Technology

Starboard Value’s Jeff Smith says Salesforce has ‘a lot more to go’ and can increase profitability

Published

1 month ago

October 22, 2024

admin

Jeff Smith, chief executive officer and chief investment officer of Starboard Value LP.

Chris Goodney | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Salesforce shares jumped 98% in 2023 in part after the business software maker increased its adjusted operating margin after Starboard Value and other activist investors raised concerns about the company’s financial performance. Starboard now sees more room for improvement.

“They’ve been doing a great job executing, improving their margins, moving up in the Rule of 40 or Rule of 50 for their for their industry, and we think there’s a lot more to go,” Starboard CEO Jeff Smith told CNBC’s David Faber at the 13D Monitor Active-Passive Investor Summit in New York on Tuesday.

The Rule of 40 refers to the idea that a company’s revenue growth rate and profit margin should add up to at least 40%. It became a more widely favored measurement in 2022 among software executives as share prices drifted lower, with investors worrying about central banks pushing up interest rates. For many years, many software companies prioritized fast growth at the expense of profitability.

Starboard argued in 2022 that, even as Salesforce ruled the market for customer relationship management software, it delivered a lower operating margin than some of its peers. Starboard revealed a holding in the stock and Salesforce responded by cutting thousands of employees and moving up its timeline for widening its adjusted operating margin.

Starboard had a $432 million Salesforce stake as of June 30, according to a regulatory filing.

Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s co-founder, chair and CEO, has said he “enjoyed getting to know” the activist investors who invested. Mason Morfit, co-CEO of ValueAct Capital, joined Salesforce’s board in March 2023. And by June 2023, most of the stock’s seven activists had moved on, Amy Weaver, Salesforce’s finance chief, said at a UBS event.

On Tuesday, Starboard said in a presentation that Salesforce “can continue to become more efficient and more profitable.” Other large software companies spend less on sales and marketing and general and administrative costs as a percentage of revenue, and Salesforce can catch up, according to the presentation. Starboard used an aggregate of Adobe, Intuit, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, ServiceNow and Workday for comparison.

And Starboard said Salesforce should commit to adhering to the Rule of 50 by the 2028 fiscal year. The activist firm laid out two scenarios, both of which involved Salesforce’s revenue growth accelerating and its adjusted operating margin widening.

The Agentforce technology for automating customer interactions, which Salesforce discussed at its Dreamforce conference in September, has the potential to boost revenue growth, Starboard said.

Salesforce shares were down 1% during Tuesday’s trading session.

“We appreciate feedback and dialogue with our investor base. Starboard continues to be a constructive shareholder in our conversations,” a Salesforce spokesperson told CNBC in an email.

Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO

Microsoft takes aim at Salesforce with new autonomous AI agents

Technology

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber says X rival is ‘billionaire proof’

Published

3 hours ago

November 21, 2024

admin

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber says X rival is 'billionaire proof'

Bluesky has surged in popularity since the presidential election earlier this month, suddenly becoming a competitor to Elon Musk’s X and Meta’s Threads. But CEO Jay Graber has some cautionary words for potential acquirers: Bluesky is “billionaire proof.”

In an interview on Thursday with CNBC’s “Money Movers,” Graber said Bluesky’s open design is intended to give users the option of leaving the service with all of their followers, which could thwart potential acquisition efforts.

“The billionaire proof is in the way everything is designed, and so if someone bought or if the Bluesky company went down, everything is open source,” Graber said. “What happened to Twitter couldn’t happen to us in the same ways, because you would always have the option to immediately move without having to start over.”

Graber was referring to the way millions of users left Twitter, now X, after Musk purchased the company in 2022. Bluesky now has over 21 million users, still dwarfed by X and Threads, which Facebook’s parent debuted in July 2023.

X and Meta didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Threads has roughly 275 million monthly users, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in October. Although Musk said in May that X has 600 million monthly users, market intelligence firm Sensor Tower estimates 318 million monthly users as of October.

Bluesky was created in 2019 as an internal Twitter project during Jack Dorsey’s second stint as CEO, and became an independent public benefit corporation in 2022. In May of this year, Dorsey said he is no longer a member of Bluesky’s board.

“In 2019, Jack had a vision for something better for social media, and so that’s why he chose me to build this, and we’re really thankful for him for setting this up, and we’ve continued to carry this out,” said Graber, who previously founded Happening, a social network focused on events. “We’re building an open-source social network that anyone can take into their own hands and build on, and it’s something that is radically different from anything that’s been done in social media before. Nobody’s been this open, this transparent and put this much control in the users hands.”

Part of Bluesky’s business plan involves offering subscriptions that would let users access special features, Graber noted. She also said that Bluesky will add more services for third-party coders as part of the startup’s “developer ecosystem.”

Graber said Bluesky has ruled out the possibility of letting advertisers send algorithmically recommended ads to users.

“There’s a lot on the road map, and I’ll tell you what we’re not going to do for monetization,” Graber said. “We’re not going to build an algorithm that just shoves ads at you, locking users in. That’s not our model.”

Bluesky has previously experienced major growth spurts. In September, it added 2 million users following X’s suspension in Brazil over content moderation policy violations in the country and related legal matters.

In October, Bluesky announced that it raised $15 million in a funding round led by Blockchain Capital. The company has raised a total of $36 million, according to Pitchbook.

Technology

Alphabet shares slide 6% following DOJ push for Google to divest Chrome

Published

4 hours ago

November 21, 2024

admin

Alphabet shares slide 6% following DOJ push for Google to divest Chrome

Jaque Silva | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Alphabet shares slid 6% Thursday, following news that the Department of Justice is calling for Google to divest its Chrome browser to put an end to its search monopoly.

The proposed break-up would, according to the DOJ in its Wednesday filing, “permanently stop Google’s control of this critical search access point and allow rival search engines the ability to access the browser that for many users is a gateway to the internet.”

This development is the latest in a years-long, bipartisan antitrust case that found in an August ruling that the search giant held an illegal monopoly in both search and text advertising, violating Section 2 of the Sherman Act.

The potential break-up would include preventing Google from entering into exclusionary agreements with competitors like Apple and Samsung, part of a set of remedies that would last 10 years.

CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.

Technology

Nvidia shares slump 3% in premarket as quarterly revenue growth slows

Published

11 hours ago

November 21, 2024

admin

Nvidia shares slump 3% in premarket as quarterly revenue growth slows

POLAND – 2024/11/13: In this photo illustration, the NVIDIA company logo is seen displayed on a smartphone screen. (Photo Illustration by Piotr Swat/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Nvidia shares dropped in U.S. premarket trading Thursday after the tech giant’s third-quarter earnings failed to impress investors.

Shares of the chipmaker slumped 3.21% at around 5:03 a.m. ET, following the Wednesday release of Nvidia’s quarterly results, which beat on both the top and bottom lines.

Revenue came in at $35.08 billion, up 94% year-on-year and exceeding the $33.16 billion forecast by LSEG analysts. Earnings per share was 81 cents adjusted, also above analyst expectations.

Other chipmakers fell on the back of the market reaction to Nvidia’s third-quarter results. Shares of Intel, Qualcomm and Micron Technology all lost 1% or more in value, while AMD declined 0.6%.

The slump in Nvidia also had a knock-on effect on European semiconductor firms. ASML, a key chip equipment supplier, dropped 0.9%, while compatriot Dutch chip firm ASMI fell 0.5%. Chipmakers BE Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics and Infineon slipped 0.8%, 0.7 and 0.6%, respectively.

Several notable chip names were also in negative territory in Asia. TSMC, which makes Nvidia’s high-performance graphics processing units, eased as much as 1.5%. Contract electronics manufacturer Foxconn dropped 1.9%.

Why are Nvidia shares falling?

Nvidia has largely cornered the market for the high-powered chips powering the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Despite nearly doubling sales year-on-year, Nvidia’s third-quarter results showed a slowdown from previous quarters. Nvidia previously reported growth of 122% in the second quarter, 262% in the first quarter, and 265% in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Derren Nathan, head of equity research at Hargreaves Lansdown, said in emailed comments Wednesday that the dip in Nvidia’s share price “suggests even outstanding isn’t enough for some investors,” adding that he expects the stock to bounce back once markets open.

“NVIDIA’s generated stellar gains for shareholders over many years now, and right now it’s pretty hard to see any major holes in the investment case,” Nathan added.