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I think I have fully processed my time spent at Salesforce's (CRM) annual extravaganza in San Francisco, known as Dreamforce.
This was my fourth Dreamforce, and it was fascinating per usual — including a dinner at the top of the 61-floor Salesforce Tower with Matthew McConaughey (a longtime friend and pitchman for the SaaS giant), Will.i.Am, Metallica lead drummer Lars Ulrich, one of Nvidia's (NVDA) founding GPU creators, and Anthropic co-founder Daniela Amodei (who gave some great brief remarks on artificial intelligence).
This dinner ended with an acoustic performance by Alanis Morissette, who sang four songs that reminded me that, at one point over the last 42 years, I did have a personal life (filled with the teenage heartbreak that only fed my appetite for sappy Alanis songs on Myspace).
I digress.
Now that I've digested this latest West Coast tech swing, I'm here to say it's good to see Salesforce co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff back to being Marc Benioff.
I realize that as a journalist, I'm supposed to be critical, and I am. Salesforce shocked the hell out of the market in late May with a weak outlook, and the stock got hammered. Not a lovely look.
But I can't completely turn off the analyst DNA in me that still exists deep down.
And on that score, I liked what I saw from Benioff at Dreamforce from a few different perspectives.
I saw a founder pull thousands of employees into his vision of an AI future during a keynote. The room full of "trailblazers" — as Salesforce employees are called — was hanging on to his every word. The group was ready to run through a wall for Benioff, essential when you are trying to deploy a billion autonomous AI agents and deliver for Wall Street each quarter.
It was also significant that Benioff mostly did the keynote himself, only yielding the mic a few times.
"The reason is I think he feels that this is a very pivotal moment for his company, for the industry, and for the technology," Goldman Sachs analyst Kash Rangan — who was also in attendance — told me.
"When these entrepreneurs like Marc and Oracle's Larry Ellison that have founded their companies and have this deep sense of connection to the companies, and they understand those pivotal moments, it is like they kick into high gear and all they can think about is getting the company to be on the right side of technology."
Salesforce co-founder & CEO Marc Benioff gives his keynote address at Dreamforce 2024. ·(Brian Sozzi)
I saw a founder deeply engaged in the products he was pitching to the masses — not reading off talking points supplied by team members. Benioff even turned the tables and quizzed me on the Opening Bid podcast about what I learned from a product demo at the event. You can catch that exchange in the above video.
If he thought he was going to catch this fella flat-footed, hell no! Forever prepared!
I saw a founder perhaps doing what very few in corporate America could do: bring together huge names to drive meaningful discussions, which often transformed into convos about Salesforce innovations and their longtime personal ties with Benioff.
Benioff has one of the most extensive networks I've seen, and trust me, that has paid dividends for Salesforce in terms of reputation, business wins, and getting things done quickly.
"Marc can turn this ship like no one else when he gets an idea in his head," one Benioff confidant told me at the Salesforce Tower dinner.
By all indications, Benioff is back to aggressively driving that huge Salesforce boat — shaking off the activist attacks that transpired a little while back.
"If I'm not enjoying it — I'm not doing it, and I think that I'm really enjoying Salesforce. I love it. I feel like we've done seminal work, especially in the last 18 months. We've gotten the company to the point where it is an absolute leader, where everyone is having to respond," Benioff remarked when asked to reflect ahead of his big 60th birthday on Sept. 25.
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So all this raises the question: Why isn't there more optimism priced into Salesforce's stock?
Its shares trade on a forward price-to-earnings multiple of 25 times, according to Yahoo Finance data. Microsoft (MSFT) trades at 33 times, whereas Oracle (ORCL) (Ellison is a mentor of Benioff's dating back to his time at the company) is at 27 times. Salesforce quasi-rival ServiceNow (NOW) trades on a 53 times forward multiple.
Pros tell me the Street is generally worried about Salesforce's propensity to spend big on acquisitions, which weighed on margins and free cash flow in the past. Others still aren't sold on Salesforce monetizing its new AI initiatives.
But they all generally agree that the stock does appear cheap on a relative and historical basis.
"I would go far enough to say that not much optimism [at all] is being priced into Salesforce's stock right now," Rangan said. "The stock is pricing in as if there is no growth at all, which is absolutely ridiculous. So not only AI optimism is not priced in, there's no optimism being priced in."
Salesforce's guidance calls for sales growth of 7% this year and up to 25% operating cash flow growth, FYI.
"I'm very optimistic about this company," Rangan said. "People tend to dismiss Marc — but I'm a big bull on the company."
Three times each week, I field insight-filled conversations with the biggest names in business and markets on Opening Bid. Find more episodes on our video hub. Watch on your preferred streaming service. Or listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
In the below Opening Bid episode, BNY (BNY) CEO Robin Vince takes the wraps off his plan to grow the iconic US bank.
