Wall Street is cheering Salesforce.com, Inc.'s (NYSE:CRM) fourth-quarter results this morning, as the stock rallies to record highs. The cloud services provider posted quarterly profit and revenue that topped expectations, and its current-quarter top- and bottom-line forecasts were also better than expected. According to Thomson Reuters, this is the eighth straight quarter the tech company's beat earnings and revenue estimates. Meanwhile, upwardly revised outlooks from several analysts is only adding to this morning's surge in CRM shares.
Looking closer, a number of brokerage firms upped their price targets to $140, but the highest bar so far has been set by Stifel at $142. Pivotal Research, meanwhile, noted Salesforce.com's marketing technology continues to eat up a larger portion of marketers' budgets, and Cowen highlighted the company's "impressive backlog growth." This bullish attention is nothing new, though, since 31 of 32 analysts in coverage say CRM stock is a "buy."
As for options data, the weekly 3/2 117-strike call saw the largest increase in open interest during the past two weeks, so those who bought the contract should be happy with today's price action. In fact, there appears to be heavy closing action at this strike already today. On the other hand, there was heavy sell-to-open activity at the front-month March 120 call in recent weeks. In other words, these bears were betting on CRM shares holding below $120 through expiration on Friday, March 16.
The security was last seen trading 3.2% higher at $119.90, earlier hitting a record high of $122.47. On a year-over-year basis the shares have gained 43%, thanks to a number of strong bounces off the 50-day moving average.