Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) Given Average Rating of “Moderate Buy” by Analysts

Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) has received an average rating of “Moderate Buy” from the forty-five analysts that are presently covering the company, Marketbeat Ratings reports. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, fourteen have assigned a hold rating, twenty-seven have given a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company. The average 12-month price objective among analysts that have updated their coverage on the stock in the last year is $254.4211.

Several equities research analysts have weighed in on the company. TD Cowen reiterated a “buy” rating on shares of Salesforce in a report on Friday, June 12th. Weiss Ratings upgraded Salesforce from a “sell (d+)” rating to a “hold (c-)” rating in a report on Tuesday. Daiwa Securities Group dropped their price target on Salesforce from $295.00 to $280.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday, June 2nd. Monness Crespi & Hardt upgraded shares of Salesforce from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $200.00 price target on the stock in a report on Thursday, June 18th. Finally, UBS Group assumed coverage on shares of Salesforce in a research report on Wednesday, July 1st. They set an “overweight” rating on the stock.

Key Headlines Impacting Salesforce

Here are the key news stories impacting Salesforce this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Salesforce said the U.S. Air Force is using its Missionforce National Security platform to manage a $13.5 billion vehicle fleet, a high-profile government contract that highlights demand for its software in mission-critical operations. Article Title
• Positive Sentiment: Guggenheim upgraded Salesforce to Buy from Neutral and set a $228 price target, arguing the AI bear case looks overdone and suggesting meaningful upside if the market re-rates the shares. Article Title
• Positive Sentiment: Salesforce also announced a $1 billion investment in Switzerland over five years to accelerate adoption of agentic AI, reinforcing its push into AI-led growth and enterprise automation. Article Title
• Positive Sentiment: New commentary around Slackbot pulling CRM data, generating charts, and sending DocuSign agreements from chat messages points to deeper product integration across Salesforce’s ecosystem, which could improve stickiness and sales productivity. Article Title
• Neutral Sentiment: Several articles reiterated that Salesforce remains a favored “beaten-down” software name with analyst support and potential upside, but they did not add materially new financial details beyond reinforcing the existing bullish narrative. Article Title
• Negative Sentiment: Despite the positive news flow, investors are still focused on Salesforce’s heavy AI spending and margin pressure, which has kept the stock near recent lows and capped enthusiasm. Article Title

Salesforce Stock Performance

Shares of NYSE:CRM opened at $166.60 on Thursday. The company has a current ratio of 0.79, a quick ratio of 0.79 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.15. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $172.63 and a 200-day moving average price of $195.42. The company has a market cap of $136.44 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 19.28, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.06 and a beta of 1.18. Salesforce has a 12 month low of $146.32 and a 12 month high of $275.56.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last posted its earnings results on Wednesday, May 27th. The CRM provider reported $3.88 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $3.13 by $0.75. Salesforce had a return on equity of 18.72% and a net margin of 18.73%.The company had revenue of $11.13 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $11.05 billion. During the same period last year, the firm earned $2.58 earnings per share. Salesforce’s quarterly revenue was up 13.3% on a year-over-year basis. Salesforce has set its FY 2027 guidance at 14.060-14.120 EPS and its Q2 2027 guidance at 3.250-3.270 EPS. As a group, equities analysts anticipate that Salesforce will post 10.29 EPS for the current 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 given a $0.44 dividend. This represents a $1.76 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.1%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, June 11th. Salesforce’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 20.37%.

Salesforce announced that its Board of Directors has authorized a share repurchase plan on Monday, March 16th that authorizes the company to buyback $25.00 billion in outstanding shares. This buyback authorization authorizes the CRM provider to reacquire up to 14.1% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares buyback plans are often a sign that the company’s management believes its stock is undervalued.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Salesforce

A number of institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of CRM. J. Stern & Co. LLP grew its holdings in shares of Salesforce by 24,056.7% during the 4th quarter. J. Stern & Co. LLP now owns 47,385,511 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $12,552,896,000 after acquiring an additional 47,189,352 shares during the period. Norges Bank purchased a new position in shares of Salesforce in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $3,182,951,000. Capital World Investors boosted its position in shares of Salesforce by 159.0% during the third quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 17,325,206 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $4,106,255,000 after purchasing an additional 10,636,161 shares in the last quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership boosted its position in shares of Salesforce by 130.2% during the first quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 12,659,217 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $2,363,096,000 after purchasing an additional 7,160,302 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Cardano Risk Management B.V. grew its stake in Salesforce by 924.7% in the fourth quarter. Cardano Risk Management B.V. now owns 3,883,610 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $1,028,807,000 after purchasing an additional 3,504,605 shares during the period. 80.43% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Salesforce Company 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.