Salesforce earnings: Strong fourth quarter, outlook

Salesforce, which markets itself as an enterprise cloud-computing company, today reported fourth quarter and fiscal year 2010 results. (Statement)

For the quarter, the company said fourth quarter profit was up 48 percent, coming in at $20.4 million, up from $13.8 million for the same quarter a year ago. GAAP earnings per share were up 41 percent, growing to 16 cents, compared to 11 cents a year ago. Revenue was $354 million, up 22 percent.

For the fiscal year, eps was 63 cents, up 82 percent from a year ago, on revenue of $1.31 Billion, a 21 percent jump from a year earlier. In a statement, chairman and CEO Marc Benioff said:

As our full year results demonstrate, the movement to Cloud Computing is driving exceptional growth for salesforce.com. Our Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Custom Cloud businesses all delivered outstanding results.  And the story is getting better: last week we launched a private beta program for Salesforce Chatter, allowing customers to experience first hand the next generation business collaboration model -- a powerful alternative to legacy products such as Lotus Notes and Microsoft SharePoint -- by delivering on the social models made popular by Facebook and Twitter.

For the quarter, total customers grew 31 percent from the year ago, up to 72,500.  For the year, the company added 17,100 net new customers.

Looking ahead, the company forecast first quarter revenue to be in the range of $365 million to about $367 million with GAAP eps to be 12-13 cents and Non-GAAP eps to be approximately 29-30 cents. For the full year, the company raised the guidance it previously offered, with revenue growth now expected to be between 16 percent to 17 percent. GAAP eps is expected to be 58-60 cents and Non-GAAP eps targeted for $1.25 to $1.27.

Shares of salesforce were up slightly in regular trading, closing at $69.44. Share were on the rise in after-hours trading.