Cloudy CRM vendor salesforce.com has seen revenues rise but losses widen during its third quarter. The company also reckons it is on course to hit $3bn in revenue for the fiscal year.
The firm, which has branched out into enterprise social software in recent years, recorded revenue of $788.4m, up 35% on the $584.3m recorded this quarter a year ago. The company said signing bigger deals than in previous quarters was behind the leap in revenue.
However losses at the San Francisco-based firm grew from $3.7m last year to $220.3m this quarter. The company said that was due to a one-off tax charge of $149m as well as $105m in stock-based compensation expense. Spending on sales and marketing rose 40%, the company added.
Salesforce.com generated $106m in cash during the quarter, a drop of 18% on the previous year. Total cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities now stand at $1.4bn, the company said.
The company is predicting to hit $3.041bn to $3.046bn for the fiscal year, and CEO Marc Benioff said the company has already broken that barrier on a run rate basis, meaning if this quarter’s performance was repeated four times it would add up to over $3bn.
Similarly for fiscal year 2014 the company is predicting revenues of $3.8bn to $3.85bn. Benioff expects one quarter to break the billion dollar barrier, giving the company revenue on a run rate of $4bn.
"Salesforce.com is the first enterprise cloud computing company to exceed a $3 billion annual revenue run rate, with outstanding third quarter revenue growth at 35% in dollars and 37% in constant currency," he said. "Given the strong customer response to our next generation social and mobile cloud technologies, I’m delighted to announce that we expect to surpass a $4bn annual revenue run rate during our fiscal year 2014."
Salesforce.com has been on a bit of a spending spree over recent years as it fleshes out its Social Enterprise strategy. Acquisitions include HR firm Rypple, social media monitoring vendor Radian6 and Buddy Media, a supplier of social media marketing technology.
