Not for the first time in recent weeks, salesforce.com (CRM +3.19%) hit an all-time high on the stock market. The company's shares closed Monday more than 3% higher at $281.25 per share.
That's quite an achievement for a company that, unlike many fellow tech stocks, has been on the market for quite some time. Salesforce had its IPO in June 2004 and while a popular choice for investors looking to play the cloud services segment, it hadn't seen a series of dramatic price increases until recently.
The coronavirus outbreak changed that, however. The sudden and sharp rise in remote work situations strongly underscored the need for enterprises to put operations onto the cloud for outside-of-the-office access. Savvy enough to take advantage of the resulting demand, Salesforce's business grew commensurately, as did its prominence.
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Two recent developments in particular put the zip in Salesforce stock, producing its recent series of record high closings.
The first was the stock's advancement to the hallowed ranks of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, arguably the most crucial of the benchmark blue-chip stock indexes. Home to only 30 stocks, the index is a very hard club to join; in fact, the company that Salesforce displaced -- ExxonMobil -- had been a component for nearly a century, in one corporate form or another.
The second development came only a few days later with Salesforce's latest quarterly results, a set of figures that blew past even some of the rosiest analyst estimates.
Revenue increased to $5.15 billion -- marking a year-over-year improvement of 29%, which is a very high number for a company that has been in business for decades. Non-GAAP (adjusted) net income rocketed even higher, rising 152% to $1.33 billion, which was nearly double the average prognosticator estimate.
