Life's three certainties: Death, taxes and Salesforce losing money

As a percentage

Of turnover it's a small loss but with that kind of turnover a small saving in some aspect of the business should produce a recognisable profit.

Perhaps his business plan or model is wrong.

Or perhaps he should get a business man in.

Missing the point?

I don't think anyone here doesn't 'get' the idea that it would have been a good idea to buy Amazon shares or Salesforce shares years ago, despite the failure to post profits.

The thing that makes these company valuable for shareholders is simply the steadily increasing share price - something based entirely on their growing market share and turnover.

If the growth disappears, then clearly you'll want something else from your share ownership, such as a hefty dividend based on profits, or else you'll think of selling.

The only thing tech investors care about is growth. No one cares about profit/EPS, ask IBM. As long as Benioff can maintain the growth rate, no one is going to be too worried about their profitability as they are clearly making successful investments in expanding their business. It is a lot of pressure though, because if that growth rate even slows down, which you would think it would have to at some point, the stock is going to tank.

SFDC probably has really expensive infrastructure costs as compared to the other SaaS providers. As they are among the oldest of the SaaS companies (and Benioff used to work at Oracle), they still use Oracle DBs under all of their services. Think about that Oracle bill.