Salesforce falls on downbeat guidance; overshadowed dividend, share buyback By Investing.com

Investing.com — Salesforce (NYSE:) announced its first ever quarterly dividend, increased its stock buyback program and posted better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings, but the cloud software maker’s stock fell premarket after disappointing full-year revenue guidance.

At 05.25 ET ( 10.25 GMT) Salesforce stock fell 1.9% in premarket trading, having closed Wednesday at $299.98.  

Salesforce beat revenue estimates for fourth-quarter revenue and profit as it benefited from higher cloud spending, prompting the company to announce its first ever quarterly dividend of $0.40 a share while increasing its share buyback plan by $10 billion.

However, Salesforce also announced that it sees revenue between $37.7 billion to $38 billion for full-year 2025, compared with analysts’ estimate of $38.62 billion, according to LSEG data.

This downbeat forecast suggests the company has concerns about the potential for a slowdown in cloud and tech spending as clients try to cut costs as they battle high interest rates and rising inflation.

Salesforce announced last month plans to cut about 700 employees, or roughly 1% of its global workforce.

“Strong execution, Gen-AI offer upside to well-rounded growth profile,” analysts at Goldman Sachs said, in a note dated Feb. 28.

For the three months ended Jan. 31, Salesforce adjusted earnings of $2.29 per diluted share, up from $1.68 a year earlier, on revenue of $9.29B, up from $8.38B a year earlier.

(Yasin Ebrahim contributed to this article.)