BUSINESS NEWS ROUNDUP

EARNINGS

Salesforce

Salesforce reported Tuesday that it had first-quarter profit of $344 million (76 cents per share), after reporting a loss in the same period a year earlier. Analysts had expected 46 cents.

The San Francisco cloud software company said its revenue during the quarter was $3.01 billion, which also topped forecasts. It projected earnings in the current quarter of 46 to 47 cents per share.

Salesforce shares were up about 4 percent in after-hours trading after closing at $126.48. The stock has gained 24 percent this year.

CEO Marc Benioff has expanded Salesforce’s ambitions. The company bought MuleSoft for $6.5 billion — its largest-ever purchase — in a deal completed in May.

HP Inc.

HP Inc. on Tuesday reported fiscal second-quarter profit of $1.06 billion (48 cents per share), in line with analysts’ expectations.

The Palo Alto maker of personal computers and printers said it had revenue of $14 billion in the period, which topped forecasts.

For the current quarter, HP expects its earnings to range from 49 to 52 cents per share.

After closing at $21.30, HP shares were up 10 cents after hours. The stock is up roughly 2 percent since the beginning of the year.

AUTomAKERS

Another Tesla crash

Authorities say a Tesla sedan in Autopilot mode crashed into a parked police cruiser in Southern California Tuesday.

Police Sgt. Jim Cota said the officer was not in the police SUV during the crash in Laguna Beach. The officer’s vehicle ended up with its two passenger-side wheels on a sidewalk.

Cota said the Tesla driver suffered minor injuries.

Tesla’s semiautonomous Autopilot mode has come under scrutiny following other recent crashes. The Palo Alto carmaker says the function is not designed to avoid a collision and warns drivers not to rely on it entirely.

CYBERCRImE

Yahoo hacker gets 5 years

A Canadian computer hacker was sentenced Tuesday to five years in prison in connection with a huge security breach at Yahoo that federal agents say was directed by Russian government spies.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco also fined 23-year-old Karim Baratov $250,000.

Baratov pleaded guilty in November to nine felony hacking charges. He acknowledged that he hacked thousands of Yahoo accounts for seven years ending with his arrest last year.

Baratov charged customers to obtain another person’s webmail passwords by tricking them to enter their credentials into a fake password reset page.

Prosecutors allege that the Russian security service hired the Kazakhstan-born Baratov to target email accounts using information obtained from the Yahoo hack. His attorneys said Baratov didn’t know he was working for the Russian spy agency.