salesforce(US:CRM) 海豚投研·2025-06-03 14:30Core Viewpoint - Salesforce's recent quarterly results indicate a stable performance with most key metrics meeting or slightly exceeding expectations, but revenue growth remains stagnant and profit margin expansion has stalled [1][6]. Revenue Growth - Subscription revenue grew by 8.3% year-over-year, slightly above the expected 7.4%, showing initial signs of stabilization. However, constant currency growth remained flat at 9%, indicating no significant improvement [1][2]. - Traditional IT spending areas such as sales, customer service, and marketing continue to show weak growth, reflecting a lack of enthusiasm in IT budget allocations among European and American companies due to economic concerns and tariff impacts [1][2]. AI and Cloud Performance - The platform cloud and data analytics segments, which are more closely related to AI, performed significantly better, exceeding expectations by approximately 5 percentage points and 4 percentage points, respectively [2]. - The growth in platform cloud is likely driven by increased corporate spending on AI, despite overall IT budgets not increasing [2]. Leading Indicators - The nominal year-over-year growth rate of cRPO (contracted revenue not yet recognized) was 12.1%, appearing to accelerate compared to the previous quarter. However, this was primarily due to favorable currency effects, with constant currency growth remaining at 11% [3]. Profit Margins - Gross profit for subscription revenue was $7.67 billion, a year-over-year increase of 9.4%. However, this was below expectations, and the growth rate showed signs of slowing [3][4]. - The subscription business's gross margin decreased by 0.5 percentage points quarter-over-quarter, with year-over-year growth narrowing to less than 1 percentage point, indicating a stagnation in the upward trend of gross margins [4]. Expense Management - Total operating expenses were $5.62 billion, a year-over-year increase of 6.8%, which was lower than revenue growth, leading to a slight decrease in the expense ratio by approximately 0.4 percentage points [3][4]. - Marketing expenses, the largest component of total expenses, were $3.43 billion, growing by 5.9%, without significant increases due to AI promotions [3]. Operating Profit - Operating profit increased by 13.6% year-over-year to $1.94 billion, with a slight margin improvement of 1.2 percentage points. However, the rate of profit margin expansion has significantly slowed compared to previous fiscal years [4][5]. Cash Flow - Free cash flow for the quarter was approximately $6.3 billion, exceeding market expectations of $5.89 billion, but only reflecting a 4% year-over-year growth, indicating the company is in an investment cycle [4][5]. Guidance - For the next quarter, Salesforce guided revenue growth at 8% to 9% in constant currency, which is better than market expectations but does not indicate significant acceleration [4][5].