Salesforce (CRM) is scheduled to report results of its fourth fiscal quarter after the market close on Wednesday, February 28, with a conference call scheduled for 5:00 pm ET. What to watch for: 1. GUIDANCE: Along with its third quarter report in November, Salesforce raised its fiscal year 2018 revenue view to $10.43B-$10.44B from $10.35B-$10.4B and its FY18 adjusted EPS view to $1.32-$1.33 from $1.29-$1.31. Consensus, which stood at $10.4B and $1.32 for revenue and earnings at that time has edged up to $10.44B and $1.34, respectively, per share. 2. PARTNERSHIPS: In November, Salesforce and Google (GOOG, GOOGL) announced a new strategic partnership under which Salesforce has named Google Cloud as a preferred public cloud provider to support the company's rapidly growing global customer base. In addition, the companies announced they will offer new integrations that connect Salesforce with G Suite, Google's productivity and team collaboration services. The companies also announced plans to integrate Salesforce with Google Analytics, to connect sales, marketing and advertising data across Salesforce Sales Cloud, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Google Analytics 360. In addition, as part of the agreement, Google will continue to use Salesforce as its preferred CRM provide and Salesforce will continue to use G Suite as its preferred email and productivity provider. In December, eGain (EGAN) announced its integration with Salesforce.com. eGain Solve for Salesforce gives contact center agents on Salesforce CRM easy access eGain Knowledge+AI, eGain's solution for knowledge management and AI reasoning. In addition, customer interactions conducted in eGain Chat are recorded in Salesforce CRM as well, and case history from Salesforce CRM is embedded in the eGain Advisor Desktop. In January, IBM (IBM) and Salesforce announced an expansion of their strategic partnership, bringing together IBM Cloud and Watson services with Salesforce Quip and Salesforce Service Cloud Einstein to enable companies to connect with their customers and collaborate more effectively with deeper insights. With this expansion, Salesforce has named IBM a preferred cloud services provider and IBM has named Salesforce its preferred customer engagement platform for sales and service. 3. WALL STREET CONFIDENCE: Over the last week, several Wall Street analysts have made bullish comments about Salesforce ahead of the company's quarterly report. On Monday, Oppenheimer analyst Brian Schwartz raised his price target for Salesforce to $135 from $125 as he expects to see a good business performance from the company in its Q4. Schwartz notes that the overall tone of his recent checks on Salesforce's business was better than the positive trends revealed in his mid-quarter customer and IT spending surveys, and displayed in the December quarter results from the SaaS companies. The analyst reiterates an Outperform rating on the shares. On Friday, Piper Jaffray analyst Alex Zukin says channel checks suggest "solid quarter" for both enterprise and commercial across multiple verticals and geographies when Salesforce reports on February 28. He expects the report to be a positive catalyst for the shares. The analyst keeps an Overweight rating on Salesforce with a $135 price target. On Thursday, Cowen analyst J. Derrick Wood raised his price target on Salesforce to $130 from $118 ahead of Q4 results. The analyst said his survey points to a very strong Q4. Wood thinks billings growth should beat consensus and believes the company is well positioned to achieve over 20% revenue and free cash flow growth this year. Wood reiterated his Outperform rating on Salesforce shares.
