Salesforce Revamps Earnings Call with Livestream and Guest Interviews in February

Salesforce founder and co-CEO Marc Benioff led the company's fourth-quarter earnings call in February 2026 from the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, turning the routine financial update into a livestreamed production. Clad in a black leather jacket and using a broadcast-quality microphone, Benioff streamed the event on YouTube, incorporating interviews with customers including SharkNinja CEO Mark Barrocas and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts CEO Geoff Ballotti.

Before delving into the financials, Benioff made a brief live appearance on TBPN, a daily live podcast about tech recently acquired by OpenAI, where he touted record revenues for Salesforce and downplayed fears of a 'SaaSpocalypse' selloff affecting software companies.

Salesforce’s social media team later created a short clip from the call for LinkedIn. Patrick Stokes, president and chief marketing officer at Salesforce, said via email to Fortune that 'Marc challenged us to try something new and speak to a bigger audience' and that the team wanted to bring some of the 'vibe and energy' of the annual Dreamforce conference to the financial update.

Salesforce plans to use the revamped format again for its first-quarter fiscal year 2027 earnings call in May 2026.

On YouTube, the stream earned 12,000 organic views on a channel with nearly 900,000 subscribers. This approach aligns with research from Weber Shandwick, which found that 81% of executives believe a visible public CEO profile is essential to a company’s reputation, and more than half say it helps attract and retain top talent.

U.S. corporate digital, said LinkedIn is a 'natural channel' for earnings content targeting a focused, niche audience. Other companies have adopted similar innovative formats for earnings calls.

Former T-Mobile CEO John Legere livestreamed calls alongside a panel of executives in front of hot-pink branding and wearing company gear. Palantir uses quarterly YouTube livestreams featuring CEO Alex Karp’s unscripted monologues delivered in a casual T-shirt against a plain backdrop, consistently racking up tens of thousands of views.

Dan Ives, managing director at Wedbush Securities, said, 'I think Palantir has changed the view of other tech companies [and] how they do calls' and that he expects more companies to follow.

Airbnb cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky, who has more than 280,000 LinkedIn followers, told them that Airbnb had a strong fourth quarter but 'the bigger story isn’t the quarter, it’s the momentum' and walked through hiring, product, and brand decisions.

Some executives are incorporating artificial intelligence into earnings presentations. In 2025, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski used an AI avatar to present highlights from the first-quarter earnings.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission submitted a proposal to eliminate the quarterly earnings requirement and allow companies to share results twice a year instead of four times. The proposal has support from JPMorgan Chase but faces opposition from institutional investors and hedge funds including Citadel, headed by billionaire Ken Griffin.

Research from FTI Consulting found that 92% of professionals say they are more likely to trust a company whose senior leaders are active on social media. Fortune reported these developments as part of its May 6, 2026, Special Digital Issue.