00:00 Speaker A
let’s get to Salesforce, because then how do you explain Salesforce? Salesforce, Okay, so great. It’s sales were up 12% and that was the hottest it’s been in a while. It’s only 12%, right? And people don’t the agent force, the AI product that Salesforce is trying to sell, it’s doing fine.
00:23 Speaker B
800 something million revenue.
00:25 Speaker A
Okay, that’s great, but it’s not what people want it to be. And they there’s the read there still seems to be that if these you know, software companies are trying to harness AI, they’re not quite there yet.
00:41 Speaker B
I think one of the other things is we don’t get very much insight into how AI is being used for most companies, right? We get a general sense, right? Or we get like different reports about, you know, from different firms who have done surveys, but we really don’t know how every individual firm is using it. Every once in a while you’ll get a press release saying, you know, oh, such and such bank says, you know, it’s great and it’s like, well, okay, well, where where’s their their documentation saying that, you know, X number of
01:13 Speaker B
I mean we just saw a report I forget if it was the journal or Bloomberg where companies are saying, use AI. Like use it. That’s like say that okay, so that’s in in my mind that’s the uh the everyone back in the office. We made this investment in this big place. We made this investment in this big product. Don’t make us look like chumps, right? So we’re we’re we’re still trying to figure all of that out, I think and and at this point everybody’s just making bets on what what is actually happening without knowing truly what’s going on.
01:31 Speaker A
And that leads me also to think about like, how much do companies know what people are doing to you know,
01:36 Speaker B
Oh, they always know Julie, rest assured, they know. Oh, they do.
01:39 Speaker C
They know when you check in, they know that you may not be logged in your computer right now. They know it all.
01:46 Speaker B
Oh hey, I can fake that.
01:47 Speaker C
Well, let me just say something real quick on Salesforce. I I put out essentially a a short free research report on the Salesforce on my LinkedIn page. It’s essentially four bullet points. I didn’t like this quarter from Salesforce. They’d like the outlook.
01:57 Speaker A
You weren’t alone.
01:58 Speaker C
No, I know. It’s just the fact, first of all, I didn’t like that the outlook was signaling slowing uh sales growth for them. Didn’t like the stock is getting hit on a new $50 billion stock repurchase per room. And I didn’t like this and I wanted to put this photo up on the screen. I didn’t really like uh to see Marc Benioff, a person of his stature create his take his earnings call and make it a TV show. You know, Marc Benioff is a a pioneer uh in the tech industry and I think he should be having a more serious earnings call than the one he had right now.
02:26 Speaker C
That’s Mark for the first time creating a show in front of a podcast mic. Um I get where he was coming from. I understand why he wanted to do this, but I think this is a serious moment for Salesforce. I think it’s a serious moment for the financials of this company and I just would have like to have seen something different.
02:40 Speaker A
By the same token, you and I have listened to hundreds if not thousands of conference calls at this point in our careers. Man, they got to shake up that format.
02:50 Speaker A
I mean I respect I respect the effort to shake up the format because
02:53 Speaker C
Yeah, I’m a big believer. We’ve seen we’ve seen this format being changed. We’ve seen uh Vlad Tenev over at Robin Hood changing it up, T-Mobile, CEO Mike Sievert, um he has his own kind of earnings day YouTube show. We’re seeing Mark now dabble in it, but there’s got to be a better way than having an executive go up to a camera and essentially talk straight into the camera probably off a prompter for 40 minutes. Um that’s essentially like a normal earnings call. Get retail questions, get retail investor questions in here. I just would have liked to seen something a little different from Salesforce on this very important earnings support and I would have like to have seen a better outlook from the company.
03:19 Speaker A
Well, we know that uh investors aren’t loving it because we’re seeing the stock down.
03:22 Speaker C
Stock down and the stock was down 38% over the past year into this quarter. So when you I would if you would have told me Salesforce was going to come out with a $50 billion new stock buyback plan, the stock would still be down. I and I would be surprised.