Salesforce, Inc. (CRM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hey, guys. Welcome to our keynote session. Really happy to have Amy Weaver from Salesforce here. Good time as well. Like I was negotiating because I think our -- Barclays is a big customer, and I want Tableau actually. And you guys might not appreciate it, but like Tableau is a very good solution. And I want it in my business, and we're not quite there yet. So hopefully...

We'll see how this conversation goes.

Yes, yes. Although I can't find the check here.

So Amy, you had like a really good, healthy quarter a couple of weeks ago. From your perspective, what were the main highlights like that you saw like in hindsight?

It wasn't just the quarter. It's really been this past year. When I look back at where we were 12 months ago to where we are today, it really feels like a renovated company. I think there's been a new focus. There has been new prioritization. And you're really seeing the benefits of that playing out, and you saw that this past quarter. So looking specifically at the quarter, a very, very solid quarter. On the top line, we met our guide for the quarter for revenue. And for the year, held our guide in nominal. But it's really a [ wave ] if you look at constant currency. And we also brought up our range at the bottom, so we feel very good on that. Op margin was fantastic. Another quarter over 30%. We were at 31.2%. And looking back just three years ago, we were in the teens. And so to see that type of progression is really gratifying. And I was especially happy to be able to guide for the year to 30.5%, and that is an incredible uplift this year. It will be more than 800 basis points increase in just 12 months. I don't think there's a lot of Fortune 500 companies who can say that they've done that and pulled that off. So it's a particular moment of pride. And then you saw all of our excitement around AI. We are rolling out generative products, and we've really focused and prioritized to make sure that we're investing into that going forward. So it felt really good last week, and it was nice to see the market reaction.

Yes, I can't imagine. Yes. And then the -- if you think about it, I wanted to double click on some of the numbers, and I apologize for that. But if you remember, I'm sell-side. The -- your CRPO growth of 13% was, to me, really a highlight. And there was a lot of skepticism and I tried to say like, no, like trust them. Can you talk a little bit about some of the drivers but also like some of the headwinds that were in this number?

Sure. So CRPO was definitely kind of the darling of the earnings call. So for Q3, we came in at 13%, 14%, depending on whether you're looking at nominal or constant currency. It was about a 3-point beat over what we had guided. And that was even with anticipating a 1% headwind from professional services. I called that out a quarter ago, and that certainly came through. In terms of the beat, it came from -- we had solid performance there. But the beat really came down to two factors and pretty much an even contribution. The first was very strong renewals and in particular, early renewals. We were able to pull forward from Q4 very effectively. The other half is from one very large deal that we signed in the quarter. Delighted to have it come in, but it wasn't in our original forecast until you saw that go up. Then for the year, of course, we guided to 11% in constant currency. Again, 1% from professional services still really seeing the headwinds there. But happy with the guide, especially under the continuing very measured buying environment that we're seeing.

That was kind of my next question, Amy. If you think about the environment at the moment, you guys have been calling it out for a while. And it is a headwind and like at our conference now, I've seen quite a few firesides like everyone is seeing the same environment. It's not getting crazy out there -- like crazy better out there. Like how have you seen the evolution over the last few quarters? And also a little bit, like how did you as an organization react to kind of the different selling environment?

So it's interesting as it's been going on for a while. We really called this out at the end of Q2 last year. And it was interesting. We have had a very strong -- we're a month off on our fiscal year, so end of the quarter is July 31 for Q2. Had a strong June then everyone went away for fourth of July weekend. And I had multiple sales account executives come back and say, they felt like they just walked into a different world. And this was about 18 months ago. And suddenly, deal times were really extending. Couldn't really predict exactly when that deal was going to close. Additional approvals, even smaller deals suddenly had to go up to the CEO. Some had to go to the Board of Directors, and we're seeing a lot of deal compression, a lot of budget issues. That has really continued. I think what has changed over that time period is that we're executing better. It's not a surprise. We're anticipating those approvals. We're dealing with the budget issues upfront. And that has made us able to perform very, very well. Now Marc talked a little bit about kind of green shoots and he has been traveling extensively, meeting regularly with CEOs around the world. And I do think that there is -- we're seeing some excitement, particularly around AI. I would say that's still kind of top of the funnel. We need to get that to convert all the way down. And on the ground, we're still seeing the same very measured buying environment that we've seen for six quarters now.

Yes, okay. And then I wanted to kind of drive the conversation a little bit more forward-looking. If you think FY '25 -- and you're not going to guide to me here, that's fine. .

Yes. We're not guiding.

But if you think about -- I still have a lot of discussions with investors that's saying like, oh, how can a company of the size of Salesforce grow double digits? And I'm thinking this, from your perspective, there should be quite a few drivers like in terms of innovation around AI, et cetera, that should actually help you. How do you think about the factors that are driving your growth? And how do you come out on that debate?

Yes. You're right. Looking forward, we have not guided yet for next year, so I'll leave that as a major caveat to any of these statements. But there's a number of things that I'm very excited about. We are looking at a lot of things that are not -- are traditional. Just get new business and keep going. One of them is pricing. Pricing has become a very important lever for us. Last summer, we announced a price increase. First increase, I'm almost embarrassed to say, in 7 years. So there was some opportunity there. And we're starting to see some of the benefits from the sales increase. And I've been very pleased with the sales team really holding the line, making sure that those are going to come all the way through the contract. Now to be clear, the real benefit from a price increase isn't just from new business. It's really getting it into the renewal. And our average deals are 1, 2, 3-year deals typically. So it's going to take a while for that to really play out and have a significant impact. But it's one of the ways that I'm seeing some real upside in that here.

And then the other factor that we should probably talk in more detail about is around AI. There was a lot of innovation and a lot of new announcements coming out of Dreamforce for you. Like talk a little bit about the classic AI, but also what people need to do around data and actually the data estate to kind of be able to help to deliver like good quality AI.

So I think there's a few things there. We had a lot of announcements at Dreamforce, so I think it's really important to remember. Salesforce is not new to AI. In fact, we made our first acquisition in the AI space in 2014. So we have almost a decade of being very embedded in it. Right now, we have 10 LLMs. But even 18 months ago, we had 3 and that was before anyone here could tell you what an LLM is. So we've been very involved with AI, mostly on the predictive side. Now, of course, this year, it feels like there's almost been a tsunami of generative AI and interest in it. In fact, I was laughing the other day. I saw someone reported that at our first earnings call last year, which was end of February, beginning of March, apparently, we mentioned GPT once. And it was just in reference to a Trailhead DX Summit coming up. In May, we mentioned it 53 times, and I think that was just Marc. So this came up very suddenly, and we've really pivoted to do that. What we're seeing right now is that we are rolling out generative AI in all of our products, so across all of our clouds right now. But looking forward, where I think we're going to see the results and where we're going to have the tangible benefits sooner is actually in data. A lot of companies are still trying to figure out what their AI strategy is. And I think particularly outside of the tech world, they're a little nervous. They know this is coming. They know they need to do something. They're not quite sure what it is. And I always tell them there's two things. They need to find a partner they can really trust to work with, and they need to get their data in order. Every single company, before they can completely optimize what they want to do with AI, they have to start with getting their data. They need it all in one place. They need to get it out of legacy systems, and they need kind of data hygiene. And so I think Data Cloud is doing very well. It's one of our fastest-growing products ever. It just had a very good quarter. So I think I look at it as data and then AI.

Yes, so it's step one before step two. Yes, you need to start walking before you start running. And then if you think about the layering of the offerings, like obviously, like some guys have like Copilot, et cetera. Like how do you think that kind of feeds into your solutions?

I think we're really at the beginning of figuring out the best way to work with our customers, have them experiment and see how we continue to innovate alongside them, if any. So of the Fortune 100, we have 17 companies that are already using Einstein GPT. And they're in early stages. They're experimenting with it. They're getting it in there. But how exciting for us to already be in with one of our generative products and to have that in 17 of the top 100 companies there. One thing going back on Data Cloud. I want to bring up MuleSoft. You probably saw MuleSoft had another great quarter. It's been so much fun to see the turnaround in MuleSoft over the last 2 years, where they went from really having some tough few quarters to being an incredible tailwind to us. I think it's coming from two things. One is really top-notch leadership from Eric Eyken-Sluyters, who we put in to lead MuleSoft a couple of -- or about 1.5 years ago. He's really rebuilt the entire area. But also talk about right products at the right time. As I said, every company needs to be getting their data together. Every company has some old on-prem system that they need to get that data out of. MuleSoft fits in beautifully, and I think it's going to continue to be one of the real winners as we move towards AI.

Yes. And then on that note, and I mentioned Tableau earlier. Where are we on the Tableau journey? Because I think that's kind of a couple of -- that's a little bit behind that MuleSoft journey.

Yes. Tableau is a wonderful product. I'm really excited. It's also from my hometown in Seattle, so I have a special heart for it. They had a good quarter. You can see they also were a tailwind to us and growing on us. I think with Tableau, they will be one of the net winners from AI. We've got so much information coming up. And if you can't quickly visualize it and understand it, the information is meaningless. So I will say, I think we still have a lot more opportunity to tap from Tableau.

Yes, I kind of mentioned it. Yes. But I mean, I have to say, like I wanted this for a internal solution, in case my IT is listening here.

Yes, I love it. They're great products.

Let's shift gear a little bit. Like the big story this year for you, besides like executing better in this environment, is like that you run Salesforce slightly differently. Like the margins came up quite a bit. And it's one thing to take out costs, but it's another thing to change the culture in the organization a little bit. Can you talk a little bit about that journey?

Sure. So it's been an interesting journey this year, and we have -- I think we have jammed in a decade's worth of change into one year. And I'm really proud about how the company has done that. So in the past year, this was a year that was really brute force, I would describe it, when it comes to operating margin. We went through a really painful decision to reduce our head count by about 10%. We made some tough decisions around real estate around the world. And we've really tightened the screws on everything across the company. Those were very, very hard decisions, I think, emotionally. But we knew what we had to do, and we got through them and we made quick gains after that. We're moving into a new phase, and it is really more of a maturity. There's more of a discipline, I think, around it. And we want to be able to make changes that aren't just good for a couple of quarters. They're good for the next decade, the next two decades. So we're looking at things like our location strategy, which hubs are we most invested in. We've typically been very, very [ high-cost place ] of -- so we want to make sure we're going to still be in a lot of very [ high-place consolation ]. So we want to make sure that we are really appropriately hiring. We're looking at automation. We're looking at systems processes. We're looking at like how we sell. We have 76 core products across our lines. We don't necessarily need 76 people showing up on a bus to sell to every company. How do we do that in a more sophisticated and a more efficient way? So really moving into phase 2, I would say, of our transformation.

And then the -- if you think about it, that's the one question that comes up from investors a lot. It's like, oh, this year, we're -- this big year of margin expansion, so next year, this is all over again, and you're back to the old ways. Like can you maybe talk a little bit like there's obviously delay effects in terms of taking action and seeing results, but also like how has the culture changed within?

I think the culture really has changed. I mean I think this year really proved -- when our employees focus on something, they focus on it 150%. The margin went up even faster than I would have imagined this year. I was really excited to see that because of the dedication. And I think the culture has changed with that. I think there's a real pride in how we're doing things. I think there's a real pride in how we came through this year. It was not an easy year. Like I said, we had layoffs, we had 7 activists in our stock. And I think we've come through it really beautifully, and there's a desire to make sure that we are institutionalizing these changes and making a stronger company going forward.

And like if you think about, for example, like property consolidation and all these actions, there is a time delay, correct? Like in terms of like taking that...

On real estate, in particular, yes. Real estate, you announce the write-offs, but you have to actually take possession of the property before you can recognize some of that for accounting purposes. So you'll see that running through for a couple of years.

Yes, okay. So that should help you, yes. And then maybe talk a little bit about the role of like Brian kind of looking at the organization. Like obviously, it's a team effort, but like Brian more on the sales organization. And so how do you think about selling some of the initiatives you mentioned, automation as well? Like how does that play in there?

So first, Brian Millham has been just an incredible leader throughout all of this. He became COO about 15 months ago, and then we have just continued moving more and more onto his plate. And it's been incredible to see what he has done. He is an absolute champion of increasing our operating margin. And he's really shown that, in particular, on what he's done with sales and marketing as a percentage of revenue. If you look back historically, our numbers were bouncing around nearly 40%, which I will fully recognize is not best in class. He's driven that down to 31% this last quarter, and I know he wants to go further. And it's by looking at new ways of doing things. It is the new way of pricing, the new way of packaging, looking at bundling and through how we sell, looking at how many people we need to sell and who is selling and what they're selling. So I think he's brought a very, very fresh eye. At the same time, he is employee #13 of the company. So he is an incredible culture carrier for the company. And I think that's really given him a lot of the credibility to make these changes, but really top-notch leadership from him this year.

And then the -- you also had a lot of -- like with others, like normally, there's an employee and he's with the company and then he leaves and -- because he wants to go somewhere else. You have a lot of kind of...

We have boomerangs.

Boomerangs, yes. Like speak to that a little bit. Like...

Sure. We've had just incredible boomerangs come to the company, which is our term for people who leave Salesforce, realize the error of their ways and come back. And they have been at all levels of the company. Just a couple really at the top. Ariel Kelman, our Chief Marketing Officer, boomerang-ed back. Miguel Milano came back as our Chief Revenue Officer, who has just been incredible. What is nice about this? They have the Salesforce DNA. They know the company. And yet, they're coming back with fresh experiences. They can compare to other companies. They see, if you come back with those fresh eyes and say, why in the world are you doing it this way, and yet appreciate where we were coming from. The ramp time is almost zero with these boomerangs, and it's also been fun. I think it's been great for employees to see people coming back. It kind of validates your own decision to be there and do that. So love our boomerangs.

I wanted to shift gear a little bit again. Like -- and I appreciate you, as a CFO, will not give me like a technical answer. But if you look on the underlying, like some of the underlying work you're doing, like one of the big projects, I think it's Hyperforce, and what you're doing there. I have to say, when I first looked at it, I was surprised like why did -- Salesforce should have the skill to run their own data centers. But now with Hyperforce, it looks like you're kind of changing that. Can you talk a little bit about the motivation and what it actually does to your numbers as well maybe at some point?

Sure. So Hyperforce, just to level set with everyone what it is, we've traditionally run on first-party data centers around the world. Hyperforce is our name for our ability to run on hyperscalers or public clouds. In our case, largely on AWS. And we've really made a dedicated shift to moving in this direction. There are a lot of benefits. First, public cloud has come so far over the last decade, and I really think it's the gold standard. It allows faster compliance around the world. It allows our customers, particularly international ones who want their data stored in a particular country, it allows them to make that choice. There are -- we can get up and running very quickly. Things that may take a month in the past to get up and running in a country are down to a matter of weeks or in some cases, days. So we're already rolled out in 10 countries. I think we've got two more coming online this quarter. Now there are initial costs involved with that, particularly when we still have our first-party data centers. But over time, I expect that to be neutral to accretive going forward.

Okay. And then there should probably be also effect for your AI efforts because...

Yes. In fact, all of our AI efforts are on Hyperforce.

Yes, okay. So that makes a lot of sense. So you won't have to compete for GPUs with the hyperscalers.

Exactly. Exactly.

Yes. That makes sense, yes. And then if you think about the -- I wanted to switch gears to a couple of more CFO-type questions. If you think about your operating OCF and free cash flow, you kind of raised margins there. Can you talk a little bit about the drivers? And obviously, there was a little bit of like operating margin is getting better. But what other things are you doing there?

So we had some very significant jumps in the operating cash flow and free cash flow for the quarter as well as the guide for the year. So a couple of things are going on in that. First, operating margin has done incredibly well this year. We started the year anticipating 27%. Again, we've taken it up to 30.5% for the full year. So we're seeing benefits that are flowing through from cash flow. But we're also seeing more money come in on the collection side. So in a tighter economic environment, what you would expect is you're going to have a percentage of customers who are not going to be able to pay. You're also going to have a lot of customers who are fine, but they're going to manage their cash very carefully, maybe stretch out payment dates a little bit further. What's interesting is we have not seen that in either case. And our collections are very much matched or exceeded at times historical patterns, norms. And it says a few things. I mean, first, it says a lot about the health of our customer base, which I also think is a great sign for our economy. It also shows that even if customers are struggling a little bit, they recognize Salesforce as being mission critical and they're prioritizing those payments. So stepping back, I have a lot of confidence about what we're going to continue to see on the collection side, and that's primarily what's driving the significant rise.

Is that also like in -- and we started a conversation with some of the benefits for Q3 were earlier in your world. It's also like a factor there then in a way that people have confidence to invest in there. Is that like a theme that you saw emerging? Or was it Q3 specific?

I think we're starting to see it in Q3. I'm hoping it's a trend, but I won't call it a trend yet.

And then historically, in Q4, you've always had that co-terming kind of help Q4 and change that. Is that still -- in this kind of economic climate, is that still a theme or how...

I think it is. Q4 is our largest renewal quarter. That's one of the reasons Q3 tends to benefit from early renewals. There's just more there to grab. And we will continue to see Q4 as our biggest. You'll also see that in our cash flow. We have -- I think something like 85% to 90% of our cash flow is in Q4 or Q1, so this does continue to get more extreme.

Is there anything from your perspective on the CFO level that -- I remember like other vendors that have been there before you that you almost wanted deemphasize Q4 and kind of incentivize the sales force to kind of sign deals earlier. Is that something that you guys are trying to do? Or is that -- do you think it's possible?

In a perfect world, it'd be lovely to have -- move cash flow all 4 quarters. I will take the business when it comes in. I'm very happy to have a very large Q4.

Yes, okay. That's fair. And the -- like as we think about like next year, you kind of mentioned there's like some benefits still coming through. Like how do you think about that balance of like, okay, you need to deliver the margin numbers and you want to kind of -- you want to see the progression. On the other hand, you need to think about like, look, at some point, there will be recovery and there's going to be lead times into like sales investments, for example, because with sales guys, it may take 9 to 12 months to get productive. There's a lot of stuff on the AI side where you kind of probably need to -- want to invest more. How do you think about that balance of growth versus margins?

Sure. So first, I'm not sure it's a direct trade-off. Let me start first by areas that we're investing in. When we made a real pivot in January and we cut -- we made extreme cuts in our expenses. We went deeper than we necessarily needed just for margin purposes. We did that so that we could invest in the areas that we think are going to grow. And you'll see that we are hiring again. But we're hiring in very specific areas. We're hiring around AI and we're doing most of that in high-scale, low-cost locations. And we are hiring in certain sales areas. But these are the areas where we're seeing the most potential and the highest productivity. So MuleSoft is a great example. Lat Am is a big growth example. So being very, very careful, but we've got to invest into this. We want to be a growth company. Now in terms of growth versus margins, I always laugh a little bit. There's a lot of very academic studies that show which dollar you put in which bucket in is going to change things. I think that's true if you have a perfectly optimized company. I've never seen a perfectly optimized company. Salesforce is not perfectly optimized, and I believe we showed that this year. We were able to take out a lot on op margin that I do not believe in any way impacted growth. And we just need to be able to do this in a smart way, and we need to do it in a disciplined way. I'm also a real believer that when you focus on process, when you focus on discipline, that is a benefit throughout the company and continue -- we plan to continue that message.

And you must be in the budgeting period at the moment. Did you guys change? Like there used to be like the older way of, here's $100. Next year, you get $120 and then $140. Did you change that approach to be more ROI based? Like how did you do it?

I think you just described our past budgeting very accurately. And then they complain that they didn't get even more. No, we've really rebuilt our entire budgeting process this year. And it isn't an automatic reward. We want to see where is the growth, where is the need, what are the things -- I would say, I don't just want to be a $50 billion company at some point. I want it to be the best. And I want to be the strongest, and that means we've got to invest in absolutely the right areas. And it means that you ruthlessly prioritize. And that's not easy, but that is a muscle that we had to develop.

Yes. And we could go on for quite a long time, but I realize I only have like a minute and a bit left. And maybe last question, it does come up a lot with investors, net around M&A. And we're both smiling now. And there's conspiracy theories going on. So you had the renewal of your shelves this week and it's like, oh my god, there's some new stuff coming now. Is there anything you can say?

I like the fact that I made it to within 90 seconds of this being over without the M&A question. So let's start with the S3 that we just renewed. It was expiring. We had to renew it, okay? That's -- everyone should understand that. It's about taking care of -- look, capital allocation, in general, our -- we've laid out principles. We want to be able to continue to grow our free cash flow margin over time. We want to invest back into the company for organic innovation. We want to be able to continue the stock repurchases and returning to our shareholders. We had never done any until five quarters ago. We've already returned $10 billion. Now in terms of inorganic, yes, it's a public company. We would not be doing our job if we were not constantly looking. But we haven't done anything for quite a while other than Airkit, which was a small kind of acqui-hire in the AI area that we did earlier this fall. It's very important though that anything we do, we need to be committed to a reasonable framework. And it's exactly what I laid out at our last Investor Day. We heard from our shareholders. They want best-in-class. They want to make sure that we're prioritizing use of our balance sheet if we do that. And people want continued op margin expansion. Now that could take a while, but you've got to be able to show a path on that. But there's nothing that -- that's not a different story. That's what I've been saying for the last 18 months.

Yes. It's nice that you repeat it though. They did repeat it though because it doesn't need a lot of, yes, that. Amy, I think our time is up. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thanks for joining us again.

Thanks, Raimo.

Thank you.