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Salesforce.com (CRM) Ascends While Market Falls: Some Facts to Note

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The latest trading session saw Salesforce.com (CRM - Free Report) ending at $209.84, denoting a +0.63% adjustment from its last day's close. The stock outpaced the S&P 500's daily loss of 0.01%. At the same time, the Dow added 0.04%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 0.25%.

The customer-management software developer's shares have seen a decrease of 3.01% over the last month, not keeping up with the Computer and Technology sector's loss of 0.05% and the S&P 500's loss of 1.6%.

The investment community will be paying close attention to the earnings performance of Salesforce.com in its upcoming release. On that day, Salesforce.com is projected to report earnings of $2.06 per share, which would represent year-over-year growth of 47.14%. In the meantime, our current consensus estimate forecasts the revenue to be $8.71 billion, indicating a 11.08% growth compared to the corresponding quarter of the prior year.

For the full year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $8.06 per share and revenue of $34.75 billion, which would represent changes of +53.82% and +10.84%, respectively, from the prior year.

Any recent changes to analyst estimates for Salesforce.com should also be noted by investors. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest near-term business trends. As such, positive estimate revisions reflect analyst optimism about the company's business and profitability.

Our research suggests that these changes in estimates have a direct relationship with upcoming stock price performance. To exploit this, we've formed the Zacks Rank, a quantitative model that includes these estimate changes and presents a viable rating system.

Ranging from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), the Zacks Rank system has a proven, outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks returning an average of +25% annually since 1988. Over the past month, there's been no change in the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate. As of now, Salesforce.com holds a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy).

Investors should also note Salesforce.com's current valuation metrics, including its Forward P/E ratio of 25.88. This indicates a discount in contrast to its industry's Forward P/E of 27.85.

One should further note that CRM currently holds a PEG ratio of 1.15. This metric is used similarly to the famous P/E ratio, but the PEG ratio also takes into account the stock's expected earnings growth rate. As the market closed yesterday, the Computer - Software industry was having an average PEG ratio of 2.25.

The Computer - Software industry is part of the Computer and Technology sector. Currently, this industry holds a Zacks Industry Rank of 103, positioning it in the top 41% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank is ordered from best to worst in terms of the average Zacks Rank of the individual companies within each of these sectors. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

Make sure to utilize Zacks.com to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and more, in the coming trading sessions.


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