Salesforce Drops 4.6% as $50B Buyback Fails to Calm AI Fears
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- Salesforce posted Q4 FY2026 revenue of $11.20 billion, up 12% year over year and essentially matching the FactSet consensus of $11.19 billion; constant-currency growth was 10%, including $399 million from the Informatica acquisition.
- Salesforce shares fell 4.6% in extended trading and are down roughly 25% year to date, reflecting a relentless software-sector selloff over fears of AI disruption, and CEO Marc Benioff called the buyback a 'great buying opportunity' in what he described as 'not a rational market.'
- Agentforce annual recurring revenue reached $800 million, surging 169% from the prior year, as Salesforce unveiled a new 'Agentic Work Units' metric and disclosed it has consumed nearly 20 trillion tokens and delivered 2.4 billion AWUs to date.
- Salesforce's current remaining performance obligations hit $35.1 billion, beating the $34.5 billion consensus and rising 16% year over year, while total RPO climbed 14% to $72.4 billion.
- Salesforce announced a $50 billion share repurchase program and hiked its quarterly dividend nearly 6% to 44 cents a share, actions CFO Robin Washington framed as 'reinforcing our commitment to delivering significant shareholder value.'
- Salesforce's Q1 guidance of $11.03 billion to $11.08 billion topped estimates of $11.01 billion, but its full FY2027 revenue range of $45.80 billion to $46.20 billion fell short of the $46.11 billion analyst consensus, prompting Evercore ISI's Kirk Materne to flag the 8% organic subscription guide as the source of the after-hours decline.
- Salesforce executives flagged 'continued weakness in marketing and commerce' and 'weaker-than-expected Tableau performance,' though Benioff pushed back on AI doom by noting Anthropic and other AI labs are building global operations atop Salesforce and Slack, and he cast the narrative as 'SaaSquatch' consuming 'SaaSpocalypse.'
Why it matters: Salesforce delivered a textbook beat-and-fall quarter: revenue matched consensus, RPO beat, and it announced the largest software buyback in years, yet the stock still dropped 4.6% as investors fixated on a sub-consensus FY2027 revenue range and a guide Evercore ISI called 'organic subscription growth of 8%.' The $50 billion repurchase is a direct shareholder-return signal from a stock down 25% YTD, but for institutional holders the question isn't capital return — it's whether Salesforce can reaccelerate organic growth back to 10% before the SaaS valuation reset deepens further.
