Salesforce forecasts annual revenue below estimates

Feb 25 (Reuters) - Salesforce forecast fiscal 2027 revenue below Wall Street expectations on ‌Wednesday, signaling sluggish spending on ‌enterprise business software as it invests heavily in its ​artificial intelligence platform to drive up demand.

Shares of the San Francisco-based company fell 4% in extended trading.

It expects annual revenue in ‌the range of $45.80 ⁠billion to $46.20 billion, with the midpoint coming in slightly below an ⁠estimate of $46.06 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.

The forecast shows that demand ​for business ​software has remained ​under pressure from global ‌economic uncertainty as companies pare back tech budgets, choosing to focus on essential spending and cost-cutting.

Salesforce has touted its agentic platform, Agentforce, as its next lever of ‌growth, with co-founder Marc ​Benioff attempting to transform the ​company into ​an AI-driven data and cloud ‌platform.

It also announced a $50 ​billion share ​repurchase program.

Salesforce reported fourth-quarter revenue of $11.20 billion, coming in slightly ahead of an ​estimate of $11.18 ‌billion.

(Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru ​and Juby Babu in Mexico City; ​Editing by Alan Barona)