Just watched Salesforce report their numbers and honestly, I'm sitting this one out. Yeah, the stock could bounce if guidance impresses, but there's something about this picture that doesn't sit right with me for the long term.

First, let's talk about what's actually happening. The company's doing fine on the surface—Q3 revenue hit $10.3 billion with 9% year-over-year growth, and free cash flow jumped 22% to $2.2 billion. That's solid. But here's what bugs me: they're handing out $805 million in stock-based compensation every quarter. That's roughly 8% of their quarterly revenue. For context, Alphabet—which is actually growing faster—sits around 6% on the same metric.

Now, Salesforce has the cash to handle it, and sure, they're buying back shares to offset dilution. They returned $4.2 billion to shareholders in Q3 alone. But the thing is, they're not the growth machine they used to be. Revenue's cooling into high single digits. When a stock isn't firing on all cylinders anymore, I'd rather see management get more disciplined with equity compensation, not just throw cash at buybacks to paper over the dilution.

Then there's the AI wildcard. Agentforce and their data platform are growing like crazy—$1.4 billion in annual recurring revenue, up 114% year-over-year. That's the exciting part. But here's where it gets messy: AI is making competition fiercer and margins harder to predict. Bigger players can use AI to bundle features and close product gaps faster. Even if demand goes up, so do the costs to serve customers. The uncertainty around what "steady state" margins look like in an AI-driven world is real.

The stock doesn't look expensive at 24x earnings, I'll give you that. But it's not cheap enough to compensate for all this uncertainty either. I'd rather wait for either clearer guidance on long-term profitability or a better entry price. Missing a potential earnings pop isn't worth it to me—I'd rather be patient and see how this actually plays out. That's just how I'm thinking about it right now.