Fifth Third Bancorp Has $66.86 Million Stock Position in Salesforce Inc. $CRM

Fifth Third Bancorp boosted its holdings in Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) by 56.1% in the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 358,201 shares of the CRM provider’s stock after purchasing an additional 128,713 shares during the quarter. Fifth Third Bancorp’s holdings in Salesforce were worth $66,865,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Other institutional investors have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Commonwealth Retirement Investments LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Salesforce during the 4th quarter worth approximately $25,000. Board of the Pension Protection Fund acquired a new position in shares of Salesforce during the 4th quarter valued at $26,000. Key Capital Management INC acquired a new position in shares of Salesforce during the 4th quarter valued at $26,000. Gilpin Wealth Management LLC bought a new position in Salesforce during the fourth quarter worth $26,000. Finally, Legacy Bridge LLC bought a new position in Salesforce during the fourth quarter worth $27,000. 80.43% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

CRM has been the subject of several research analyst reports. Citigroup raised shares of Salesforce from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, July 1st. Scotiabank cut shares of Salesforce from a “sector outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating in a research report on Thursday, June 18th. KeyCorp lowered Salesforce from an “overweight” rating to a “sector weight” rating in a research report on Wednesday. Roth Capital reiterated a “buy” rating and issued a $325.00 price target on shares of Salesforce in a report on Thursday, May 28th. Finally, Phillip Securities cut Salesforce from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating and reduced their price objective for the company from $253.00 to $166.00 in a research note on Monday, June 29th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-seven have assigned a Buy rating, fourteen have assigned a Hold rating and three have given a Sell rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $254.42.

Key Salesforce News

Here are the key news stories impacting Salesforce this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Salesforce announced a $1 billion investment in Switzerland over five years to expand adoption of agentic AI, reinforcing its commitment to AI-led growth and potentially strengthening its international enterprise relationships.
• Positive Sentiment: A bullish deep-dive argued Salesforce is trading at a depressed valuation, with strong free-cash-flow generation and a large debt-funded buyback that reduced share count by more than 10%, signaling management confidence in the business.
• Neutral Sentiment: Salesforce also unveiled MCP-powered capabilities for Slackbot, which could improve product usefulness and customer engagement, but the market may need proof that these features translate into faster growth.
• Neutral Sentiment: Triveni Power Transmission’s partnership with Salesforce for customer engagement in manufacturing adds another example of industry adoption, though the near-term financial impact appears limited.
• Negative Sentiment: KeyBanc’s downgrade and slightly lower earnings forecast added to investor skepticism that Agentforce will become a major growth catalyst soon.
• Negative Sentiment: Several market commentaries highlighted that CRM has been a weak performer over the past year, and the recent pullback suggests investors remain cautious despite its lower valuation.

Salesforce Stock Up 0.0%

Shares of NYSE CRM opened at $163.34 on Monday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.15, a current ratio of 0.79 and a quick ratio of 0.79. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $171.89 and a 200-day moving average price of $194.02. The stock has a market capitalization of $133.77 billion, a P/E ratio of 18.90, a P/E/G ratio of 0.88 and a beta of 1.18. Salesforce Inc. has a 1 year low of $146.32 and a 1 year high of $274.00.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last posted its earnings results on Wednesday, May 27th. The CRM provider reported $3.88 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.13 by $0.75. Salesforce had a net margin of 18.73% and a return on equity of 18.72%. The company had revenue of $11.13 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $11.05 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business posted $2.58 EPS. The firm’s revenue was up 13.3% compared to the same quarter last year. Salesforce has set its FY 2027 guidance at 14.060-14.120 EPS and its Q2 2027 guidance at 3.250-3.270 EPS. On average, equities research analysts forecast that Salesforce Inc. will post 10.29 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Salesforce Announces Dividend

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, July 2nd. Stockholders of record on Thursday, June 11th were issued a $0.44 dividend. This represents a $1.76 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.1%. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, June 11th. Salesforce’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 20.37%.

Salesforce announced that its Board of Directors has initiated a stock buyback program on Monday, March 16th that authorizes the company to buyback $25.00 billion in shares. This buyback authorization authorizes the CRM provider to reacquire up to 14.1% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback programs are usually a sign that the company’s management believes its stock is undervalued.

About Salesforce

Salesforce, founded in 1999 and headquartered in San Francisco, is a global provider of cloud-based software focused on customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise applications. The company popularized the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model for CRM and has built a broad portfolio of products designed to help organizations manage sales, service, marketing, commerce and analytics through a unified, cloud-first platform.

Core offerings include Sales Cloud for sales automation, Service Cloud for customer support, Marketing Cloud for digital marketing and engagement, and Commerce Cloud for e-commerce.