Matt Frankel

I mean, on one hand, the company is still growing the top line by double digits, not by much, but 10% is still double digit growth and generating really strong cashflow.

Plus the AI related metrics have all been moving in the right direction.

Annual recurring revenue from the AgentForce platform is now $800 million.

Not a giant part of its revenue yet, but up 170% year over year.

Plus, and this is probably the most interesting statistic, over 60% of AgentForce and Data360 bookings in the most recent quarter came from Salesforce's existing customers, not from outside of the ecosystem.

So that indicates that it's using AI to expand its customer relationships.

It's not losing customers and churning them.

So on the other hand, the CRM business is growing at a pretty slow, just a single digit rate.

And it remains to be seen if the headwinds are going to be more powerful than the AI tailwinds.

Because like I mentioned, the AI part of the business is growing nice, but it's still a small part.

Right.

Management seems confident with an accelerated $25 billion buyback, but I'm going to channel my inner Tyler Crowe here and say that that also says that they can't find anything better to do with $25 billion than just buy back their own stock, which for a tech company that's supposed to be fast growing and leaning into AI is also kind of a little bit of a concern.

So I...

This is a long way to say that I think Salesforce will be relatively unscathed by the AI headwinds over the next few years.

But beyond that, there are legitimate questions.

Well...

Like pretty much any other stock in earnings season, it's all about expectations.

Shopify grew revenue by 34% in the first quarter, but they're guiding for full-year revenue growth in the high 20s range.

If you have 34% in the first quarter, high 20s the rest of the year, the law of averages tells you you're going to have a slowdown as you head into the rest of the year.

I'm not as worried about the net income number and the net income miss.