Cullinan Associates Inc. Cuts Position in Salesforce Inc. $CRM

Cullinan Associates Inc. reduced its stake in shares of Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) by 28.9% in the first quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 8,455 shares of the CRM provider’s stock after selling 3,445 shares during the quarter. Cullinan Associates Inc.’s holdings in Salesforce were worth $1,578,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other institutional investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in CRM. Commonwealth Retirement Investments LLC bought a new position in Salesforce in the fourth quarter worth about $25,000. Board of the Pension Protection Fund bought a new stake in shares of Salesforce in the 4th quarter valued at about $26,000. Key Capital Management INC purchased a new position in shares of Salesforce in the 4th quarter worth approximately $26,000. Gilpin Wealth Management LLC bought a new position in shares of Salesforce during the 4th quarter worth approximately $26,000. Finally, Legacy Bridge LLC bought a new position in shares of Salesforce during the 4th quarter worth approximately $27,000. Institutional investors own 80.43% of the company’s stock.

Key Stories Impacting Salesforce

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 Performance

Shares of NYSE CRM traded up $0.84 during midday trading on Friday, reaching $163.34. The company had a trading volume of 8,316,028 shares, compared to its average volume of 15,336,670. The business’s 50-day simple moving average is $171.89 and its 200 day simple moving average is $194.51. The stock has a market cap of $133.77 billion, a P/E ratio of 18.90, a P/E/G ratio of 1.02 and a beta of 1.18. Salesforce Inc. has a 1 year low of $146.32 and a 1 year high of $274.00. The company has a current ratio of 0.79, a quick ratio of 0.79 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.15.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, May 27th. The CRM provider reported $3.88 earnings per share for the quarter, beating 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 firm had revenue of $11.13 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $11.05 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $2.58 earnings per share. The business’s quarterly 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, analysts forecast that Salesforce Inc. will post 10.29 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Salesforce announced that its board has approved a share buyback program on Monday, March 16th that permits the company to buyback $25.00 billion in shares. This buyback authorization permits the CRM provider to buy up to 14.1% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares buyback programs are usually a sign that the company’s leadership believes its stock is undervalued.

Salesforce Dividend Announcement

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, July 2nd. Shareholders of record on Thursday, June 11th were paid a dividend of $0.44 per share. This represents a $1.76 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.1%. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, June 11th. Salesforce’s payout ratio is presently 20.37%.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

CRM has been the subject of several recent analyst reports. Raymond James Financial downgraded shares of Salesforce from a “strong-buy” rating to a “moderate buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, July 1st. HSBC upped their price target on Salesforce from $350.00 to $356.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, May 29th. Weiss Ratings raised Salesforce from a “sell (d+)” rating to a “hold (c-)” rating in a research report on Tuesday. Wall Street Zen upgraded Salesforce from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Saturday, June 6th. Finally, Wolfe Research lowered Salesforce from an “outperform” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Wednesday, July 1st. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-seven have assigned a Buy rating, fourteen have given a Hold rating and three have assigned a Sell rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Salesforce presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $254.42.

Salesforce Profile

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.