Salesforce Releases Earnings Today, AI Pricing Model Debate is Key

According to a report in Barron's on May 27th, Wall Street expects Salesforce to achieve first-quarter sales of $11.1 billion, a 12% increase year-over-year, with adjusted earnings per share at $3.13, a significant increase from the $2.58 in the same period last year.

The core contradiction that suppresses the stock price is not the growth itself, but the structural threat of AI agents to its pricing model. Salesforce has long relied on a per-user charging model, with a gross margin as high as 75%. However, with the popularity of AI programming agents, corporate clients can build customized CRM tools themselves, bypassing Salesforce's standard products. Palantir directly disclosed in the earnings call at the beginning of this month that it has replaced its existing CRM software with a self-developed solution, which has aroused the market's high vigilance for this trend.

Salesforce's response strategy is to launch its own line of AI agent products, Agentforce, and switch the billing logic from "per user" to "per service consumption." By the end of the fourth quarter, Agentforce's annual recurring revenue reached $800 million, almost doubling from $440 million nine months earlier, with a significant growth rate.

However, this scale is still minuscule compared to the company's expected total revenue of about $46 billion in 2027. What investors want to see most today is whether the management can provide a clearer scaling path for Agentforce and whether the new pricing model can truly compensate for the growth gap in traditional business.