CRM - Salesforce.com

[Palantir]

Why are heavy amounts of deferred revenue and share compensation necessarily a problem? It seems these are hiding profitability more than vice versa.

[jschembs]

My point there is that operating cash flow growth is coming from unsustainable sources. Earnings quality as measured by net income as a proportion of operating cash flow is non-existent.

[Hielko]

pretty good article imo on CRM @ SA: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1776782-salesforce-com-the-underpants-gnomes-of-wall-street

[jschembs]

Thanks! I could have added a few more paragraphs of serious issues (15 years and effectively no retained earnings, increasing debt load, first convertible coming due next year), but I didn't want the article to get too unwieldy.

[Hielko]

Didn't realize you were the writer, but makes sense looking at your username :p. Nice job.

[tombgrt]

Did anyone read this article? It's a few months old so I'm probably late to the party. It's pretty funny.

 

http://valleywag.gawker.com/marc-benioff-is-the-ron-burgundy-of-tech-1469662002/all

 

Holy cow is that Benioff nuts!

 

And he's still at it with his 1-1-1 charity project it seems:

Maybe he should go for 1% of revenue because other than employee hours the rest is quite shit!

 

Also like the regular complaints on his personal twitter feed. And what about the other ego boosting with celebs, fashion, ... Ha!

 

I really have a hard time not increasing my put option position when I read more of this nonsense but I understand the idiotic momentum that can continue in such stocks. At the least at the current price with $10b in revenue and 20%+ op. margins, the stock wouldn't be too severly overpriced. If we were already living in that time (2020?) that is... Not that I believe we'll actually ever see this scenario come to frution.

[Vish_ram]

Great post.

 

I'm in ERP and haven't used CRM products. No position in CRM.

 

1) The comparison to GOOG and MSFT in SA article is specious. The latter two are natural monopolies. CRM needs to get their foot in the door. CRM is not a monopoly and it has to fight tooth and nail to gain revenue.

 

2) How do you short a company that is growing revenue at several factors of GDP growth, doesn't issue much debt and generates operating cash flow to fund most of growth?

 

3) Once you embed a software in corporate world, it gets very hard to take it out. It took me 4 years to remove a piece of software from my company as that functionality was now provided by the main ERP. For a big CRM implementation that would spread tentacles (integration to back office etc) to other pieces of software in corp world, you can almost forget getting it removed. It is hard to get in, harder to get out.

 

4) In a way CRM is like AMZN. Some of the traditional metrics don't matter. What matters is revenue growth. FOr each $1 of revenue, they are keeping the competitors permanently at bay. Look at the growth of revenue per share for last 10 years.

 

The analogy that I've is that , CRM shareholders are owning the miracle tree that grows rapidly and generates a million seeds. The seeds are carried by wind near and far and they outsmart other seeds to grow in fresh virgin soil. The cycle repeats. The tree doesn't generate any fruits for now, but in the end, the owners of this tree will find a big area of land blanketed by this miracle tree. Once there is no more land left, the tree can stop producing seeds and start giving fruits.

 

The only troubling trend in CRM is the recent decline in ROIC. We need to see if this is one time blip or a permanent phenomenon. The short thesis precariously rests on this. A company doing lots of acquisitions will show more BV (through write up of Goodwill), so invested capital looks bigger (as opposed to spending on sales that is expensed). This might explain lower ROIC as well.

 

As economy expands, IT budgets go up and companies start ramping up software projects.

I would never short a growing software firm that is not issuing debt. Good luck to shorts, they need it in plenty.

 

Let's invert: the longs are looking at quality SAAS business model, consistent revenue growth, market share in a fairly sticky product business, 1st mover advantage in CRM software, and the ability of Salesforce.com to reduce their selling expenses (currently ~40% of revenue) in the future and thus generate FCF.

 

CRM as a business was exceptional  being the first to put forth a solid CRM system via SAAS model (thus in terms of driving a high EBITDA multiple and high customer retention).  So the underlying product is useful to customers and sticky.  This is true. 

 

The question is FCF generation.  When a dominant software company (say ORCL or MSFT) dominates their industry they begin gushing cash. Yet we haven't seen this with CRM even though much of their (bloated) sales staff is paid in "free money" equity.  Why is that?  Why can't CRM generate cash?  Oracle trades at 11x unlevered FCF, MSFT trades at 11.5x unlevered cash flow while CRM trades at 38x unlevered FCF. Is CRM's growth curve that emphatic with the big dog enterprise software players getting into the market?

 

The shorts are looking at unsustainable growth rate of revenue growth, questionable accounting, management selling stock hand over fist, low ROIC.  Said another way: In an upside case CRM will do ~$1.2 billion in FCF in FY2015, thus its trading at~25x FCF or a 4% FCF yield in an upside case?  Does this makes sense?

[jschembs]

At what point does sheer size start to weigh on the valuation? The company's 10.5x EV/revenue (recognizing EV/billings is better, but I'm pulling quick numbers from Cap IQ) is currently the same as it was in 2007, when it was generating roughly $500 MM in revenue (versus $4 BN today). As the company grows, each incremental percentage point of revenue growth is more difficult and expensive to achieve.

[Guest wellmont]

this company is ridiculously overpriced and will come back to earth eventually.

[tombgrt]

Great post.

 

I'm in ERP and haven't used CRM products. No position in CRM.

 

1) The comparison to GOOG and MSFT in SA article is specious. The latter two are natural monopolies. CRM needs to get their foot in the door. CRM is not a monopoly and it has to fight tooth and nail to gain revenue.

 

2) How do you short a company that is growing revenue at several factors of GDP growth, doesn't issue much debt and generates operating cash flow to fund most of growth?

 

3) Once you embed a software in corporate world, it gets very hard to take it out. It took me 4 years to remove a piece of software from my company as that functionality was now provided by the main ERP. For a big CRM implementation that would spread tentacles (integration to back office etc) to other pieces of software in corp world, you can almost forget getting it removed. It is hard to get in, harder to get out.

 

4) In a way CRM is like AMZN. Some of the traditional metrics don't matter. What matters is revenue growth. FOr each $1 of revenue, they are keeping the competitors permanently at bay. Look at the growth of revenue per share for last 10 years.

 

The analogy that I've is that , CRM shareholders are owning the miracle tree that grows rapidly and generates a million seeds. The seeds are carried by wind near and far and they outsmart other seeds to grow in fresh virgin soil. The cycle repeats. The tree doesn't generate any fruits for now, but in the end, the owners of this tree will find a big area of land blanketed by this miracle tree. Once there is no more land left, the tree can stop producing seeds and start giving fruits.

 

The only troubling trend in CRM is the recent decline in ROIC. We need to see if this is one time blip or a permanent phenomenon. The short thesis precariously rests on this. A company doing lots of acquisitions will show more BV (through write up of Goodwill), so invested capital looks bigger (as opposed to spending on sales that is expensed). This might explain lower ROIC as well.

 

As economy expands, IT budgets go up and companies start ramping up software projects.

I would never short a growing software firm that is not issuing debt. Good luck to shorts, they need it in plenty.

 

Let's invert: the longs are looking at quality SAAS business model, consistent revenue growth, market share in a fairly sticky product business, 1st mover advantage in CRM software, and the ability of Salesforce.com to reduce their selling expenses (currently ~40% of revenue) in the future and thus generate FCF.

 

CRM as a business was exceptional  being the first to put forth a solid CRM system via SAAS model (thus in terms of driving a high EBITDA multiple and high customer retention).  So the underlying product is useful to customers and sticky.  This is true. 

 

The question is FCF generation.  When a dominant software company (say ORCL or MSFT) dominates their industry they begin gushing cash. Yet we haven't seen this with CRM even though much of their (bloated) sales staff is paid in "free money" equity.  Why is that?  Why can't CRM generate cash?  Oracle trades at 11x unlevered FCF, MSFT trades at 11.5x unlevered cash flow while CRM trades at 38x unlevered FCF. Is CRM's growth curve that emphatic with the big dog enterprise software players getting into the market?

 

The shorts are looking at unsustainable growth rate of revenue growth, questionable accounting, management selling stock hand over fist, low ROIC.  Said another way: In an upside case CRM will do ~$1.2 billion in FCF in FY2015, thus its trading at~25x FCF or a 4% FCF yield in an upside case?  Does this makes sense?

 

1) Yes, CRM is no GOOG or MSFT. Why then is it priced as if it is going to have a more than perfect future? When is the "amazingness" going to show in the numbers?

 

2) That cash flow through options trick only works as long as the stock plays along. 

 

3) I'm sure that is true, at least until a certain point. CRM's basic product is - from what I heard - more than adequate for its clients. However, I wonder what kind of possible mess they will be in after all the mindless acquisitions that get thrown in the mix. Egomaniacs and their diworsification of businesses has never proven to be a winning formula in the past. I don't see how it will be different this time, especially given the prices that are being paid. And it's not like it is getting any cheaper or easier to get a bigger piece of the pie. The easy part is over.

 

4) How is every dollar of revenue at amazon permanently in their hands? Are you talking about scale advantages in this specific case? Competition is only going to make the endless fight for revenue harder for both AMZN and CRM, not easier. In the fast changing world of today, it's very easy to lose your perceived moat in a blink. While a lot of that revenue might be very sticky for CRM, they will still have to fight for it.

 

Explain how standard metrics are useless please, I have little experience with miracle trees or the magical trolls such as Benioff that operate them... Maybe there is value in a business that sells dollars for 99 cent after all!

[ScottHall]

Great post.

 

I'm in ERP and haven't used CRM products. No position in CRM.

 

1) The comparison to GOOG and MSFT in SA article is specious. The latter two are natural monopolies. CRM needs to get their foot in the door. CRM is not a monopoly and it has to fight tooth and nail to gain revenue.

 

2) How do you short a company that is growing revenue at several factors of GDP growth, doesn't issue much debt and generates operating cash flow to fund most of growth?

 

3) Once you embed a software in corporate world, it gets very hard to take it out. It took me 4 years to remove a piece of software from my company as that functionality was now provided by the main ERP. For a big CRM implementation that would spread tentacles (integration to back office etc) to other pieces of software in corp world, you can almost forget getting it removed. It is hard to get in, harder to get out.

 

4) In a way CRM is like AMZN. Some of the traditional metrics don't matter. What matters is revenue growth. FOr each $1 of revenue, they are keeping the competitors permanently at bay. Look at the growth of revenue per share for last 10 years.

 

The analogy that I've is that , CRM shareholders are owning the miracle tree that grows rapidly and generates a million seeds. The seeds are carried by wind near and far and they outsmart other seeds to grow in fresh virgin soil. The cycle repeats. The tree doesn't generate any fruits for now, but in the end, the owners of this tree will find a big area of land blanketed by this miracle tree. Once there is no more land left, the tree can stop producing seeds and start giving fruits.

 

The only troubling trend in CRM is the recent decline in ROIC. We need to see if this is one time blip or a permanent phenomenon. The short thesis precariously rests on this. A company doing lots of acquisitions will show more BV (through write up of Goodwill), so invested capital looks bigger (as opposed to spending on sales that is expensed). This might explain lower ROIC as well.

 

As economy expands, IT budgets go up and companies start ramping up software projects.

I would never short a growing software firm that is not issuing debt. Good luck to shorts, they need it in plenty.

 

Let's invert: the longs are looking at quality SAAS business model, consistent revenue growth, market share in a fairly sticky product business, 1st mover advantage in CRM software, and the ability of Salesforce.com to reduce their selling expenses (currently ~40% of revenue) in the future and thus generate FCF.

 

CRM as a business was exceptional  being the first to put forth a solid CRM system via SAAS model (thus in terms of driving a high EBITDA multiple and high customer retention).  So the underlying product is useful to customers and sticky.  This is true. 

 

The question is FCF generation.  When a dominant software company (say ORCL or MSFT) dominates their industry they begin gushing cash. Yet we haven't seen this with CRM even though much of their (bloated) sales staff is paid in "free money" equity.  Why is that?  Why can't CRM generate cash?  Oracle trades at 11x unlevered FCF, MSFT trades at 11.5x unlevered cash flow while CRM trades at 38x unlevered FCF. Is CRM's growth curve that emphatic with the big dog enterprise software players getting into the market?

 

The shorts are looking at unsustainable growth rate of revenue growth, questionable accounting, management selling stock hand over fist, low ROIC.  Said another way: In an upside case CRM will do ~$1.2 billion in FCF in FY2015, thus its trading at~25x FCF or a 4% FCF yield in an upside case?  Does this makes sense?

 

1) Yes, CRM is no GOOG or MSFT. Why then is it priced as if it is going to have a more than perfect future? When is the "amazingness" going to show in the numbers?

 

2) That cash flow through options trick only works as long as the stock plays along. 

 

3) I'm sure that is true, at least until a certain point. CRM's basic product is - from what I heard - more than adequate for its clients. However, I wonder what kind of possible mess they will be in after all the mindless acquisitions that get thrown in the mix. Egomaniacs and their diworsification of businesses has never proven to be a winning formula in the past. I don't see how it will be different this time, especially given the prices that are being paid. And it's not like it is getting any cheaper or easier to get a bigger piece of the pie. The easy part is over.

 

4) How is every dollar of revenue at amazon permanently in their hands? Are you talking about scale advantages in this specific case? Competition is only going to make the endless fight for revenue harder for both AMZN and CRM, not easier. In the fast changing world of today, it's very easy to lose your perceived moat in a blink. While a lot of that revenue might be very sticky for CRM, they will still have to fight for it.

 

Explain how standard metrics are useless please, I have little experience with miracle trees or the magical trolls such as Benioff that operate them... Maybe there is value in a business that sells dollars for 99 cent after all!

 

Nothing to add on CRM one way or the other, but I would warn against being so offensively dismissive, Tombgrt. You may disagree with him, but by being a prick about it I think you're shorting yourself the opportunity to pick up additional mental models.

 

If you evaluate his opinion and just disagree with them, that's fine, but you should keep your disagreement to the facts and not by coming up with witty ways to poke fun at your conversation partner.

[Vish_ram]

No offense taken.

 

Lets take the hypothetical case of Softville. The two companies Riskoff and Benioff are CRM companies with sales of 10MM. Riskoff is growing at 10% and Benioff at 40%, they both spend 15% of revenues on R&D. Riskoff never overspends to increase sales, focuses on profits, ROE, free cash flow and buybacks. Riskoff's CEO generously sprinkles his shareholder report with Buffett and Munger quotes. Value investors go gaga on Riskoff as all free cash flow goes to buyback.

 

Riskoff shuns acquisitions at more than 10 times P/E.

 

Benioff's swashbuckling CEO, pouring every penny back into the company, increasing sales force, achieves great growth. The market cheers, values it for growth. Benioff awards generous stock options, attracting the best talent and creates the virtuous cycle. Fast forward 10 years, the revenues of Riskoff and Benioff are 25MM and 290MM respectively. With 15% spent on R&D, Benioff spends 10 times more money on R&D than Riskoff.

 

Benioff's product offerings explode, and aided by acquisitions they start bundling all the product suite wiht one single attractive price. The Riskoff product suite is now a small subset and can be considered a small feature in the broad product offering of Benioff. Everybody abandons Riskoff in the next upgrade cycle and moves to Benioff.

 

The Riskoff with great free cash flow and excellent capital allocation  suddenly declares bankruptcy.

 

In software, the #1 player takes home bulk of profits and creates a self fulfilling prophesy.

 

A short on CRM is a bet that revenue growth is coming to a halt. It is a bet that movement towards cloud computing, saas is slowing down. The q is , who is speculating more? the longs or the shorts.

 

Speaking of valuations, a not too bright guy (yours truly) who was with Oracle when Benioff started CRM thought CRM was most over hyped and over valued company in the world. Fast forward to today, the statement may be still true (hope the valuation part :) ) and stock is up 15 times.

 

[Palantir]

this company is ridiculously overpriced and will come back to earth eventually.

 

What should it be priced?

[Guest wellmont]

at least 50% lower. for starters.

[jschembs]

this company is ridiculously overpriced and will come back to earth eventually.

 

What should it be priced?

 

$25-30 is reasonable

[tombgrt]

Great post.

 

I'm in ERP and haven't used CRM products. No position in CRM.

 

1) The comparison to GOOG and MSFT in SA article is specious. The latter two are natural monopolies. CRM needs to get their foot in the door. CRM is not a monopoly and it has to fight tooth and nail to gain revenue.

 

2) How do you short a company that is growing revenue at several factors of GDP growth, doesn't issue much debt and generates operating cash flow to fund most of growth?

 

3) Once you embed a software in corporate world, it gets very hard to take it out. It took me 4 years to remove a piece of software from my company as that functionality was now provided by the main ERP. For a big CRM implementation that would spread tentacles (integration to back office etc) to other pieces of software in corp world, you can almost forget getting it removed. It is hard to get in, harder to get out.

 

4) In a way CRM is like AMZN. Some of the traditional metrics don't matter. What matters is revenue growth. FOr each $1 of revenue, they are keeping the competitors permanently at bay. Look at the growth of revenue per share for last 10 years.

 

The analogy that I've is that , CRM shareholders are owning the miracle tree that grows rapidly and generates a million seeds. The seeds are carried by wind near and far and they outsmart other seeds to grow in fresh virgin soil. The cycle repeats. The tree doesn't generate any fruits for now, but in the end, the owners of this tree will find a big area of land blanketed by this miracle tree. Once there is no more land left, the tree can stop producing seeds and start giving fruits.

 

The only troubling trend in CRM is the recent decline in ROIC. We need to see if this is one time blip or a permanent phenomenon. The short thesis precariously rests on this. A company doing lots of acquisitions will show more BV (through write up of Goodwill), so invested capital looks bigger (as opposed to spending on sales that is expensed). This might explain lower ROIC as well.

 

As economy expands, IT budgets go up and companies start ramping up software projects.

I would never short a growing software firm that is not issuing debt. Good luck to shorts, they need it in plenty.

 

Let's invert: the longs are looking at quality SAAS business model, consistent revenue growth, market share in a fairly sticky product business, 1st mover advantage in CRM software, and the ability of Salesforce.com to reduce their selling expenses (currently ~40% of revenue) in the future and thus generate FCF.

 

CRM as a business was exceptional  being the first to put forth a solid CRM system via SAAS model (thus in terms of driving a high EBITDA multiple and high customer retention).  So the underlying product is useful to customers and sticky.  This is true. 

 

The question is FCF generation.  When a dominant software company (say ORCL or MSFT) dominates their industry they begin gushing cash. Yet we haven't seen this with CRM even though much of their (bloated) sales staff is paid in "free money" equity.  Why is that?  Why can't CRM generate cash?  Oracle trades at 11x unlevered FCF, MSFT trades at 11.5x unlevered cash flow while CRM trades at 38x unlevered FCF. Is CRM's growth curve that emphatic with the big dog enterprise software players getting into the market?

 

The shorts are looking at unsustainable growth rate of revenue growth, questionable accounting, management selling stock hand over fist, low ROIC.  Said another way: In an upside case CRM will do ~$1.2 billion in FCF in FY2015, thus its trading at~25x FCF or a 4% FCF yield in an upside case?  Does this makes sense?

 

1) Yes, CRM is no GOOG or MSFT. Why then is it priced as if it is going to have a more than perfect future? When is the "amazingness" going to show in the numbers?

 

2) That cash flow through options trick only works as long as the stock plays along. 

 

3) I'm sure that is true, at least until a certain point. CRM's basic product is - from what I heard - more than adequate for its clients. However, I wonder what kind of possible mess they will be in after all the mindless acquisitions that get thrown in the mix. Egomaniacs and their diworsification of businesses has never proven to be a winning formula in the past. I don't see how it will be different this time, especially given the prices that are being paid. And it's not like it is getting any cheaper or easier to get a bigger piece of the pie. The easy part is over.

 

4) How is every dollar of revenue at amazon permanently in their hands? Are you talking about scale advantages in this specific case? Competition is only going to make the endless fight for revenue harder for both AMZN and CRM, not easier. In the fast changing world of today, it's very easy to lose your perceived moat in a blink. While a lot of that revenue might be very sticky for CRM, they will still have to fight for it.

 

Explain how standard metrics are useless please, I have little experience with miracle trees or the magical trolls such as Benioff that operate them... Maybe there is value in a business that sells dollars for 99 cent after all!

 

Nothing to add on CRM one way or the other, but I would warn against being so offensively dismissive, Tombgrt. You may disagree with him, but by being a prick about it I think you're shorting yourself the opportunity to pick up additional mental models.

 

If you evaluate his opinion and just disagree with them, that's fine, but you should keep your disagreement to the facts and not by coming up with witty ways to poke fun at your conversation partner.

 

I'm sorry if it came of as off offensive to Scotthall or anyone else, that was not my intention. My intention with the last paragraph was simply to poke a little fun with the comment on the "magical tree". (*) I think that I asked some valid and fair questions in the rest of my post so I don't really see where you are coming from when you say that I dismiss other views. I respect everyone's view, especially since most people here are a heck of a lot older, wiser and smarter than me.

 

(*) IMO my attempt at being funny is especially relevant considering what's going on with CRM. Giving away stuff is easy, making money and intensively competing with big players is something else. Another perfect (small) beat this Q and all is well! Look at operating margins declining, SG&A going through the roof, increase in stock option compensation, ... You can extrapolate any reasonable growth number and let them finance it with stock, it's not going to add up to the current stock price. I understand what Vish_ram is saying but the numbers simply don't tell the story of a healthy, profitable, succesful company, now or in the future. I don't see this ending well, with or without the stock taking a dive first. I increased my put option exposure before earnings Thursday and bought some more during the day yesterday. These are all long dated. I'm confident in this position considering where we are with market valuations, sector valuations, detoriating financials, insiders selling hand over fist, relative cheapness of the options, market cap of CRM compared to smaller but equally overvalued competitors, ... Still a good change that I lose 100% of this position but I don't see my odds getting much better from here. We'll see, GL to all!  ;)

[Phaceliacapital]

http://seekingalpha.com/article/2073073-salesforce-com-cant-tell-you-where-its-revenues-come-from

 

Who makes this up :D ??

 

Salesforce also noted that its 38% growth for the year under review "...was due to new customers, upgrades, and additional subscriptions from existing customers and improved renewal rates..." Yet, when the SEC asked Salesforce to provide the contribution of each factor to the company's growth, Salesforce admits that they "...do not separately quantify or monitor the separate impact of these enumerated factors." In other words, growth must come from these factors, because they cannot think of anywhere else revenue growth could have come from.

[tombgrt]

Ha!

 

In reporting 33% revenue growth last year "due almost entirely" to new customers and existing customers, Salesforce omits that 19% of that growth came from a single acquisition.

 

Another point I forgot to mention in my previous post. There is no way they can finance their unprofitable growth and keep it at the same pace if the stock would take a hit. At some point the self fulfilling prophecy will revert course IMO.

[tombgrt]

http://seekingalpha.com/article/2075543-beyond-gaap-does-salesforce-look-much-better

 

Another excellent article by board member jschembs.

[Phaceliacapital]

I've also argued in the past why I believe acquisitions should be deducted against OCF in determining CRM's FCF, but this analysis excludes acquisitions.

 

And still massively overvalued, unbelievable

[tombgrt]

this company is ridiculously overpriced and will come back to earth eventually.

 

What should it be priced?

 

$25-30 is reasonable

 

Btw, I was surprised by this 'target' given your posts on SA. I have that target as well for most of my put options but believe we could easily see it tumble way lower exactly because they rely on an ever increasing stock price. I'd gladly sell my leaps at $25-35 and buy more with much lower strikes. But hey, this stock is more likely to hit $100 first anyway...

[Phaceliacapital]

Title: Salesforce.com Announces Appointment of General Colin Powell to its Board of Directors

 

Just because they can!

[tombgrt]

Haha. Seriously, I should stop reading all this stuff. Confirmation bias is getting me.

[jschembs]

this company is ridiculously overpriced and will come back to earth eventually.

 

What should it be priced?

 

$25-30 is reasonable

 

Btw, I was surprised by this 'target' given your posts on SA. I have that target as well for most of my put options but believe we could easily see it tumble way lower exactly because they rely on an ever increasing stock price. I'd gladly sell my leaps at $25-35 and buy more with much lower strikes. But hey, this stock is more likely to hit $100 first anyway...

 

You raise a good point, likely due to my own anchoring after seeing market prices so much consistently higher. I think a more realistic value is $15-20, but not sure if/when we'd get there. However, one thing I learned in shorting NFLX in 2011 is that once the market begins to sniff out liquidity risks, things can go crazy quite quickly. I don't foresee liquidity risks with CRM, although one of their convertibles comes due in early 2015, and if they had any serious growth hiccup, FCF would be seriously impacted, since a large portion of the company's FCF results from growth in negative working capital.

 

On a separate note, does anyone have a subscription to theinformation.com? There's an article on CRM that quotes Bernstein's analyst, who has called their accounting practices into question for years. Unfortunately, I can't access the entire article.

 

https://www.theinformation.com/Amid-Cloud-Mania-Questions-about-Salesforce-s-Growth

[tombgrt]

Thanks jschembs, appreciate the added color. :)

 

Would be interested in the article as well!