Salesforce came through in the clutch. The enterprise software giant on Wednesday delivered better-than-expected results for its fiscal second quarter and issued guidance for the current period that makes good on the company’s pledge to reaccelerate into the end of the year. The one-two punch not only validates the once-struggling stock’s recent resurgence. It is also sending shares up 12% in extended trading, reaching levels last seen in late January — before the market’s concerns about artificial intelligence displacing traditional software vendors reached a fever pitch and sent their stocks into a tailspin. If this wasn’t enough, Salesforce on Wednesday announced a new product integration with Claude chatbot maker Anthropic, the very startup whose rapid technological advances this year fanned much of those AI disruption fears. The tie-up should help some skeptical investors grow more confident that Salesforce — thanks to troves of proprietary customer data housed within its applications — has a role to play in this new AI world. Revenue in the three months ended in July totaled $11.35 billion, topping the LSEG consensus of $11.32 billion. On a year-over-year basis, revenue rose 9.9%. Adjusted earnings per share (EPS) came in at $5.90. The profit figure was driven by a massive paper gain in the company’s strategic investment portfolio, which includes a stake in Anthropic. As a result, it’s not immediately comparable to the Wall Street consensus. CRM YTD mountain Salesforce’s year-to-date stock performance. Bottom line Take a bow, Marc Benioff. The Salesforce co-founder and CEO has spent most of this year crusading against the “SaaSpocalypse,” trying to convince the market that generative AI was not a dire threat to the software-as-a-service business model, which has historically relied on seat-based licenses. At the same time, Benioff was also touting the company’s new Agentforce suite as central to its AI future. For much of the year, Benioff’s argument was in vain. At its late June lows, Salesforce’s stock was down more than 40% in 2026; its price-to-earnings ratio had shriveled to 11, down from roughly 20 at the start of the year, reflecting the market’s waning confidence in its future in a world where companies may shed headcount thanks to embracing AI tools, and where new applications can be generated with a couple prompts to an AI model. Salesforce and other software stocks have perked up over the past month, as sentiment around the group improved for a couple of reasons, including a Reuters report on take-private talks involving HR software provider Workday . Still, the AI disruption risk remained, as Intuit’s earnings report Tuesday night showed, with the TurboTax parent seeing pressure from cheaper AI-based alternatives. It’s a much better picture for Salesforce on Wednesday night, and our patience with the stock is being rewarded. In particular, we’re thrilled to see the third-quarter guidance show that management’s promise that…
Read More: We’re raising our price target on Salesforce after results defy