Salesforce just hit an all time high

Salesforce stock is now up more than 6% after hours, after an earnings report that confirmed the company is growing solidly. Revenue came in at $1.51 billion, up 23% from last year, and deferred revenue (which measures money that's been collected but not yet booked as revenue) was up 31%.

At a current trading price of $74.79, the stock's at an all time high (in terms of closing prices; it reached an intraday high over $78 but dropped fast from there). That's particularly impressive because last month, the stock rose about 12% in one day on a report that Salesforce had hired advisors to talk it through a potential takeover bid. The company never confirmed the report, and nobody has yet run down who - if anybody - was making the bid.

Here's the stock chart for the last month, not including the after-hours movement today, which won't show up until the open of trading in the U.S. tomorrow.

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It's a nice validation for the company that started this whole "cloud" thing back in 1999, when most people thought delivering business software over the internet was an insane idea.

That said, it's still earning only razor-thin margins - it had GAAP profits of $4 million this quarter on $1.41 billion in revenue. By way of comparison, Microsoft - the profits giant of the old software world - earned $4.9 billion on $21 billion in revenue in its last quarter.