Salesforce Inc Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Kasthuri Gopalan Rangan - Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Research Division - Analyst : Congratulations on a terrific quarter. And Marc and others who have been through multiple cycles on the call here, I'm wondering why are you so confident with this economic cycle? I mean what is so different about this cycle? Certainly, we -- you talk to CEOs, you meet with them on a daily basis. What is top of their mind? And what do you feel differently about Salesforce's positioning in this economic cycle? And then one for Amy. I just wanted to understand what gives you confidence. I think you've said something faster cash flow growth and margin growth in the press release, just very assuring, just a little bit more detail on how you plan to get there would be great. Marc R. Benioff - Salesforce, Inc. - Co-Founder, Chairman & Co-CEO Well, Kash, I think I'm going to let each one of our executives speak on this because I'll tell you that we have been having a lot of customer interaction right now and an incredible amount. And I'll tell you when I was down in Sydney, Australia, about 3 weeks ago or 4 weeks ago, and I was just very impressed with the level of economic activity with all of these customers. They're focused on growth. They're focused on market share, they're focused on expansion. They're focused on digital transformation. REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. MAY 31, 2022 / 9:00PM, CRM.N - Q1 2023 Salesforce Inc Earnings Call And then I went off to Japan, and I was in Tokyo and well, it was the same thing. I was with one of our very large customers, Sompo, one of the largest and now the largest insurance company in Japan with their CEO, Sakurada-san. And very impressed with how they're investing and excited about expanding and going into new areas and looking at a number of our new products. They've been with us for quite a long time. And all of the customers that I met with were growing. It was just an exciting moment. And then we went off to New York, same thing, same story. Everyone is very motivated. These are customers without a lot of debt on their balance sheet. They have flexibility, they're nimble. They know what their product strategies are. They're ready to go. And then when we went down to Atlanta and we reviewed our entire operation, we heard this consistently from our management team. And when we went to Davos last week, again, across industry, across geography, while everyone is looking at rising inflation or supply chain issues or interest rate changes or stock market gyrations or foreign exchange shifts, at the end of the day, we all have our -- we all, I think, are in a very different place than we've really ever been before. And I think a lot of it has to do with the pandemic. I think the pandemic gave everybody the ability to kind of do a reset and think about, okay, now where am I going over the next decade? And so in the last 2 years, I think every company rebuilt their strategy, look at us. We acquired Slack, our largest acquisition ever, we retooled, we built our CDP. We augmented our professional services strategy. We changed our management team. We transformed who's running the company and how it's being run. So we're an example of, okay, we're ready for the next decade. And I think that, that example is probably true for all the customers that we're meeting with. And Bret, do you want to come in and talk about some of your experiences in Davos?