财报前瞻 | AI 尚未成为助力，赛富时如何提高利润率？
赛富时将于 5 月 29 日公布 2025 财年第一季度业绩。分析师预计营收将增长 11%，至 91.5 亿美元；预计每股收益将增长 40%，至 2.37 美元。一个重要的问题是，利润率的提高是否足以推高股价。一些分析师认为，收入增长需要重新加速。
According to the Zhitong Finance and Economics APP, Salesforce (CRM.US) is set to announce its first-quarter financial results for the fiscal year 2025 on May 29. Analysts expect revenue to increase by 11% to $9.15 billion, and earnings per share to rise by 40% to $2.37.
In addition, the current remaining performance obligations (CRPO) are expected to climb by 11% to $26.76 billion. CRPO orders are the sum of deferred revenue and backlog orders, serving as an indicator of sales growth.
Can Artificial Intelligence be a Boost
Some analysts predict that customer upgrades to artificial intelligence tools will boost revenue for the fiscal year 2026.
Bank of America analyst Brad Sills stated: "The next catalyst is that with the development of data cloud computing, the growth of subscription revenue will re-accelerate from the current 10% expectation." "The outlook for the fiscal year 2025 assumes almost no growth in subscription revenue from data cloud. We estimate that by the fourth quarter of the fiscal year 2025, in the $29.6 billion non-relational database industry, only a 1% share represents a 1% incremental subscription growth."
Meanwhile, activist investors pressured Salesforce in 2022 to increase profit margins and avoid dilutive acquisitions. Salesforce disbanded a research M&A team in early 2023, indicating that the company will no longer engage in large transactions. But that was before the rise of generative artificial intelligence.
Stock Dividends, Buybacks
When announcing its fourth-quarter financial results for the fiscal year 2024, Salesforce declared its first dividend.
Furthermore, Salesforce increased its stock buyback program by $10 billion. The company repurchased $1.7 billion worth of stock in the fourth quarter, bringing the total stock repurchase amount to approximately $12 billion since the program started in August 2022.
Amid activist investors pushing for cost reductions, Salesforce has refocused on improving operating profit margins. In late January, the company announced plans to lay off 700 employees.
An important question is whether the increase in profit margins is sufficient to boost the stock price. Some analysts believe that revenue growth needs to re-accelerate