The rally on Wall Street continued on Thursday, with investors cheering news of a strong employment market and prospects for the Federal Reserve to remain relatively accommodating on monetary policy well into the future. At 10:45 a.m. EDT, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI +0.10%) was up 460 points to 34,718. The S&P 500 (^GSPC +0.25%) had gained 51 points to 4,447, and the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC +0.47%) had picked up 138 points to 15,035.
The technology sector has been a hotbed of growth lately, and a couple of high-profile tech stocks made big moves higher on Thursday morning. BlackBerry (BB +0.61%) released its latest earnings results, while Salesforce.com (CRM 1.55%) gave investors some good news about what it expects from its business in the near future. Below, we'll look more closely at both companies to see what's up.
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A big move for BlackBerry
Shares of BlackBerry moved sharply higher on Thursday morning, rising almost 15%. The former mobile device pioneer with a new emphasis on cybersecurity released financial results for the second quarter that were highly encouraging for shareholders.
To be clear, BlackBerry's numbers didn't necessarily look all that strong at first glance. Revenue moved sharply lower by 32% to $175 million. Adjusted net losses came in at $0.06 per share. Yet those losses were actually narrower than most investors had expected, and sales exceeded expectations.
CEO John Chen highlighted the success of BlackBerry's strategic vision, noting that the cybersecurity business unit had strong growth in sequential revenue and billings from the first quarter. At the same time, BlackBerry's Internet of Things division saw strong performance, overcoming headwinds from global semiconductor chip shortages.
With more interest than ever in cloud computing, the need for BlackBerry's services has risen dramatically. That's a good sign for shareholders, and BlackBerry hopes the positive trends will continue well into the future.
More optimism from Salesforce
Meanwhile, shares of Dow component Salesforce gained more than 5%. The customer relationship management software specialist said it now expects its 2022 fiscal year to be even stronger than it previously expected.
On Thursday morning, Salesforce boosted its guidance in preparation for its annual investor day presentation. The company now expects that revenue will come in between $26.25 billion and $26.35 billion for fiscal 2022. That was higher by about $50 million from the guidance range that Salesforce gave investors just last month.
At the same time, Salesforce also provided its first look at how fiscal 2023 might play out. The software-as-a-service pioneer projected sales to come in between $31.65 billion and $31.8 billion. That implies a growth rate of more than 20%, and although that might look small compared to what investors have seen from the disruptive SaaS stocks that have made headlines over the last couple of years, it's highly impressive when you consider that Salesforce already has a revenue run rate exceeding $100 billion annually.
Salesforce has already generated impressive returns for shareholders, but its latest guidance shows that its business is still healthy. That bodes well both for those who already own shares of Salesforce and those considering the tech stock for the first time.
