The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Salesforce.com shares jump as it turns in a loss

'Ave that, Microsoft, Oracle

Free whitepaper – Dell PowerEdge servers 2009 - Memory

Depite posting a loss for its second quarter, shares in Salesforce.com surged 19 per cent on Thursday, as the sales software firm beat Wall Street revenue estimates.

Salesforce.com lost $145,000 on a GAAP basis, compared to a profit of $5m for the same period a year earlier. The firm's P&L shows that the sales surge was outrun slightly by stock option expenses and other spending to fuel growth.

Revenue rose 64 per cent to $118m, topping analyst expectations of around $114m. Non-GAAP earnings per share were $0.06, two cents ahead of predictions.

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff said: "While other software companies talk about an undefined on-demand future with undefined products that may or may not be available at some point in the future, Salesforce...is delivering the promise of on-demand services to nearly 25,000 customers with more than 500,000 subscribers around the world today."

The comment was presumably a dig at Microsoft's CRM software and Oracle's Siebel venture.

The firm netted 57,000 new subscibers to its services in the quarter, up 63 per cent on the Q2 2005 total. ®

Free whitepaper – Out-of-box comparison between Dell, HP, and IBM blade servers

Don’t Miss

DustbinDirty, dirty PCs: The X-rated picture guide

Ventblockers Horror beyond human imagination

SC09Top 500 supers - rise of the Linux quad-cores

SC09 Jaguar munches Roadrunner

Ubuntu teaser Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala

Smooth Windows upgrade it ain't

Sign up, sign up for The Register IT security newsletter

Narrowcasting for the email classes