| By Maureen O'Gara |
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| August 21, 2008 03:45 PM EDT |
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Salesforce.com, the king of SaaS, reported Q2 earnings of $10 million, eight cents a share, nearly triple its results last year on revenues up 49% to $263.1 million.
The strong results Wednesday were roughly in line with expectations but the company’s stock dropped 15%. Oppenheimer blames weaker-than-expected deferred revenues that hint of a “meaningful slowdown.”
After posting negative sequential growth in Q1, deferred revenues were only up2% sequentially in Q2 to $479.5 million, which management attributed to timing issues.
Subscription billings grew 34% year-over-year to $249 million, but fell short of Oppenheimer’s expectations of $269 million.
Salesforce added 4,100 customers in the quarter, making its user base about 47,700.
It figures it can clear $273 million-$274 million this quarter and return about the same earnings it did in Q2. That means it could do $1.07 billion-$1.075 billion this year and earn 34 cents-35 cents.
Meanwhile, Salesforce has bought nine-year-old Chicago-based call center ISV InStranet for $31.5 million, which should pare five cents off this quarter’s net.
The company, whose operations are mostly in Paris, has no particular CRM or SaaS credentials, but it’s supposed to be good at self-service support compliments of a knowledge base that Salesforce intends integrating into its offering.
InStranet CEO Alex Dayon will become VP of product management at Salesforce.
Existing InStranet customers include Orange, Comcast and T-Mobile.
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