Salesforce once again has co-CEOs, but that doesn’t mean longtime CEO Marc Benioff plans to retire anytime soon…or ever.
Salesforce is one of the few big tech companies to rely on co-CEOs, rather than a single person at the top spot. While Benioff has held the top position for years, the last co-CEO was Keith Block, who resigned in February 2020.
Bret Taylor was recently appointed to join Benioff as co-CEO, even being seen as Benioff’s heir-apparent. Despite the perception, Benioff has set the record straight that he has no intention of leaving the company he founded.
“I love Salesforce. You see me with our customers and how much fun I have with all of our stakeholders. I’m never leaving Salesforce. This is my life’s pursuit,” Benioff told Mad Money’s Jim Cramer.
“But I couldn’t be more thrilled to have a great partner here with Bret Taylor, and he’s just amazing,” Benioff continued. “This is my dream, that Bret would come in the company and we could work it and run it together and lead it together in a trusted partnership, and that’s happening.”
Coinbase is calling out the SEC for what it believes is “sketchy” behavior, but TheStreet’s Jim Cramer is not a fan of its strategy.
The issue involves Coinbase’s crypto lending program, called Lend. The service would allow individuals to lend their crypto assets and earn interest on the loans. Unfortunately, for Coinbase, the SEC seems to have an issue with Lend and has sent the company a Wells Notice.
“Last Wednesday, after months of effort by Coinbase to engage productively, the SEC gave us what’s called a Wells notice about our planned Coinbase Lend program,” writes Paul Grewal, Chief Legal Officer, on the company’s blog. “A Wells notice is the official way a regulator tells a company that it intends to sue the company in court. As surprised as we were at the SEC’s threat to sue without ever telling us why, we want to be transparent with you about the course of events leading up to it.”
CEO Brian Armstrong has gone even further, calling the SEC’s behavior “sketchy.”
1/ Some really sketchy behavior coming out of the SEC recently. Story time…
TheStreet’s Jim Cramer believes Armstrong and Coinbase are playing a dangerous game, especially since SEC chair Gary Gensler “taught crypto at MIT,” and has the full weight of a government agency backing him up on his already knowledgable position.
“[Coinbase] is declaring war against a man who has unlimited firepower,” Cramer said.
Marc Benioff: Employees ‘Can Be Successful From Anywhere’
Mad Money’s Jim Cramer interviewed Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff about the surge in Delta cases and whether people would return to the office.
Benioff compared pandemic response in San Francisco and Geneva, saying it felt like A Tale of Two Cities. Whereas there are a number of restrictions in place in San Francisco, when he traveled to Geneva a day later there were no restrictions, with in-person meetings and far less concern over the COVID variant.
Nonetheless, Benioff expressed his belief the pandemic has fundamentally changed the new normal for the workforce.
“The phenomenon that I see happening globally, is not as many employees are coming back into their offices globally as any CEO expected,” Benioff said. “And you’re really starting to see some very low attendance numbers in offices because employees are so productive at home.
“So they can do their job at home, they can be successful from anywhere. The companies and our customers are successful. It’s incredible, but the way they’re being successful has completely changed.
“The pandemic is A Tale of Two Cities, but the new normal is not. We’re starting to see this new normal appear, and business is going to be quite different as we come into this new world.”
Wedbush Securities has raised Microsoft’s target price from $310 to $325 after the company became the third to cross the $2 trillion mark.
Microsoft made headlines yesterday when it became only the third company to have a market capitalization of $2 trillion, behind Saudi Aramco and Apple. The company has been firing on all cylinders in recent years, thanks to the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella.
Wedbush has been bullish on Microsoft for some time, largely on the strength of its cloud platform. The firm is once again raising its price arget following yesterday’s news, from $310 to $325 per share.
“While many tech stocks overall are all being lumped together as part of the WFH trade, we believe the growth story at Microsoft is not slowing down as more enterprises/governments head down this cloud path over the coming years,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote, via TheStreet.
TheStreet’s Jim Cramer echoed those sentiments, believing Microsoft’s shares are still undervalued. He said the company “has moved up on a delayed action to its great quarter. It remains inexpensive despite its historic growth rate and its consistency. And do I care that [CEO Satya Nadella] was named chairman? Hey, listen, we have stocks that go up like that, naming guys chairman every day of the week.”
On its opening day, Coinbase soared above its initial reference price of $250 a share, hitting as high as $429.54 before settling down.
Coinbase is one of the leading platforms for trading cryptocurrency, and its success is inextricably tied with the crypto market. It’s off to a good start however. It opened trading at $381 a share, 52% above its reference price.
Despite soaring to 72% above reference to $429.54 during its first day, it closed at $328.28, or 14% below its opening trade.
Jim Cramer, founder of TheStreet had high praise for Coinbase, calling it “the real deal,” saying if you’re a “big believer in cryptocurrency … you want to own Coinbase for the long haul.”
TheStreet also quoted Wedbush analyst Dan Ives on the significance of the Coinbase IPO.
“The Coinbase IPO is a watershed and historical event for the crypto industry and will be something the Street will be laser focused on to gauge investor appetite going forward,” Ives said.
Salesforce and Slack are expected to announce a sales agreement Tuesday, in what would be Salesforce’s biggest acquisition to date.
The two companies made headlines Wednesday with news that Salesforce was looking to purchase the iconic corporate messaging app. At the time, talks were thought to still be in the preliminary stages, with no indication a deal was in sight. Within hours, however, outlets starting reporting the talks were in the advanced stages.
Things have progressed quickly, as a new report from the Wall Street Journal says a deal could be announced as early as Tuesday after market close. CNBC’s David Faber reports the deal will be roughly half cash and half stock, although it may be slightly weighted toward the cash side.
Similarly, while initial reports valued Slack at $17 billion, it appears Salesforce will be paying a significant premium. Faber said the deal is not expected to reach $30 billion, but may come close.
Experts believe the acquisition will help Slack, as well as Salesforce, fend off Microsoft. Slack has been hurt by a number of factors, most significantly Microsoft’s bundling of Teams with Office. Microsoft’s tactics prompted Slack to file an antitrust claim with the EU, a claim Jim Cramer calls “strong.”
At the same time, Microsoft continues to go after Salesforce’s core CRM market. Its most recent inroad was a partnership with C3.ai and Adobe to create AI-driven CRM.
The combination of the two companies may ultimately help both compete with Microsoft more effectively.
The Financial Times reports that under Oracle’s proposal currently under review by various entities within the US government including Treasury and Homeland Security, TikTok is set to become a standalone US company to satisfy White House conditions. The agreement would keep ByteDance as majority shareholding, with Oracle holding a minority stake. This condition would seem to be at odds with Trump’s mandate for TikTok to become an American owned company to satisfy the terms of his executive order designed to protect the privacy and security of the American public.
However, President Trump told reporters today that he heard that Oracle and TikTok are “very close to a deal.” He said that a decision on the pending deal will be made “pretty soon.” He noted that he has “high respect” Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison. Ellison is a well-known supporter of President Trump. The trust that the President has with Ellison is likely key to making this deal happen.
CNBC’s Jim Cramer who has both tech world sources and is friends with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said this today:
I think there’s a deal as soon as today. I think that the review is almost complete. They like Oracle. They don’t feel that Oracle has any ties (to China). I think that they are going to get all of TikTok worldwide. They are going to hire 25,000 people in America. Apparently Secretary Mnuchin is very happy about the security concerns. Oracle CEO Safra Catz is saying we are ready. We have a gigantic cloud presence and we are already doing a lot in advertising. This is going to be today or maybe tomorrow.
There are 55 million users at 79 minutes a day and there are 100 million users per month. It is a prize asset. The reason why the deal is going to be done is because Oracle is a trusted company in the White House. It’s not going to be that Oracle owns it. It is going to be owned by these PE firms, some of it Oracle, and that’s why I think the deal is going to be approved.
The Wall Street Journal tonight is reporting that the deal may actually include a piece of the TikTok globally as well:
China’s ByteDance Ltd. would retain a majority ownership stake in its TikTok app as part of a proposal to be reviewed by national-security regulators on Tuesday with an eye toward settling the high-profile deal by a deadline Sunday, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The proposal includes Oracle Corp. ’s bid to become TikTok’s U.S. technology partner as part of an effort to address the administration’s national-security concerns surrounding the Chinese-owned video-sharing app.
Source: Wall Street Journal
“We just got this proposal over the weekend it would be inappropriate for me to comment on it,” said Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin yesterday in an impromptu press gathering this afternoon. “It’s going to go through a national security review in the next couple of days and then we’ll be sitting down and reviewing it with the President. But as we’ve said before a condition of any deal is to make sure that we believe that the code is safe, that U.S .citizens personal data is safe, and that the phones are safe. We have a lot of confidence in Oracle so we’ll be reviewing the technical issues with them.”
Mad Money’s Jim Cramer sat down with Akamai CEO Tom Leighton to discuss the impact 5G will have on the web.
Akamai Technologies is one of the premier content delivery networks, providing critical services to companies around the world. As a result, the company has unique insight into new internet technologies, especially those that promise the transformative effect of 5G.
Cramer asked Leighton about streaming platforms, and whether they were all Akamai customers.
”We work with Netflix, but don’t deliver the long-form videos today. We’re much more diversified today, so there’s no single really large customer on our platform. We work with pretty much all the world’s major brands, including the sporting events.”
The interview then turned toward 5G specifically, with Cramer asking if 5G would essentially do away with the need for TVs.
”You’ll have a device always. Maybe it’s not your traditional TV. I think the devices are obviously changing. And I think 5G is a really exciting technology for the future, not just for watching video, but for the potential of all the IoT applications. The whole paradigm of the web could be changing. You know, we already operate an IoT platform. We have dozens of customers that are early adopters. The protocols there are all different than the web, and they’re a lot more efficient. The paradigms are different. I think that’s an exciting part of the future…”
Leighton then expressed that the switch to remote work, remote learning, online banking, home entertainment and other post-pandemic changes were providing tailwinds for the company. As a result, their profits are up 30% year-over-year.
Akamai CEO Says 5G Will Change the Paradigm of the Web
VMware is synonymous with virtualization software. Everyone from data centers to end users rely on the company’s software to be able to run multiple operating systems on a single set of hardware.
In an interview with Mad Money’s Jim Cramer, VMware COO Sanjay Poonen commented on the current state of telecommuting during the coronavirus pandemic, as well as VMware’s role in 5G.
On The Impacts of the Coronavirus Pandemic
“This is unprecedented times. We’ve always been a trusted advisor and, as you know, we know a thing or two about virtualization. Our customers run their critical apps on our infrastructure.”
On How Long-Lasting the Impacts Will Be
“I think there’s part of our life, Jim, that’s going to change forever. Behind me I have a saying from Winston Churchill that says, ‘when you’re going through hell, go through it.’ Another one I like from Winston Churchill is ‘never waste a crisis.’
And I think that’s part of our life that’s forever going to change. We will, perhaps, have a place where, for instance, less travel is good for the planet.”
On Collaboration
“We want to make sure that if you are at home, you are productive, you’re able to work continuous, just like it was at work…We were one of the early customers that used Zoom. We love it. We use Slack. We use Microsoft Teams. These are all ways in which you can collaborate.”
On VMware’s Role in 5G and the Network Strain the Pandemic Is Causing
“We have tremendous relationships with the telco players—they are some of our biggest customers—and the cloud infrastructure players. In many cases, we are between software, compute, storage and networking. Software defined architecture is really where the world of 5G is going.
“So a lot of these big companies have started relying on us for that future world of 5G. And software is a lot easier to manage. It’s also just as reliable, more reliable, because you can fix things. And we’re working very closely with our customers. Bandwidth is going to be something we watch very carefully.”
The vast majority of wireless customers have yet to experience 5G but, according to a report by Ericsson (PDF), that is about to change in a big way.
In the Ericsson Mobility Report, the company is predicting that 2.6 billion individuals will have 5G plans by 2025.
“With the continued momentum for 5G, we predict 13 million 5G subscriptions by the end of this year. A big share of these subscriptions is expected to be in China. All three of the main service providers launched commercial 5G services in Q4 2019. Sign-up of customers started even before launch, with more than 10 million 5G users registered in October 2019.
“In 2025 we forecast 2.6 billion 5G subscriptions globally, accounting for 29 percent of all mobile subscriptions at that time.
“LTE will remain the dominant mobile access technology by subscription during the forecast period. It is projected to peak in 2022 at 5.4 billion subscriptions and decline to around 4.8 billion subscriptions by the end of 2025 as LTE subscriptions migrate to 5G.”
Experts, such as Jim Cramer, have been saying that 5G is greatly misunderstood and offers exponentially more than a simple generational improvement. The speeds offered by 5G will create a world of new opportunities for a wide range of industries. Given the promise of the new technology, it’s a good sign that so many customers are expected to have access so quickly.
On the heels of news that Google has partnered with Ascension to collect data on millions of American patients, CBS News is reporting that government officials are opening an inquiry into the deal.
Ascension is the second largest chain of hospitals and healthcare facilities in the U.S. The program, “Project Nightingale,” which began last year, provides Google with detailed information on patients in 21 states, including names, dates of birth, lab results, diagnoses, hospitalization records and more. Together, the information gives Google a patient’s complete health record. Google is using the information to design AI-based tools to assist in patient diagnostics.
Despite the fact the agreement is likely legal under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, Google is facing backlash in the wake of reports on the project. Even Jim Cramer, co-founder of TheStreet.com, questioned the wisdom of Google’s actions, saying the company “did things we regard as being unauthorized by some, so therefore a U.S. Attorney or someone is going to look into it….The country is hyper-sensitive to what Google does and Facebook does. So why aren’t they a little more thoughtful?”
Google’s own reaction to the backlash has done little to improve the situation, with a cloud executive penning the initial blog responding to the story, rather than any of the health-care professionals on the company’s payroll. In addition, as CNBC reports, Google’s secrecy and use of cryptic code-names only adds fuel to the flames of suspicion that the company is up to something underhanded. As a result, the Department of Health and Human Services is launching an inquiry into Project Nightingale.
Whatever the outcome, there can be no denying that Project Nightingale represents another privacy misstep for Google, right as the company is trying to expand into other privacy-sensitive industries and markets.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday announced a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump. To no one’s surprise, the stock market took a nosedive in the aftermath of the announcement, leading business owners and shareholders alike to wonder how this will impact their bottom line.
Jim Cramer discussed the topic on Mad Money, making a point of highlighting how the markets survived the last time this happened.
“We have something else to worry about. We have partisan acrimony per share.”
Mr. Cramer went on to highlight that—in the wake of revelations that President Trump may have tried to pressure Ukraine into investigating a political rival—Democrats seemed determine to impeach Trump, sending articles of impeachment to the Senate.
“Before you freak out, for those of you who don’t remember civic classes, let me explain. Even if the House impeaches Trump, you can’t remove a sitting president without a two-thirds majority in the Senate. So until the Democrats can convince at least 20 Republican senators to turn on their guy, impeachment remains a sideshow.
“Still, I get why people sold today. It made a lot of sense. We haven’t seen this level of partisan acrimony in the United States since the Civil War. And when things in Washington turn hostile, that can and always will hurt the stock market.”
Despite the potential for stocks to take a beating, Cramer sees a silver lining. Ultimately, with the Senate under Republican control, the likelihood of impeachment leading to anything is virtually nil.
“The Senate will most likely acquit. How much will that matter to the stock market? You know what? We’ve seen this movie before. When the Republican House of Representatives impeached President Clinton, everyone knew he’d be acquitted in the Senate. So how did the Clinton impeachment impact the market?”
Cramer goes on to highlight how much the stock market dropped when impeachment proceedings were announced against Clinton, with the Nasdaq and tech stocks bearing the brunt. However, as Cramer points out, the market quickly recovered with tech leading way and showing some of the biggest gains.
“If you let the impeachment story shake you out of the market, well, guess what happened? You missed one of the greatest moves of all time….Every pullback during that period—every one—was a buying opportunity….If this turns out like 1998 all over again, then you may want to buy at the moment of maximum rancor.”
The message is clear: While stocks may take a short term hit, over the long term, impeachment may represent a significant economic opportunity.
Snapchat, the ephemeral messaging app that’s gaining quite the following, has been accused of facilitating some risque communications. When it first launched, it quickly garnered the reputation as being a “sexting” app for teens.
You see, Snapchat allows users to send short messages which then self-destruct in a designated amount of time – 30 second, a minute, 5 minutes, and so on. At that point, the messages are deleted from the recipient’s device. If the recipient tries to take a screenshot of the image, the message sender is notified. I’m sure you can see how it developed its “sexting app” reputation.
Now there’s another interesting (and illegal) Snapchat use that’s gaining some attention – thanks to CNBC’s Jim Cramer. Apparently, he thinks that Snapchat could be used for the purpose of insider trading.
At least that’s what he told U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara. Speaking at the Delivering Alpha conference, Cramer suggested that Snapchat could be used to send out insider trading tips.
The funny thing is that Bharara had no idea what Snapchat was until Cramer mentioned it.
“It’s absolutely blowing up right now,” a former banker told NY Mag. “People are generally sending shots of cubicles, laptops, airports and other motifs of corporate life.”
And they’re also using it to communicate all of the private aspect of their lives that they wish to keep out of the public eye. Drinking at a bar? Don’t Facebook it – send it with Snapchat.
But Cramer suggests that it could be used for much more nefarious purposes.
