Market Update: Salesforce.com Inc (NYSE:CRM) – Salesforce: Buy this Cloud Star on New Products and Pricing, Says CLSA

[at Barrons.com] – Shares of Salesforce.com (CRM) are up $3.79, or almost 7%, at $61.12, after CLSA’s Ed Maguire this morning raised his rating on the shares to Buy, with a $78 price target, urging investors to “toss the bathwater, keep this cloud baby.” Maguire is contrasting the company with others such as Workday (WDAY), Netsuite (N), and ServiceNow (NOW). Noting a 28% sell-off in the shares this year, Maguire writes that it’s “a buying opportunity for the premier pure-play SaaS franchise with substantial scale advantages, a culture of leading-edge innovation and burgeoning platform business poised as the fundamental growth engine for the long term.” Salesforce shares have declined to levels not seen since October 2014 as selling across leading SaaS and cloud names has significantly cut multiples across the group. Read more on this. salesforce.com, inc. (CRM) , with a current value of $39.53B, started trading this morning at $58.48. Shares have traded today between $58.38 and $61.60 per share with a one year range of $52.60 to $82.90. Priced at 72.07x this year’s forecasted earnings, CRM shares are relatively expensive compared to the industry ’s 6.91x forward p/e ratio. Consensus earnings for the current quarter by the 41 sell-side analysts covering the stock is an estimate of $0.19 per share, which would be $0.05 better than the year-ago quarter and a $0.00 sequential decrease. What we find to be interesting is that the full-year EPS estimate of $0.75 is a $0.23 improvement when compared to the previous year’s annual results. The quarterly earnings estimate is predicated on a consensus revenue forecast of $1.79 Billion. If reported, that would be a 24.31% increase over the year-ago quarter. More recently, Credit Agricole upgraded CRM from Outperform to Buy (Feb 10, 2016). Previously, Jefferies upgraded CRM from Underperform to Hold. With the above information in mind, readers should note that the average price target is $89.64, which is 53.28% above where the stock opened this morning. See more in (NYSE:CRM) Similar Articles: Company Update: Salesforce.com Inc (NYSE:CRM) – Salesforce Ecosystem: Growth Beyond The Cloud Market Update: Salesforce.com Inc (NYSE:CRM) – Salesforce Unveils the Next Wave of Salesforce Analytics Cloud–Delivering Actionable Insights Across the Customer Success Platform Stock Update: Salesforce.com Inc (NYSE:CRM) – Salesforce Introduces Salesforce Financial Services Cloud: Transforming the Client-Advisor Relationship