Company name salesforce.com, inc.
Stock ticker CRM
Live stock price [stckqut]CRM[/stckqut]
Confident Investor Rating Poor

The following company description is from Google Finance: http://www.google.com/finance?q=crm

Salesforce.com, inc. is a provider of enterprise cloud computing and social enterprise solutions. The Company provides a customer and collaboration relationship management (CRM), applications through the Internet or cloud. Cloud computing refers to the use of Internet-based computing, storage and connectivity technology to deliver a variety of different services. The Company delivers its service through Internet browsers and mobile devices. It markets its social enterprise applications and platforms to businesses on a subscription basis, primarily through its direct sales efforts and indirectly through partners. In January 2011, it acquired Heroku, Inc. and DimDim, Inc. In May 2011, the Company acquired Radian6 Technologies Inc. In September 2011, the Company acquired Assistly. In August 2012, the Company acquired Buddy Media.
Confident Investor comments: I am removing Salesforce from my Watch List. They were not profitable in their last earnings period.At this price and at this time, I do not think that a Confident Investor can confidently invest in this stock. It is not possible to confidently invest in a company that is not currently profitable.

Company name salesforce.com, inc.
Stock ticker CRM
Live stock price [stckqut]CRM[/stckqut]
P/E compared to competitors Fair
MANAGEMENT EXECUTION
Employee productivity Poor
Sales growth Good
EPS growth Good
P/E growth Good
EBIT growth Good
ANALYSIS
Confident Investor Rating Good
Target stock price (TWCA growth scenario) $179.24
Target stock price (averages with growth) $304.84
Target stock price (averages with no growth) $265.88
Target stock price (manual assumptions) $179.23

The following company description is from Google Finance: http://www.google.com/finance?q=crm

Salesforce.com, Inc. is a provider of enterprise cloud computing applications. The Company provides a customer and collaboration relationship management (CRM), service to businesses of all sizes and industries worldwide and provides a technology platform for customers and developers to build and run business applications. Cloud computing refers to the use of Internet-based computing, storage and connectivity technology for a variety of different services. The Company designed and developed its offering, which can be deployed, customized and integrated with other software applications. The Company delivers its service through the Web browsers. It markets its service to businesses on a subscription basis, primarily through its direct sales efforts and indirectly through partners. In May 2010, the Company acquired Jigsaw Data Corporation, a cloud provider of crowd-sourced data services in the cloud. In January 2011, it acquired Heroku, Inc. and Dimdim, Inc.

Confident Investor comments: My biggest concern with this stock is its huge P/E even compared to its peer group. The only real way to justify this P/E is that no other company has come up with an effective product to compete with Salesforce.com for its core offering. If that were to happen or if the growth in that core market should slow, this stock would be ripe for a correction. My second biggest concern is that the company operates on very thin margins making far less than 2% net profit on its sales and this is reflected by a troubling ratio of income per employee. At this price and at this time therefore, I think that a Confident Investor can cautiously invest in this stock even though most of the other metrics are quite good.

Apple [stckqut]aapl[/stckqut] has come under a great deal of discussion in the past week or so due to it’s ever expanding hoard of cash. Most companies hate having that much cash in the bank (or perhaps they are not fortunate enough to accumulate it) but Apple seems to really enjoy having a big savings account.

Since all the other bloggers that discuss companies and investing seem to have chimed into this conversation, I have to decided to do it as well.  Here are my suggestions:

  1. Use the cash like they have been. Apple uses its cash very effectively and very aggressively. As pointed out in PC Magazine, Apple effectively uses its cash to gain a technical advantage by locking up its supplier community in ways that their computer and device competitors such as Toshiba, Dell [stckqut]dell[/stckqut], and Hewlett Packard [stckqut]hpq[/stckqut] simply cannot afford to do. They are able to help manufacturers build their plants to create new components and lock in a pricing and supply chain that virtually locks out or delays the competition from the latest and greatest hardware advances. This competitive advantage means that they can continue to create large amounts of profit and build more cash.
  2. Increase R&D and rapidly expand their products with things that people want. Last year, Apple spent about 2.7% of revenue on R&D (and last year about 3.1%). I would like to see this grow to 7 or 8% of revenue. Yes, this is a big increase but Apple has a unique opportunity to solidify their presence in the markets that are important to them. Think what would happen if Apple had twice as many products that covered a broader spectrum of electronic experience.
  3. Increase their library. They should vastly increase their library of movies and video content to stream.  While they shouldn’t be stupid about the deals that they cut but they need to make deals with every movie and TV content holder out there. The consumer needs to feel that if they want to watch a professionally created video, Apple will always have the content. Making a ton of money in this area is not incredibly important (but don’t do it at a loss). What is more important is that they use this content to drive the sales of more multimedia devices and computers. While they are at it, they need to cut deals with the newspapers and magazines as well. Apple has had some short-sighted rules that have prevented the allegiance of those that create printed material – they need to put these rules aside.
  4. Streaming. They should make it so that they can stream to their subscribers more easily and more reliably than ANYONE else.  Supposedly they are investing in more data centers and that is a project that should be accelerated and expanded. Also, there are rumors of acquisition discussions with Hulu, this would be an acquisition that makes sense as it fits with their core offering today. Some commentators suggest that they should diversify by buying a company like Facebook but that would be ill-advised. Most companies that try to expand into vaguely related markets end up screwing up (think of EBay [stckqut]ebay[/stckqut] buying Skype).
  5. Integration with the cloud. They should make it so that integration between their products on your local network and between their products and the cloud is seamless and easy – in fact even fun.  Lion looks like it has great features in this area but they should take it to a new level. They would do well to expand that connectivity by putting a Windows application out there that makes Windows computers integrate easily and rapidly with Macs/iPhones/iPads. This doesn’t mean iTunes but instead iTunes on steroids – no cords – use the cloud, the private cloud, and the local connectivity connection of the computers.Read More →

Several times a year, a Confident Investor must reevaluate the companies in the portfolio. Keeping your money in a stock that no longer qualifies as a “Good” company can end up hurting your investment performance a great deal.  Also, there are a lot of Good Companies so losing the worst of the best is not going to impact the ability to have a balanced portfolio.  Over the coming days, this site will evaluate each stock on the Watch List.

Company name salesforce.com, inc.
Stock ticker CRM
Live stock price [stckqut]CRM[/stckqut]
P/E compared to competitors Fair
MANAGEMENT EXECUTION
Employee productivity Poor
Sales growth Good
EPS growth Good
P/E growth Good
EBIT growth Good
ANALYSIS
Confident Investor Rating Good
Target stock price (TWCA growth scenario) $197.74
Target stock price (averages with growth) $538.47
Target stock price (averages with no growth) $591.66
Target stock price (manual assumptions) $170.57

The following company description is from Google Finance: http://www.google.com/finance?q=crm
Salesforce.com, Inc. is a provider of enterprise cloud computing applications. It provides a customer and collaboration relationship management (CRM), service to businesses of all sizes and industries worldwide and provides a technology platform for customers and developers to build and run business applications. Cloud computing refers to the use of Internet-based computing, storage and connectivity technology for a variety of different services. The Company designed and developed its offering, which can be deployed, customized and integrated with other software applications. It markets its service to businesses on a subscription basis, primarily through the direct sales efforts and indirectly through partners. In May 2010, the Company acquired Jigsaw. In January 2011, the Company acquired Heroku, the cloud platform for writing Ruby-based applications. In January 2011, the Company acquired Dimdim.

Confident Investor comments: At this price and at this time, I think that a Confident Investor can confidently invest in this stock.

Company name salesforce.com, inc.
Stock ticker CRM
Live stock price [stckqut]CRM[/stckqut]
P/E compared to competitors Fair
MANAGEMENT EXECUTION
Employee productivity Poor
Sales growth Good
EPS growth Good
P/E growth Good
EBIT growth Good
ANALYSIS
Confident Investor Rating Good
Target stock price (TWCA growth scenario) $175.1
Target stock price (averages with growth) $624.43
Target stock price (averages with no growth) $749.76
Target stock price (manual assumptions) $166.01

Confident Investor comments: At this price and at this time, I think that a Confident Investor can confidently invest in this stock. I am slightly concerned that the employee productivity of this company is so low. With their business model, I would expect this number to be much better. This could be a sign that they have more productivity to scale out or that there is a problem inherently with their management.