Salesforce’s Mixed Earnings

Today is Wednesday, December 1, 2021.

Salesforce’s Mixed Earnings

Shares of Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) fell 6.19% in after-hours trading on Tuesday after the technology giant’s future outlook missed expectations, even though the most recent quarter was strong.

Financials: Salesforce reported earnings per share of $1.27 in the quarter and revenue reached $6.86 billion. Both numbers were better than expected.

The Future: The problem for Salesforce was its fourth-quarter guidance. The company expects to hit earnings per share between 72 cents and 73 cents. Analysts were expecting the company to exceed 80 cents.

New Boss: Salesforce announced Tuesday that Bret Taylor was promoted to Vice Chair of the Board and Co-CEO of Salesforce. This occurred one day after Taylor was also named the chairman of Twitter (NYSE: TWTR).

Quote: “With the tremendous strength of our Customer 360 platform and Slack, we’re on track to reach $50 billion revenue in FY26.” - Marc Benioff, chair and CEO of Salesforce.

Final Thoughts: Outlook aside, it was still a strong quarter. This dip might be a good time to buy Salesforce stock, if you are bullish on the company.

Notables

Notable Earnings Today: Crowdstrike Holdings (Nasdaq: CRWD), Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), Royal Bank of Canada (NYSE: RY), Okta (Nasdaq: OKTA), Splunk (Nasdaq: SPLK) Five Below (Nasdaq: FIVE), PVH (NYSE: PVH), Veeva Systems (NYSE: VEEV), Semtech (Nasdaq: SMTC).

Notable IPOs Today: Nuvectis Pharma, Inc. (Nasdaq; NVCT), TLGY Acquisition Corporation Unit (Nasdaq: TLGYU), Codere Online Luxembourg, S.A. Ordinary Shares (Nasdaq: CDRO), Harte-Hanks, Inc. Common Stock (Nasdaq: HHS).

Notable Equity Crowdfunding Campaigns Ending Today: Secretos de mis Abuelos (Honeycomb).

Notable Economic Events Today: ADP non-farm employment change (8:15 a.m. ET), Manufacturing PMI (9:45 a.m. ET), ISM manufacturing index (10:00 a.m. ET), Crude oil inventories (10:30 a.m. ET), Beige Book (2:00 p.m. ET).

Merck Ticks up Due to FDA Panel Approval

Photo by Danilo Alvesd / Unsplash

Shares of Merck & Co. (NYSE: MRK) jumped 1.49% in after-hours trading on Tuesday after a panel of experts with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted in favor of emergency use authorization for the drug company’s Covid-19 treatment pill.

Details: The panel narrowly voted to recommend the drug, with 13 members voting for it and 10 voting against it. There were concerns raised, including issues for pregnant women. The FDA now takes the recommendation from the panel into consideration before making a decision.

Background: Merck’s pill, which is the first at-home oral treatment for Covid-19, has been shown to reduce hospitalization and death by 30%.

Numbers: Even with the stock price increase on Tuesday afternoon, Merck’s stock price is still slightly down in 2021.

Final Thoughts: A similar pill from Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), which has been shown to reduce hospitalization and death risk by 89%, is now under review by the FDA.

Buy the Omicron Cryptocurrency Dip?

The identification of the new Omicron variant of the coronavirus caused the prices of most cryptocurrencies to dip a few days ago.

Background: Most cryptos reached record-high prices in early November. Many investors saw crypto as a good hedge against inflation in a post-pandemic world, but the Omicron variant changes that predicament.

Bullish Case: The Omicron dip could be a buying opportunity for investors. In fact, that is what El Salvador did by buying 100 more Bitcoins. Thanks in part to both the metaverse and real-world use cases, crypto is here to stay.

Bearish Case: However, investors should ask if this dip is short-term or not. After all, crypto is still a volatile asset.

Final Thoughts: How does the crypto dip compare to the recent dip in traditional stocks?

Trends to Watch

Welcome, Parag: Meet the new CEO of Twitter (CNN)

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