Salesforce beats by a hair, stock pops

Salesforce just reported earnings for the quarter ended April 30 - the first earnings report since the company reportedly hired bankers to negotiate a takeover bid.

Here are the relevant numbers:

• Revenue of $1.51 billion, ahead of expectations of $1.50 billion, up roughly 22% year-over-year
• Non-GAAP EPS of $0.16 vs $0.14 expected.

In the report, Salesforce boasted of becoming the first enterprise cloud computing company to achieve a $6 billion annualized run rate, which is the measurement of current contract value extended out through the next four quarters. However, this seems to be ignoring Amazon, which reported AWS revenues that would equal out to $6 billion a year in its earnings report last month.

The company also upgraded its FY'16 guidance, and said. Q2 revenue is expected to come in between $1.59 and $1.60 billion.

Investors liked the news, sending the stock is up more than 3% after hours.

Salesforce never confirmed the potential acquisition report, and nobody has reported who the potential buyer was. Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, SAP, and even Google have all been floated as possible candidates. Equally likely, the company could be considering a partial spin-off, or maybe even going private. So far, we're not seeing anything in today's earnings report that mentions the possibility of a buyout, but we're scanning...

Analysts will also be watching today's report for signs of success in the company's newer products, particularly its Wave Analytics Cloud, which helps companies analyze business data, and the just-announced Salesforce for HR, which Goldman Sachs believes could help take on Workday and Oracle's HR suite.