Salesforce Shares Explode After Company Reports Strong Q2 Results

American cloud-based software company Salesforce saw its shares soaring this week after the company reported strong second quarter earnings.

For the second quarter, the company reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.44 on revenue of $5.15 billion. That blew away analyst expectations of 67 cents earnings per share on revenue of $4.9 billion, according to Refinitiv.

The company said that its adjusted earnings were positively impacted by mark-to-market accounting for the company’s investments. Salesforce’s overall revenue grew 29% year over year in the fiscal second quarter, which ended July 31.

President and CFO Mark Hawkins said on the earnings call, “While our performance in Q2 leaves us optimistic about the future, it is important to note that we remain mindful of how the pandemic may continue to impact our customers and our community. Let me take you through some of the results for Q2, and I’ll begin with the top-line commentary. Revenue was $5.15 billion, representing 29% year-over-year growth. Q2 was the first time in which the company surpassed $5 billion in a single quarter.”

He added, “Our revenue performance by cloud continued to demonstrate strength across the portfolio. Sales cloud grew 13%. Service cloud grew 20%. Platform and other grew 66% with Tableau contributing 41 points of that growth, and marketing and commerce grew 21%.”

Founder Marc Benioff noted on the call, “This has been such a challenging time. Our hearts have been broken. We’ve heard so many stories of pain and distress across the world. And for us, this really — this moment is actually quite humbling, quite bittersweet. It reminds us that, at Salesforce, business is the greatest platform for change, that we’re really here to be a great example of stakeholder capitalism, to really show how we’re able to deliver a phenomenal return for our shareholders, as well as for our stakeholders. And in many ways, this quarter really is a victory for stakeholder capitalism. It’s been not only about our core values but also about our core products.”

Earlier in the week the S&P Dow Jones Indices said that it would replace Exxon Mobil with Salesforce with the latter joining the index on August 31st.

Shares of the stock are now up 66% YTD.

Disclaimer: We have no position in salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE: CRM) and have not been compensated for this article.