First Interstate Bank Grows Position in Salesforce Inc. $CRM

First Interstate Bank increased its holdings in Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) by 59.0% in the 1st quarter, according to its most recent filing with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 24,279 shares of the CRM provider’s stock after buying an additional 9,013 shares during the quarter. First Interstate Bank’s holdings in Salesforce were worth $4,532,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Other hedge funds have also bought and sold shares of the company. Commonwealth Retirement Investments LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Salesforce during the 4th quarter valued at about $25,000. Board of the Pension Protection Fund purchased a new position in shares of Salesforce during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $26,000. Key Capital Management INC bought a new position in Salesforce during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $26,000. Gilpin Wealth Management LLC bought a new position in Salesforce during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $26,000. Finally, Legacy Bridge LLC purchased a new stake in Salesforce in the fourth quarter worth approximately $27,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 80.43% of the company’s stock.

Salesforce News Summary

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

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of equities research analysts have commented on the stock. HSBC lifted their target price on shares of Salesforce from $350.00 to $356.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, May 29th. Citizens Jmp restated a “market outperform” rating and issued a $315.00 price target on shares of Salesforce in a research note on Thursday, May 28th. Scotiabank lowered Salesforce from a “sector outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating in a report on Thursday, June 18th. Susquehanna initiated coverage on Salesforce in a research report on Wednesday, July 1st. They set a “neutral” rating for the company. Finally, KeyCorp downgraded Salesforce from an “overweight” rating to a “sector weight” rating in a report on Wednesday. One investment 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 issued a Sell rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $254.42.

Salesforce Stock Down 1.7%

CRM opened at $166.60 on Thursday. The firm’s 50 day simple moving average is $172.63 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $195.42. The company has a market capitalization of $136.44 billion, a PE ratio of 19.28, a PEG ratio of 1.06 and a beta of 1.18. Salesforce Inc. has a 1-year low of $146.32 and a 1-year high of $275.56. 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 issued its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, May 27th. The CRM provider reported $3.88 earnings per share (EPS) 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 during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $11.05 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm posted $2.58 EPS. The company’s revenue for the quarter 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. As a group, equities analysts forecast that Salesforce Inc. will post 10.29 EPS for the current year.

Salesforce Dividend Announcement

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

Salesforce declared that its Board of Directors has initiated a share buyback plan on Monday, March 16th that authorizes the company to buyback $25.00 billion in shares. This buyback authorization authorizes the CRM provider to purchase up to 14.1% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback plans are often an indication that the company’s management believes its stock is undervalued.

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.