23 June 2004: Salesforce goes public, ticker CRM
Salesforce.com began trading on the NYSE on June 23, 2004, under the ticker CRM, short for customer relationship management. Priced at $11, the shares jumped sharply on the first day. Founder Marc Benioff had preached the end of software, meaning programs installed on company servers, in favor of renting it over the internet. The subscription model became the standard for business software.
The lesson: Recurring revenue from customers who rarely leave is one of the most valuable business models there is.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Salesforce at the start of 2005 → $65,000 today, vs $5,763 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2005, the first year in our price data after the event. That is 65.0 times the money, and $59,237 more than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Salesforce teaches: Activists tend to arrive when growth slows; Salesforce's shift from acquisitive expansion to margins showed how a company's identity changes once its market matures.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | $4.00 | $65,000 | $5,763 |
| 2007 | $10.00 | $26,000 | $4,789 |
| 2008 | $15.00 | $17,333 | $4,626 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Salesforce? Every starting year and the full story →
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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