Sprinklr rose 17% on Salesforce's $47.50 Braze deal, but grew 1% while Braze grew 26%
The market read Salesforce's purchase of Braze as a re-rating of Sprinklr, but Sprinklr grew 1% last quarter while Braze grew 26%. The pop has no number behind it; the early-December report settles it.
Richard Tang · 3 min read
Salesforce−0.75% — Salesforce, down 0.75 percent today agreed on October 19 to buy Braze for $47.50 a share in cash, and Sprinklr+0.41% — Sprinklr, up 0.41 percent today rose 16.85% over the same week with no announcement of its own 1. Salesforce, the CRM software company, bought Braze+0.03% — Braze, up 0.03 percent today, a customer-engagement platform growing fast. Sprinklr, which sells customer-experience software across social, service and marketing channels, got the pop by association.
The market's read-across (when a deal re-rates comparable companies' shares) has no number behind it: Sprinklr grew 1% last quarter while Braze grew 26% 1. The decision is to trim the pop and wait for the early-December report, where subscription growth must clear 3% 1.
Braze's multiple is higher because it grows 26% while Sprinklr grows 1%
In the quarter it agreed to be sold, Braze grew revenue 26% to $227.2 million and guided its full year to $910 million to $913 million, with 110% net retention (customers spend 10% more year over year) 1. Sprinklr, reporting the same fiscal quarter, grew total revenue 1% to $213.7 million, subscription 3% to $194.8 million, and ran a net expansion rate of 102%, only slightly above the 100% level where growth from existing customers merely offsets churn 1.
Braze sold while growing 26%; Sprinklr grew 1% the same quarter
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Braze revenue | 26% |
| Sprinklr subscription | 3% |
| Sprinklr total | 1% |
That growth gap is what the valuation gap tracks. Sprinklr's enterprise value is about $1.05 billion after subtracting $452.9 million of cash against no debt, roughly 1.2 times guided revenue 1. Salesforce paid about 6.2 times Braze's guided revenue 1. Sprinklr trades at a fifth of what Salesforce paid, and the discount reflects a company growing at 1% against one growing at 26% 1.
The one real event of the week shows who owns the customer
On October 22 Sprinklr put its eight Voice of the Customer agents, covering brand health, crisis monitoring, competitive benchmarking and more, into Google's Gemini Enterprise Agent Marketplace 2. That is the right direction: specialized agents that turn customer feedback into analyst-grade answers, distributed through Agent-to-Agent connectivity into workflows enterprises already use, are where this category is going 2.
But note who carries the product. Google−0.65% — Google, down 0.65 percent today owns the marketplace and the workflow; Sprinklr supplies one suite inside it. Management says AI-native products grew annual recurring revenue 40%, but discloses no dollar base, so the 40% cannot be checked against total revenue 1.
Meanwhile the board spent $125 million on an accelerated buyback that retired about 22 million shares at a price below today's 1. The buyback shrank the share count but added no revenue growth, and the read-across buyers have now lifted the price above where management bought it back. Trim the pop, and let the December report decide: subscription growth has to clear 3% before anything Salesforce paid for Braze says anything about Sprinklr 1.
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