Salesforce.Com Posts Strong Q4

Customer relationship management company Salesforce.com has reported an increase of 50% in revenue to $217m year-over-year for the fourth quarter ended January 2008, with net income of $7.4m, up from $0.52m in the year-ago quarter.

It also reported earnings for fiscal 2008. It said revenue for the year rose 51% to $748.7m, with an increase of 51% in subscription and support revenue to $680.6m and professional services revenue rose 50% to $68.1m. Net income increased to $18.36m from $0.48m in the previous year.

Subscription and support revenue in the quarter grew 49% to $196.5m on a year-over-year basis, and professional services and other revenue rose 68% to $20.4m.

Salesforce.com said net paying customers rose approximately 2,900 during the quarter and approximately 11,200 during the year to finish at approximately 41,000 and the net paying subscribers rose to nearly 1.1 million, an increase of more than 450,000 year over year.

Marc Benioff, chairman and chief executive at Salesforce.com, said: “Our fourth-quarter and full-year results show that businesses are selecting the Force.com Platform-as-a-Service and cloud computing over failed client-server alternatives.”

Looking forward, for the first quarter 2009 the company said it expects revenue to be in range of approximately $233m to $235m and the GAAP diluted EPS to be in the range of $0.06 to $0.07. It said it expects revenue for fiscal 2009 to be in range of approximately $1.03bn to $1.035bn, with GAAP diluted EPS to be in the range of $0.32 to $0.33.