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Now, taking a look at Salesforce as its first quarter results just hitting the wire right now. You can see that stock popping as these headlines cross. Q1 adjusted EPS 258. The street was closer to 244. Q1 sales, I'm seeing 2.13 billion. Street was closer to 2.16 billion. Let's spin ahead. I'm looking for guidance here. They see uh Q2 revenue they're calling for between 10.11 and 10.16 billion. The street was at 10.02 billion. Um and I'm also trying to look for the full year revenue. There it is. 41 to 41.3 billion. They had seen 40.5 to 40.9 billion in July.

And I'm taking a look at some commentary from Mark Benioff, the CEO of the company, talking about the strong results. And you know, Salesforce is known as a company that buys a lot of other companies or had been and had taken a pause until very, very recently. And he mentions a lot of the different things they've rolled up, but he talks about their products as well. He says with Agent Force, data cloud, our customer 360 apps, Tableau, a company they bought, Slack, a company they bought, all built on one trusted unified foundation. Companies of every size can build a digital labor force. He also says, and with our agreement to acquire Informatica, that was the one most recently here, we will bring together the industry's leading AI CRM, customer resource management and AI powered lots of acronyms in here. And the point is, he says we'll create the most complete intelligent AI and data platform for the enterprise.

Yeah, uh the full year revenue guys is also interesting again. They're calling that for between 41 to 41.3 and they had seen 40.5 to 40.9. Interesting only because I had I had seen some analysts um Julie, thinking that Mark Benioff would actually just maintain the guide. And they thought, well, he's going to maintain it because that would be in their words kind of the more prudent move given the macro backdrop. So that's interesting that they they they they made that decision.

Investors do like it. The shares are up what almost 5% here. They've fallen by 17% this year. And

This year. And basically we're flat over the past 12 months.

Yeah. And there was some concern over this recent announcement to buy Informatica that, you know, after Salesforce had sort of found religion, some of it under activist pressure on the M&A front, it had been so acquisitive for so long, had taken that pause. Was Informatica a sign that it was coming back to the table, not just for this deal, but for more deal making and that will likely be a question for Benny off.

You're right because that would have been one thing I I did see some on the street flag was, well, does this sort of indicate that to you that Benny off is on the hunt again and he's going to get back to that old pattern of relatively large M&A after taking what had been a kind of a hiatus for a few years. There were some who were skeptical of that deal. I know. I mean, the street was it was interesting. There were some who thought, listen, why why did you need to buy it? Why couldn't you just partnered there? They also Right. Right.

And why do it now?

Exactly. But um other questions for sure come up, not only broader questions, how are you dealing with the macro? What levers you're pulling to deal with the macro or you're seeing it in the business in terms of sales cycles. And of course a lot of questions about AI. There are certainly bulls on this stock and we've had them on the show who believe, listen, if you want to play the AI trade, um yes, you play it with Nvidia and Microsoft, but certainly a lot do believe in in the moves Benny off is making there too.

Yeah, and speaking of which, if you look at the analyst coverage on the stock, most um analysts who covered are bulls, about 80% of those who covered are bulls, um about 3% of a sell about 16% at holds on sales force. So to your point, there are still a lot of folks who are are bulls out there. Um the other interesting thing about the Informatica deal is it was supposed to happen in 2024, right? And then it was abandoned. At that point it would have been at a higher price. So Salesforce actually got it at a lower price than it would have. I guess that's on the uh the the plus note um when uh folks are looking at this deal. So um but Benny off uh you know, as usual sounding a pretty optimistic tone here. Um and really talking about agentic AI as the buzzword, not just really for Salesforce, but a lot of different analysts that we've been speaking with, they've been talking about.

And investors look equally optimistic. We're about 5% here.