Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff outlines his plan to turn around his struggling stock

sales force CEO Marc Benioff laid out his strategy for navigating a period when stock performance has fallen sharply: focus on delivering a strong product to customers and continue buying back shares.

“We’re going to continue to focus on customer success,” Benioff said Wednesday on “Mad Money.” “We’ll continue to grow our revenue, we’ll continue to generate tremendous cash flow.”

Salesforce shares have struggled this year amid growing concerns that generative AI platforms from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI could disrupt traditional software providers. The stock fell another 1.5% in extended trading Wednesday despite better-than-expected earnings as investors focused on softer-than-expected guidance.

Benioff dismissed concerns that Salesforce was falling behind in what he jokingly called the “Saaspocalypse,” citing better-than-expected revenue and profits.

“You can see we had a record quarter,” he said. “We have never seen transactions this large take place.”

Instead of pulling back during the selloff, Salesforce is stepping up share buybacks, Benioff said. The company has now repurchased $27.1 billion worth of shares. In the earnings call, CFO Robin Washington said buybacks reduced Salesforce’s diluted share count by 10% year-over-year in the quarter and increased adjusted earnings per share by 23 cents in the first quarter.

“We can research great opportunities in the market, but Salesforce is probably the biggest,” he said. “We are very happy to get our shares back.”

Benioff also argued that AI will strengthen rather than disrupt Salesforce, and pointed to Slack’s integration with Anthropic-powered tools.

“This Slack bot is run by Anthropic,” he said. “By incorporating Anthropic into Slack now, we are able to create an incredibly successful product… and provide tremendous advice.”