Salesforce, Starboard, David Faber discussed on CNBC's Fast Money
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Starboard founder Jeff Smith telling CBC's David Faber this morning, he believes Salesforce is cheap right now, and then he wants to be a long-term investor in the name. Starboard also revealed a new stake in Splunk betting that the software company could be a takeover target as well. Splunk shares popping about 3% in today's session, Tim Seymour, Salesforce. I'm a little surprised. Starboard is a big company. Salesforce is a very big company to be trying to take a little activist stake in. Well, but part of this is just putting pressure and jostling a little bit. They don't like the business mix. They don't like the margin. They think they should be growing more than 20%. And this is an environment where this company has had enormous growth. By the way, Salesforce has also been growing through acquisition. And at some point, that becomes a little difficult. Talk to Oracle, even though successfully done. So it gets back to a place where you look at companies like this and certainly in the software space, the multiples were not things we were comfortable with 6 months ago. Certainly not a year ago. And the question is, do you want to pay them here? I think in Salesforce, you start to want to own this thing. Yeah, Nathan, you take on CRM. Yeah, I do think it's interesting. I think our viewers should know that when you see starboard, they said long term, they're not trying to shake up the management ranks. I think the co CEOs and benioff and Brett Taylor are considered two of the best in tech. It really is getting them to think about how differently other than acquisition to kind of grow that business. And again, they're going to take a long-term approach to this. I just say this, it feels like and I got to tell you, up four and a half percent on that news, down 50% on the year was not particularly impressive, that Splunk, up 3%, not impressive. So to me, I look at CRMs estimates for next year, fiscal 2024 expected EPS growth of 20% on 15% sales growth and I say, you know what? There's probably another downgrade to that guy. I think you're having an opportunity to buy this thing lower in my opinion. Enjoy the stock is $50 under its 50 day moving average. To Dan's point. I mean, the weakness even relative to the macro market in 9 months has been overwhelming. Yeah, I mean, if you look at this business writ large, it barely barely occupies the space it's in. It's you should think looking at it if I described it to you that this would be producing incredible levels of profitability and it's pretty mediocre and so then it becomes a question of how is this business allocating its capital because it's really not meeting its potential. It's worse than I was in high school, honestly. No one is underperformed like that. And I think long term, you have to be wondering if this is just a business that's going to grow through acquisition, why should I own that? I'm perfectly competent diversifying my portfolio. I don't need a company to do that. Making those synergies actually work is critical. The one liners out of Julie Beale with a straight face that tremendous. I mean, tremendous effort right there. You didn't give any salute. I just did. I just literally, if you're driving home, you're on the radio, you can't see me. Genius, thank you. I was just literally given a salute. Julie, I like it. Leakage. Coming up with the earnings