Piper Jaffray Reports Strong Hiring From CRM

Piper Jaffray is maintaining its Overweight rating and its $183 price target on salesforce.com CRM despite increased confidence in the company. In the report, Piper Jaffray states, “Consistent with findings from our partner surveys, CRM reported solid Q2 results well ahead of consensus, highlighted by 37% billings growth (vs. 29% consensus), driven by a strong and linear performance across all product lines and geographies. CRM hired an all-time record number of employees, stated that it has not seen any softening in the environment, and demonstrated future confidence by signaling that aggressive hiring will continue in the second half of the fiscal year. Results support our thesis that "Salesforce for the Masses" is taking hold in 2011 as CRM's platform hits a turning point driven by the release of multiple viral Freemium offerings. Bottom Line: We believe CRM remains the best investment in the powerful Cloud Computing wave.” CRM closed yesterday at $114.06.