Courtesy of Benzinga.
The cloud segment saw a major shakeup this week after salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE: CRM) and Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) confirmed a new partnership. As part of the agreement, Google’s office software suite will be integrated into Salesforce’s core platform, while Google Analytics will be integrated into Salesforce’s marketing software.
The Analyst
B. Riley FBR’s Sameet Sinha.
The Rating
Sinha maintains a Buy rating on Alphabet’s stock with an unchanged $1,200 price target. (See Sinha’s track record here.)
The Thesis
The main takeaway from Salesforce and Google’s agreement is that it will leverage each company’s specialties across the other’s platforms, Sinha said in a Tuesday note. On Google’s end, the partnership validates its Enterprise platform, with a major tech company like Salesforce using technologies from Mountain View “at the core of its operations.”
While the immediate impact of the partnership is “fairly null,” there are multiple runways for growth, as Salesforce’s international sales account for just 28 percent of total revenue, according to B. Riley FBR.
The sheer amount of data that can be derived through the two platforms, such as advertising intent and customer relationship management, is “significant,” Sinha said.
“We believe this is a major beachhead account for GOOGL, setting the stage for other ‘multi cloud’ initiatives and possibly win share as a result,” the analyst said.
Price Action
Google was up less than 1 percent to $1,059.50 at the time of writing. Salesforce was up 2.07 percent Wednesday to $104.86.
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Latest Ratings for CRM
Date | Firm | Action | From | To |
---|---|---|---|---|
Nov 2017 | Bank of America | Maintains | Buy | |
Nov 2017 | Deutsche Bank | Maintains | Buy | |
Nov 2017 | Stifel Nicolaus | Maintains | Buy |
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