Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) has promoted Bret Taylor to the role of co-CEO, alongside Marc Benioff who co-founded the company in 1999.
Taylor, age 41, joined Salesforce in 2016, through the $412 million acquisition of his productivity software start-up Quip, which he co-founded four years earlier. Taylor quickly moved up the ranks to become president and chief product officer at Salesforce.
Before starting Quip, Taylor helped create Google Maps (NASDAQ:GOOGL), sold social networking start-up FriendFeed to Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), and spent three years as Facebook’s chief technology officer. Taylor sits on Twitter’s board of directors, and on Monday was named chairman as part of Jack Dorsey’s departure as CEO.
Taylor made $13.9 million in total compensation for the 2021 fiscal year, mostly from stock awards, according to Salesforce’s most recent proxy statement. He owns about $329 million worth of Salesforce shares. Taylor received Salesforce stock in exchange for his Quip holdings.
As part of his promotion, Taylor’s annual salary was increased to $1.4 million from $1 million, and his annual target bonus jumped to 200% of his base salary from 150%, Salesforce said in a filing. The company also said it intends to grant Taylor $3 million worth of performance stock units and options to purchase $2 million of Salesforce shares at the closing price on the grant award date.
This is not the first time Salesforce has named a co-CEO. In 2018, Benioff named former Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) executive Keith Block as co-CEO. But Block stepped down less than two years later, and Benioff removed the “co” from his title.
Salesforce is the largest employer in San Francisco, drawing tens of thousands of attendees each year to its “Dreamforce” conference, where Benioff expounds on business trends. Benioff regularly engages in politics, directs money to philanthropic causes and, with his wife, Lynne, acquired ownership of Time Magazine from Meredith Corp. in 2018.
Salesforce has expanded beyond its core of providing cloud-based software for sales reps, with products for customer service, marketing and commerce. Acquisitions of MuleSoft, Tableau and most recently Slack have also helped Salesforce grow.
Taylor’s name was already being floated as a possible successor to Benioff, who’s now 57, has a net worth of $11 billion, and spends most of his time at his estate in Hawaii.
The naming of Taylor as the company’s co-chief executive officer came as Salesforce reported better-than-expected third quarter earnings. The company’s earnings per share came in at $1.27 compared to $0.92 that had been expected and up 27% year-over-year. Revenues came in at $6.86 billion versus $6.80 billion that had been expected.
However, Salesforce said its earnings per share for the December quarter will fall between $0.72 and $0.73, lower than Refinitiv analyst expectations of $0.81. That weaker guidance has Salesforce stock down 6% in today’s premarket trading.