Salesforce.com (CRM) is expected to report Q4 earnings after the market close on Wednesday, February 24, with a conference call scheduled for 5 pm ET.

GUIDANCE

The consensus estimate is 15c for EPS and $342.28M for revenue, according to First Call.  Guidance provided by management on their last earnings report for Q4 was EPS of 14c-15c on revenue of $340M-$342M.

ANALYSTS' VIEWS

Think Equity’s recent checks with several important salesforce.com partners, competitors, and others were mostly positive, suggesting a mildly improving spending environment.  That applies across regions, to favorable Q4 linearity, strengthening large deal activity, product momentum, and efforts to control costs, offset by notably more aggressive competition.  The firm expects a solid Q4 and strengthening trends throughout CY10 on the heels of an improved IT spending environment and a couple of important product cycles.  Think Equity believes that saleforce.com’s ’ServiceCloud’ and recently introduced ’Chatter’ could represent two important product cycles through 2010.  In fact, some early feedback on the new product, Chatter, was upbeat, suggesting a clear competitive differentiator and some accelerated adoption, in Think Equity’s view.  The slight negative the firm picked up was that Oracle (ORCL) and Microsoft (MSFT) appear to have been showing up more frequently in sales cycles which is affecting pricing on some new deals and renewals. 

Key issues for the conference call: A reaffirmation of the company’s previously provided FY10 guidance of EPS 62c-63 on $1.292B-$1.294B in revenue.  Guidance for FY11 was for revenue growth of about 15%-16%.  Investors will also be looking for commentary on the pricing environment and competition.  Also, whether salesforce.com is looking to make acquisitions.  In the recent past, Oppenheimer believed that salesforce.com’s decision to raise $500M through convertible notes indicated that the company was looking to accelerate acquisition activity.