Earnings Call Insights: Salesforce (CRM) Q3 2026
Management View
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Marc Benioff, CEO, reported “we delivered strong results for the quarter across all of our key metrics” and highlighted the company’s ongoing execution toward its $60 billion long-term ambition. Benioff stated, “We have delivered incredible results with Agentforce. It’s really exceeding our expectations… 3.2 trillion tokens delivered for our customers.” He described Agentforce as Salesforce’s fastest-growing product ever, now reaching nearly $1.4 billion in ARR for the quarter, with Agentforce ARR at about $540 million, up 330% year-over-year. He also emphasized the successful integration of Informatica, Data 360, and MuleSoft, noting, “that’s going to strengthen our overall leadership in data and, of course, AI.”
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Benioff explained that the company is witnessing strong global demand for its agentic enterprise offerings, stating, “customers in production with Agentforce jumped 70% quarter-over-quarter,” and described a “consumption flywheel” as more than 50% of new Agentforce and Data 360 bookings came from existing customers expanding investments.
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Robin Washington, President and CFO, stated, “More than 70% of our top 100 wins included 5 or more clouds… new bookings for Agentforce 1 Edition and [A for X]… doubled quarter-over-quarter.” Washington added, “Q3 was one of our biggest pipeline generation quarters ever and customers leveraging our forward-deployed engineers are seeing 33% faster deployment times.”
Outlook
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Washington stated, “We are reiterating our fiscal year ’26 organic subscription and support growth guidance of approximately 9% year-over-year in constant currency.”
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The company expects total revenue for fiscal year ‘26 on an organic basis to be between $41.15 billion and $41.25 billion, with Informatica contributing to a consolidated total of $41.45 billion to $41.55 billion or approximately 9% to 10% growth in nominal terms and about 9% in constant currency.
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Operating cash flow growth guidance was raised to “approximately 13% to 14% growth as a result of our strong Q3 bookings performance.”
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Organic current remaining performance obligation (cRPO) growth for Q4 is expected to be “approximately 11% year-over-year in nominal and 9% year-over-year in constant currency,” while inclusive of Informatica, cRPO growth is projected at 15% year-over-year in nominal, or 13% in constant currency.
Financial Results
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Benioff reported Q3 revenue of $10.26 billion, up 9% year-over-year, and noted a non-GAAP operating margin of 35.5%.
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Current remaining performance obligation (cRPO) was $29.4 billion, up 11% year-over-year. Operating cash flow for the quarter reached $2.3 billion, up 17% year-over-year, and free cash flow was $2.2 billion, up 22% year-over-year.
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Washington highlighted that “Q3 non-GAAP operating margin [was] up 240 basis points and GAAP operating margin up 130 basis points.”
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Agentforce and Data 360 ARR increased 114% year-over-year, with Agentforce ARR up 330% year-over-year.
Q&A
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Keith Weiss, Morgan Stanley: Asked about customer appetite for building generative AI solutions in-house versus using Salesforce. Miguel Milano, CRO, responded, “There is something very large, very important… every single company in the world, small, medium, large wants to become an agentic enterprise… they’ve been experimenting for 2 years. They’ve gone from experimentation now to frustration a little bit. And now they’re all saying… this is hard… they all want to go to scale.”
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Raimo Lenschow, Barclays: Inquired about the expansion and ramping of sales reps. Milano stated, “We have now, today, 20% more capacity in place. We’re going to finish the year with 15% more capacity enabled already… It takes 6 to 12 months to — on average to ramp AEs.”
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Brad Zelnick, Deutsche Bank: Questioned Salesforce’s infrastructure business and competitive advantage. Benioff explained, “Our data infrastructure is incredible… Informatica, Data 360, our data cloud and also MuleSoft… together… will do about $10 billion next year in business.”
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Brent Thill, Jefferies: Asked about the “halo effect” of Agentforce on other clouds, especially Slack. Benioff responded, “It’s an accelerator on the core… our ability to take our core applications, extend them and deliver another level of value beyond what we were doing before.”
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S. Kirk Materne, Evercore: Asked about Agentforce pricing and monetization as automation may impact customer headcount. Milano described flexible pricing models and noted, “We have the whole portfolio, and we are meeting… every customer is a different point of the journey.”
Sentiment Analysis
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Analysts repeatedly probed for clarity on AI adoption, sales ramp, pricing, and monetization strategies, in a tone that was generally positive but focused on execution risks and the sustainability of growth, as reflected by questions on customer DIY efforts and headcount implications.
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Management maintained a confident tone in both prepared remarks and responses. Benioff described the quarter as “the best quarter, I think we’ve had actually in 3 years,” and Milano emphasized exponential monetization potential from agentic enterprise transformation.
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Compared to the previous quarter, both analysts and management displayed increased confidence, with less skepticism about AI adoption and more focus on operational execution and monetization.
Quarter-over-Quarter Comparison
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Revenue growth decelerated slightly from 10% year-over-year in Q2 to 9% in Q3.
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Agentforce ARR accelerated to $540 million, up 330% year-over-year, compared to broader AI and data ARR of $1.2 billion in Q2, up 120% year-over-year.
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The integration of Informatica was completed three months ahead of schedule and is now included in guidance, whereas in Q2, Informatica contribution was excluded pending deal closure.
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Sales capacity investments increased, with enabled capacity now up 23% for the year compared to a 20% increase at the end of Q2.
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Management’s tone shifted from emphasizing early adoption and pilot-to-production transitions to highlighting broad-based adoption, operational scale, and exponential monetization opportunities.
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Analysts’ questions shifted from structural risks and the impact of AI on SaaS models to operational execution, pricing models, and the sustainability of growth drivers.
Risks and Concerns
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Management cited faster-than-anticipated mix shift to cloud for Tableau and on-prem revenue timing in Tableau and MuleSoft as partial offsets.
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Washington noted geographic variability, with stronger growth in North America and EMEA but “Asia Pacific was more constrained, particularly in Australia and India.”
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Segment weakness was seen in “comms and media and manufacturing, automotive and energy.”
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Continued reallocation of resources to high-growth areas was mentioned as key to driving adoption and mitigating sector-specific softness.
Final Takeaway
The quarter demonstrated Salesforce’s accelerating momentum in AI-driven solutions, with Agentforce and Data 360 driving record bookings, rapid enterprise adoption, and a strong pipeline for future growth. The successful integration of Informatica, flexible pricing models, and substantial increases in sales capacity position the company to capitalize on the secular shift toward agentic enterprise transformation. Management reiterated high confidence in sustainable, profitable growth, targeting up to $41.55 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2026 and substantial cash flow generation, supported by broad-based adoption and disciplined capital allocation strategies.