Salesforce (Minutes): AI is an assistant, not a killer; SMEs are the new direction for growth.

The following is organized by Dolphin Research$Salesforce(CRM.US) 2025 Q2 (FY26) Earnings Call Minutes. For earnings interpretation, please refer to "Salesforce: Is AI a 'Savior' or a 'Death Knell'?"

I. Review of Core Financial Information:

1. Agentforce Product and Business Highlights

Agentforce and Data Cloud: AI and data product annualized revenue (ARR) reached $1.2 billion, a year-on-year increase of 120%.

Agentforce Customer Growth: Since the launch of Agentforce, approximately 12,500 contracts have been signed, with over 6,000 already paid, and 40% of new bookings come from existing customer expansions.

Industry Coverage: Major clients in government, finance, retail, healthcare, and other industries continue to expand.

2. Dreamforce 2025 Conference Preview

The conference will be held in San Francisco from October 14th to 16th. Key highlights include:

Showcasing the full range of "intelligent agent-based" products (including Agentforce 4.0 and the new ITSM platform);

Hundreds of customers will share their transformation practices (including Dell, FedEx, Accenture, Smartsheet, Williams-Sonoma, Pfizer, OpenAI, Anthropic, and others);

Key themes will include: How the "intelligent agent-based enterprise" is reshaping business and how Salesforce is using technology to drive social value (such as customer service optimization, sustainability, and community support).

3. Shareholder Returns: In the second quarter, $2.6 billion was returned to shareholders through repurchases and dividends, bringing the total to nearly $27 billion. The Board of Directors has approved an increase of $20 billion in the share repurchase authorization.

4. Q3 Guidance

Revenue: $10.24 billion to $10.29 billion (year-over-year growth of 8%-9%, 8% at constant currency);

Cross-border Revenue Points (cRPO) Growth: Slightly over 10% at nominal exchange rates (including $300 million of foreign exchange gains), slightly over 9% at constant currency; Note: Despite recent normalization in contract signings, cRPO will continue to be impacted by the cumulative impact of sales fluctuations since the second quarter of fiscal 2023.

II. Detailed Content of the Earnings Call

2.1, Key Information from Executive Statements

1. Strategic Direction: Agentic Enterprise

The company is fully transitioning to an "agent-driven" model, where AI agents collaborate with humans to reshape business processes.

All core products (Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Slack, etc.) have been embedded with agent capabilities.

Customer cases include DirecTV, Under Armour, FedEx, etc., achieving significant improvements in customer service efficiency and sales process automation.

2. Product Innovation and Launch

Agentforce: Launched the fourth edition, supporting multimodal interaction and more precise reasoning capabilities.

Data Cloud: Becomes the core data foundation for agents, supporting zero-copy integration, with an annual growth of 326%.

Slack as an Agent Platform: Launched IT Service Management (ITSM) products based on Slack, supporting no-code interaction.

Upcoming Releases: Agentforce v4, ITSM platform, Tableau Next, Marketing Cloud Next, etc.

3. Market and Customer Strategy

Five Segmented Markets: Large enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises, mid-market, government, ISV ecosystem.

Significant growth in small and medium-sized enterprises and mid-market, AI lowers usage barriers, promoting product adoption.

Government business continues to expand, signing large contracts with the U.S. Army, FedRAMP High certification aids government market penetration.

4. Capital Strategy and M&A

Adheres to a "trinity" capital allocation strategy: buybacks, dividends, strategic acquisitions.

Recently acquired Convergence AI, Bluebirds, Waii, and signed an agreement to acquire Regrello (an agent supply chain platform).

The Informatica acquisition is expected to be completed in FY26 Q4 or early FY27.

5. Operational Efficiency and Organizational Transformation

Through agent automation of customer service, sales, and other processes, internal customer service manpower has been reduced by nearly 40%.

The organization is transitioning to an "agent-driven" architecture, emphasizing human-agent collaboration.

Strengthening talent recruitment, especially industry experts and international talent.

2.2, Q&A Analyst Questions and Answers

Q: Is SaaS outdated? Will AI-native applications or custom AI disrupt the SaaS field where Salesforce operates? When will Data Cloud and Agentforce significantly impact the top line?

A: SaaS is not being disrupted but is extending capabilities through AI. Salesforce leverages its 26-year customer data foundation (managing 200-300 PB of data) to combine Agentforce with Data Cloud, achieving "human-machine collaboration". For example, in the past 9 months, Agentforce handled 1.5 million customer conversations with over 90% accuracy, with complex issues being resolved by humans. Data Cloud currently has an annual revenue of $7 billion, covering more than half of the Fortune 500, and zero-copy integration technology has increased data access volume by 326% year-on-year. Revenue growth from AI products (such as Agentforce) is already evident, with 40% of new bookings coming from existing customer expansions. The "pay-as-you-go" model will accelerate penetration, gradually becoming a revenue growth engine.

Q: What are the technical or implementation catalysts behind the 60% quarterly growth in the number of customers moving from pilot to production with Agentforce? What are the differences between Agentforce in production environments and the pilot phase?

A: Technical Optimization and Customization: Customized UI branding features for clients like Equinox, solved "prompt engineering loop" issues for companies like Lennar, and achieved large-scale monitoring and performance management through the Agentforce Command Center.

Customer Case Validation: DirecTV reduced customer service time by 300 hours/week using Agentforce, executing 50,000 automated operations weekly; Falabella, in the Latin American retail scenario, used Agentforce to handle "order inquiry" demands, reducing phone inquiries by 25%, increasing NPS by 10 points, and placing three additional orders within three months.
In production environments, Agentforce needs to deeply integrate with Data Cloud, MuleSoft, and other underlying data to support complex scenarios such as supply chain automation and multi-channel customer service, while the pilot phase focuses on single-function validation (such as customer service script optimization).

Q: The board approved an additional $20 billion stock buyback. Does this mean the company prefers buybacks over acquisitions? How do you balance the capital allocation strategy?

A: The company adheres to a "buyback + dividend + strategic acquisition" trinity strategy. In 2025, it is expected to generate nearly $15 billion in operating cash flow. In addition to buybacks, recent acquisitions include Convergence AI, Bluebirds, Waii, and the signing of the Regrello (agent supply chain platform) acquisition agreement. The Informatica acquisition is expected to be completed in Q4 2026 or early 2027 to strengthen data integration capabilities. Capital allocation is based on healthy cash flow, prioritizing shareholder returns while supplementing AI and data field technology gaps through acquisitions.

Q: Are small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) and the mid-market becoming a sustainable growth driver? How does AI drive market expansion?

A: SMBs (0-200 people) and the mid-market (200-10,000 people) are experiencing significant growth due to:

AI lowers usage barriers: Agentforce launched a "pay-as-you-go" model, with Flex Credits accounting for 80% of new bookings in Q2, allowing small and medium-sized businesses to quickly deploy automation tools (such as Slack-integrated ITSM products, with zero learning cost).

Organizational Expansion Drive: AI assists SMBs in transitioning to medium-sized enterprises, with 20% of new sales teams in 2025 focusing on this area, and clients like Falabella placing three additional Agentforce orders within three months.

Market Strategy Optimization: Accelerating recruitment and training through the "hubs" model, with "instant open and close" transactions from SMBs accounting for 40% of ACV in Q2 2025, and the number of small and medium-sized business customers growing by over 60% year-on-year.

Q: Salesforce's support team manpower has been reduced by nearly 40%. Why is it difficult for other software companies to achieve this? How do the released resources drive growth?

A: Salesforce can significantly reduce the support team because it has built a complete "agent-driven enterprise" architecture.

Depth of Technical Integration: Agentforce and Data Cloud achieve 77% automatic resolution of customer issues, with AI handling efficiency on par with humans in 1.5 million internal conversations, such as the CSAT score on the help.salesforce.com platform being equivalent to human support.

Organizational Transformation Boldness: Reallocating support personnel to sales and solutions teams, with new positions focusing on AI products (such as Agentforce Voice, Tableau Next).
Other companies are hindered by fragmented technology (lack of unified data foundation) and resistance to change, while Salesforce, as "Customer Zero," has validated the feasibility of the model through internal process automation (such as a 200% increase in sales lead processing efficiency).

Q: How does the expansion of the sales team and Agentforce enhance growth confidence? What are the future growth drivers?

A: In Q2 2025, the sales team size increased by 20%, focusing on high-growth areas.

Strong Agentforce Repurchase: Thousands of enterprises are entering the "renewal-expansion" cycle, with clients like Falabella placing three additional orders within three months, and a certain client purchasing Agentforce credits four times within four months.

Pipeline Health Improvement: H2 large orders (>$1 million) grew by nearly 20%, with strong demand in the government sector (such as the U.S. Army signing the Fast Pass agreement) and financial services cloud.

Product Matrix Expansion: Upcoming releases of Agentforce v4, Marketing Cloud Next, etc., combined with Informatica's data capabilities, are expected to further increase the proportion of AI-related revenue in 2026, maintaining an operating cash flow growth rate of 12%-13%.

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