Last week, progressive company Salesforce saw its share price plunge 10% after Bret Taylor suddenly tendered his resignation as the company's co-CEO.* The event was a bolt from the blue for investors who had been very optimistic about the next quarter. The company earned $1.40 per share, well ahead of FactSet's estimate of $1.22. Revenue, which reached $7.84 billion, also beat expectations by $10 million.
Salesforce, a US cloud company based in San Francisco, California, has been on the market since February 1999, and they focus on, for example, CRM systems, marketing automation, analytics, and application development within the cloud.
The slump itself was caused by the company's press release announcing that the current co-CEO of Salesforce, the aforementioned Bret Taylor, will only be with the company until January 31 of the next year. Bret plans to join a startup. Mark Benioff will thus remain the sole director of the company.
On the earnings call report, Benioff mentioned that they have to let Bret go, that they understand it, but that they obviously don't like it. He also said of him that they will always see him as a brother, that they love him in the company, and that he will always have a home there. He also said that Bret should count on them trying to get him back at some point in the future, and not to think that he got away with it. We'll see how Mark does in running the company on his own.
* Past performance is no guarantee of future results
