The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.
(Questions from industry analysts are provided in full, but answers are omitted - download the transcript to see the full question-and-answer session)
Question: Kasthuri Gopalan Rangan - Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Research Division - Analyst
: Lots of exciting news for Salesforce. Congrats on all the changes. My question maybe, Brian, congrats to you as well in your new
position. What would you do to turn around the data cloud? I know, clearly, it has had some very significant momentum. But I can,
in some sense, look at the new guidance versus the old and say a lot of that delta is basically the slowdown on the growth rate in
the data cloud that is the Tableau and MuleSoft business. Brian, want to get your opinion on that.
And just the management team, as you talk to customers, Marc, you've been through these cycles before, what are customers saying
as to when they might reengage at the same level of enthusiasm at Salesforce, be deal size or close rate. What are the things that
they're looking for from a macro perspective or leading indicators in their business so it could be back to reengaging the way they
used to reengage with Salesforce.
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AUGUST 24, 2022 / 9:00PM, CRM.N - Q2 2023 Salesforce Inc Earnings Call
Question: Karl Emil Keirstead - UBS Investment Bank, Research Division - Analyst
: Maybe I'll direct this to Marc and Amy and it's about the $10 billion share repurchase. So maybe a 2-parter. Marc, maybe for you, why
do you think this is the right time in the company's development to move forward with your first large repurchase?
And then secondly, should everybody on the line interpret this as a signal that perhaps large M&A may be off the table for now?
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AUGUST 24, 2022 / 9:00PM, CRM.N - Q2 2023 Salesforce Inc Earnings Call
Marc R. Benioff - Salesforce, Inc. - Co-Founder, Chairman & Co-CEO
Well, it's a great question. And I'll tell you this was kind of -- I looked at this quarter very much as kind of a milestone. I'm a big fan of
SAP and I have a lot of respect for their business and what they've done in the market over the last 40 -- almost 50 years. And to see
our business in July do more than they reported in June in terms of revenue, that was very meaningful to me and I'm very grateful
and proud of our team for kind of hitting this tremendous level of scale.
But at that same moment, I kind of also can say, okay, what are some changes that we can make. And one of the things, we have
such massive cash flow that I think it's completely appropriate for us to look at how we're handling our dilution, for example. I think
that's been on the table for a while, and a lot of my conversations with investors they bring it up. We've waited for that moment. I
think now is the right moment where we can say we're going to directly address this with our kind of first-ever share repurchase,
$10 billion. I'm very excited about it.
At the same time, I don't think that, that takes M&A off the table. I think that we continue to look for opportunities. We want to be
able to use our cash constructively. This is important for us. It doesn't mean that we're not going to have different kind of guardrails
for M&A.
And Bret, do you want to just address that point?
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