1-Star Stocks Poised to Plunge: salesforce.com?
Based on the aggregated intelligence of 180,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, customer relations management (CRM) software specialist salesforce.com (NYS: CRM) has received the dreaded one-star ranking.
With that in mind, let's take a closer look at salesforce's business and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.
salesforcefacts
Headquarters (Founded) | San Francisco (1999) |
Market Cap | $19.2 billion |
Industry | Application software |
Trailing-12-Month Revenue | $1.78 billion |
Management | Co-Founder/Chairman/CEO Marc Benioff CFO Graham Smith |
Return on Equity (Average, Past 3 Years) | 7.4% |
Cash/Debt | $763.8 million / $527.4 million |
Competitors | Microsoft (NAS: MSFT) Oracle (NAS: ORCL) SAP (NYS: SAP) |
Sources: Capital IQ (a division of Standard & Poor's) and Motley Fool CAPS.
On CAPS, 48% of the 1,678 members who have rated salesforce believe the stock will underperform the S&P 500 going forward. These bears include paids and JP9287.
Just last month, paids touched on salesforce's seemingly unsustainable stock price: "Only a matter of time before people realize 'cloud computing' is just a fancy way of saying storing data offline. And it sure doesn't justify these valuations."
In fact, salesforce currently sports a particularly lofty forward P/E of almost 77. That represents a clear premium to rivals like Microsoft (8.5), Oracle (11.1), and SAP (19.4).
CAPS member JP9287 elaborates on the salesforce bear case:
Cloud computing right now is in a very quick growth period. Because of this, I think the valuations for this stock, as well as many others in this sector are ridiculously high. While this trend may continue upwards in the short term, it is my belief that this will soon settle, the market will correct to a more reasonable level. The fundamentals on this company are so stratospheric that any misstep in the future ... will have devastating repercussions on this stock.
What do you think about salesforce, or any other stock for that matter? If you want to retire rich, you need to protect your portfolio from any undue risk. Staying away from dangerous stocks is crucial to securing your financial future, and on Motley Fool CAPS, thousands of investors are working every day to flag them. CAPS is 100% free, so get started!
At the time thisarticle was published Fool contributor Brian Pacampara owns no position in any of the companies mentioned. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of and shorting salesforce. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of and creating a covered collar position in Microsoft. The Fool owns shares of Microsoft and Oracle. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days.We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Fool's disclosure policy always gets a perfect score.
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