Salesforce.com (CRM  ) reported Q4 earnings that exceeded analysts' expectations in terms of sales, earnings, and guidance. The company also announced that COO Bret Taylor would become the company's co-CEO along with founder and current CEO, Marc Benioff. The move has been expected and is seen as a way to keep Taylor in the fold rather than have him take a CEO role at another company.

Overall, Salesforce is down about 35% since it peaked in November. Remarkably, CRM has been able to maintain double-digit growth rates despite the company being nearly 2 decades old. It's a reflection that cloud and tech spending remains unaffected by macroeconomic factors and that CRM's software platform is an integral part of these ecosystems.

Inside the Numbers

In Q4, Salesforce reported $0.84 in earnings per share which topped expectations of $0.74 per share. Revenue came in at $7.33 billion which is above expectations of $7.24 billion and was 26% higher than last year.

In Q1, the company expects revenue of $7.3 billion, slightly higher than expectations of $7.26 billion. For the full year, it sees guidance of $32 billion to $32.1 billion in revenue which was also above analysts' estimate of $31.8 billion.

On the company's conference call, CEO Mark Benioff noted the weakness in enterprise software stocks and their "precipitous fall." He added that "we've seen it happen many times over the last 20, 30 years. It's not unprecedented, but it does happen."

The company's current focus is on integrating its products with Slack which it purchased in 2020 for $27.7 billion and is a contributor to revenue growth. This year, it expects Slack to generate $1.5 billion in revenue.

Given the current market weakness and Salesforce's track record of M&A, there has been speculation about which companies it may target. However, the company said that it doesn't have any acquisitions in the pipeline nor any concrete plans in the short-term.

Despite Salesforce's recent weakness and the bear market in tech stocks, it's still nearly twice as expensive as the S&P 500 (SPY  ) with its forward P/E of around 43. However, Salesforce is much cheaper than other cloud stocks, and it's not showing any slowdown which is different than other cloud stocks. Therefore, Salesforce is one of the best ways for investors to gain exposure to cloud computing.