After a speculator two-year run, it's been a stormy 2014 for enterprise cloud computing provider salesforce.com.
The company's stock has dropped nearly 8% over the past month alone, perhaps due to worries about its free-spending ways.
Salesforce.com (CRM) has shelled out at least $3.9 billion on major acquisitions since 2011, including a $390 million buyout of rival RelateIQ earlier this month. The shopping spree was highlighted by a $2.5 billion deal last year to take over online marketer ExactTarget.
Despite the recent stock slide, salesforce.com remains expensive, based on projected earnings. After three consecutive annual losses, salesforce.com is expected to post a profit of $332 million in the 12 months ended January 2015.
Still, analysts remain bullish on the stock: 84% of Wall Street analysts covering salesforce.com have "buy" ratings on the stock, compared with just 9% who have "sell ratings."
There's also a big gap between Wall Street's average price target of $67.31 and salesforce.com's recent stock price of about $53. That suggests analysts believe salesforce.com is worth the lofty price tag.
