technology journalist he has written for national and trade publications, including BusinessWeek, CNBC.com, Investment Dealers’ Digest, The Red Herring, The Communications of the ACM, and Mobile Computing & Communications, among others.
He is a member of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP).
Keith holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Magazine Journalism and Sociology from Syracuse University.
