After becoming the unwilling poster child for the so-called SaaSpocalypse earlier this year, Marc Benioff & Co. used Salesforce’s quarterly earnings report Wednesday to make the case that Wall Street’s software pessimists are little more than Chicken Littles of the AI age. Their evidence? Record revenue and Salesforce’s own continued embrace of agentic AI.

Is The Sky Falling?

The narrative that put Salesforce at the center of the SaaSpocalypse is a simple one: In a world of highly capable AI-coding agents, every company can follow Klarna and Palantir’s lead and build a customer relationship management system of its own, lickety-split, saving tens of thousands of dollars in yearly expenses. Shares of the company have plummeted 30% this year as the world got Claude-pilled, and have lagged behind peers amid a post-repricing SaaS rebound. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF, for instance, has gained about 24% from an April 10 low, while Salesforce shares have rebounded less than 10%.

Last week, Bank of America analyst Tal Liani reinstated coverage of the company with a note reiterating an underperform rating, writing that “we expect a structural reset driven by AI transition that raises three core concerns: muted net new customer additions, limited up-sell potential, and an underwhelming AI monetization pathway.”

Company leaders essentially spent the earnings report attempting to refute the points, one by one:

• Salesforce posted revenue of $11.1 billion, a record and up 13% year over year. While that’s slower than the growth the company routinely achieved earlier this decade, Salesforce said it would deliver organic revenue acceleration in the second half of the year.
• Annual recurring revenue for Data 360 and Agentforce, its agentic AI tool, rose 200% from a year ago to nearly $3.4 billion. Meanwhile, “Agentic Work Units,” the company’s outcomes-based pricing metric for Agentforce, jumped 111% from the previous quarter, and more than half of bookings on Agentforce and Data 360 came from existing customers, a sign that clients are adopting the new AI-driven tools.

Force Majeure: Wall Street didn’t exactly bite. A lower-than-expected revenue forecast for the current quarter of $11.3 billion (below consensus estimates of $11.4 billion) dulled any enthusiasm for evidence that the corporate world isn’t quite ready to jump ship from its entrenched CRM platform. “We are not sure this will be enough to drive a meaningful reaction,” Barclays analyst Raimo Lenschow wrote in a note following the after-the-bell earnings call. Shares of the company fell as much as 1.6% in after-hours trading, suggesting the SaaSpocalypse narrative hasn’t exactly been slain.

SpaceX may be counting down to its IPO, but some people are just too impatient to wait for liftoff.

Just look at the share price of Intuitive Machines, which flew nearly 16% on Wednesday and is up more than 125% so far this year as the company transforms from a provider of niche lunar landing gear to an all-in-one infrastructure player at the dawn of a new space age. It’s just one of several space-related companies riding the SpaceX gravitational pull straight to the moon.

To the Moon And Back

The Houston, Texas-based company went public via a SPAC merger back in 2023 and, almost exactly a year later, its unmanned lunar lander, Odysseus, gained the distinction of delivering the first American spacecraft to the moon’s surface since the Apollo program. Space geeks may remember that Odysseus took a tumble upon said landing, compromising many of NASA’s goals, though both the company and the space agency ultimately described the mission as a success. A year later, Intuitive Machines once again sent a lander to the moon, though once again, it toppled over upon landing.

Nevertheless, the company says it expects to increase its revenue nearly fivefold to $1 billion this year, as it cashes in on a surge in both public and commercial contracts to provide services ranging from satellite communications to data transmission. The SpaceX hype is so strong that investors hardly seem to care that Intuitive Machines lost a bid this week for NASA lunar landing contracts to Astrolab and Lunar Outpost. It’s hardly the only firm riding a boom in space spending and going for a ride ahead of the June 12 SpaceX IPO:

• Shares of AST SpaceMobile have climbed 67% over the past month, while Rocket Lab shares have gained more than 80% and Redwire shares have risen 157%.
• “SpaceX going public ​has acted as a lens to focus the investment community on space travel ⁠and related support systems,” Andersen Capital Management founder Pete Andersen recently told Reuters.

Tick, Tick, Boom: Unsurprisingly, however, the Elon Musk-related hype cycle has been met with an equal amount of skepticism. In fact, nearly one-fifth of commercially available AST shares have been shorted, as have 7% of Rocket Lab shares. It might be a sign that some investors have learned a lesson from so many SpaceX Starship launches: What goes up doesn’t always just come back down. It might explode.

Bill Ackman’s road to acquiring Universal Music Group, home to The Beatles’ master recordings, just got longer and more winding.

Influential shareholder Bolloré Group urged UMG on Wednesday to reject a $65 billion takeover bid by the billionaire’s Pershing Square Capital, arguing it undervalues the world’s biggest record label.

All in the Family Conglomerate

No less than Ackman has conceded the approval of Bolloré, a Paris-based conglomerate controlled by its namesake family, is essential to a deal. “Without Bolloré, we don’t have a transaction,” he said last month. As of UMG’s most recent annual report, the company held an 18.5% stake and 40% voting rights.

Ackman has argued Universal’s Amsterdam-listed stock, down 30% in the past 12 months, is undervalued and would have a better home on the New York Stock Exchange, where he wants to shift its listing. But Bolloré is hesitant to part with any of its investment. Music publishing is a capital-light business that earns cash flows from royalties in perpetuity, giving it lasting appeal. “It’s great for protection during economic crises,” CEO Cyrille Bolloré told shareholders.

Bolloré praised Ackman as a “really smart investor,” but had harsh words for Pershing’s ambitions: “I don’t think this offer is positive, I don’t think it would be positive for the company, and I encourage UMG management to reject the offer.” The market didn’t take well to the development:

• On Wednesday, UMG fell 2.6% to €19.78, considerably less than Pershing’s €30.40 cash-and-stock bid in April. In early afternoon trading in Amsterdam on Thursday, it was down again, dropping 1.9%. The stock remains below its IPO debut almost five years ago.
• In addition to lacking a US listing, Pershing argues UMG management has underutilized the company’s balance sheet, whose assets include a library featuring Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Frank Sinatra and The Rolling Stones.

The Beef Business: UMG is also home to Kendrick Lamar and Drake, making it the uncontested winner of the two rappers’ high-profile feuding. As for any beef with Ackman, UMG has signaled it takes his concerns about market value seriously and is open to addressing them. In April, the company said it would increase its share buyback program and sell half of its roughly 3% stake in Spotify, worth about $1.4 billion (Pershing has advocated for selling the whole thing). Maybe both sides could finally come together.