Salesforce Q4 Beats Street, as CFO Smith Plans Exit

Cloud software company Salesforce.com just announced quarterly earnings results that were slightly better than what analysts had estimated, and the company announced that CFO Graham Smith will retire next year.

The company reported non-GAAP earnings of seven cents a share on sales of $1.15 billion, beating the consensus estimates of analysts, who had called for six cents on $1.13 billion. On a GAAP basis, the company reported a loss of 19 cents per share.

Salesforce shares fell in after-hours trading by 47 cents, or less than one percent, after the earnings were announced. The shares rose by more than three percent during the regular session and closed at $66.22 a share. The main reason appeared to be EPS guidance that was a little lighter than consensus. The company guided for earnings of nine to 10 cents in the first quarter versus a consensus view of 10 cents, and 48 to 50 cents for the fiscal year compared to a consensus of 50 cents.

In a statement, CEO Marc Benioff raised the company’s revenue guidance for the 2015 fiscal year to $5.3 billion which is higher than the previous consensus view of $5.2 billion. Salesforce finished its 2014 fiscal year with $4.07 billion in sales.

On a conference call with analysts, Benioff said that the number of “seven- and eight-figure deals” for Salesforce increased last quarter.

Deferred revenue, a key figure that indicates growth in Salesforce’s subscriptions, grew to $2.5 billion, up 35 percent over the year-ago quarter and benefited partially from last year’s acquisitions of the email marketing firm ExactTarget.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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