Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) Trading Down 2.2% – Here’s What Happened

Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM)’s share price fell 2.2% on Friday . The stock traded as low as $236.55 and last traded at $237.5560. 21,526,208 shares were traded during mid-day trading, an increase of 53% from the average daily volume of 14,045,555 shares. The stock had previously closed at $242.85.

Key Salesforce News

Here are the key news stories impacting Salesforce this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Salesforce’s fiscal 2030 revenue target of more than $63 billion exceeded expectations, helping ease concerns that generative AI could disrupt its core customer-relationship software business. Salesforce issues revenue target of over $63 billion for fiscal 2030
• Positive Sentiment: Several analysts raised their price targets, including Stifel, Canaccord Genuity, BMO Capital Markets, Wells Fargo, Citizens JMP and Stephens. Targets generally range from $250 to $315, reflecting increased confidence in AI-driven revenue reacceleration and greater customer spending.
• Positive Sentiment: BNP Paribas described customer demand as incrementally positive, citing stronger new-business activity and a potential renewal surge tied to Agentforce. Partnerships that connect Salesforce data with Google Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude and Snap’s enterprise augmented-reality glasses could also expand usage.
• Positive Sentiment: The $25 billion buyback and Salesforce’s continued emphasis on shareholder returns provide additional support for the investment case.
• Neutral Sentiment: Salesforce unveiled Koa, its first internally developed AI model for CRM reasoning, and AIforce, a broader platform intended to make CRM data and agents accessible across external applications. These launches strengthen Salesforce’s product narrative, but their financial impact remains unproven.
• Neutral Sentiment: Management and conference attendees emphasized that enterprises are focused on deploying existing AI models rather than waiting for the newest models, suggesting adoption may depend more on practical return on investment than technical performance.
• Negative Sentiment: UBS said AIforce could drive usage but cautioned that its price point is too high. RBC also reported mixed feedback on pricing, raising concerns about customer adoption, contract expansion and Salesforce’s ability to convert AI interest into near-term revenue.
• Negative Sentiment: Koa may not be broadly available until 2027, limiting its immediate ability to affect sales or earnings. Investors therefore appear to be taking profits after Salesforce’s strong recent rally while awaiting evidence of measurable Agentforce and AIforce monetization.
• Negative Sentiment: Recent service-outage reports and ongoing debate over AI returns add to execution concerns, helping explain why the stock has decreased despite the higher analyst targets and stronger long-term forecast.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several equities research analysts recently commented on CRM shares. Mizuho boosted their price target on Salesforce from $265.00 to $280.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday. Guggenheim lifted their target price on Salesforce from $270.00 to $300.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Thursday. KeyCorp downgraded shares of Salesforce from an “overweight” rating to a “sector weight” rating in a report on Wednesday, July 8th. Phillip Securities cut Salesforce from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating and cut their price objective for the company from $253.00 to $166.00 in a report on Monday, June 29th. Finally, Stifel Nicolaus increased their price target on Salesforce from $275.00 to $300.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Thursday. Three analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty have assigned a Buy rating, fourteen have issued a Hold rating and three have assigned a Sell rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $275.14.

Salesforce Stock Down 2.2%

The company has a market capitalization of $195.51 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 21.66, a P/E/G ratio of 1.14 and a beta of 1.20. The stock’s fifty day moving average price is $207.43 and its 200-day moving average price is $188.91. The company has a quick ratio of 0.84, a current ratio of 0.84 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.02.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last released its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, August 26th. The CRM provider reported $5.90 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.27 by $2.63. Salesforce had a return on equity of 24.90% and a net margin of 21.99%.The firm had revenue of $11.35 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $11.33 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned $2.91 earnings per share. The business’s revenue for the quarter was up 10.8% compared to the same quarter last year. Salesforce has set its FY 2027 guidance at 16.670-16.710 EPS and its Q3 2027 guidance at 3.420-3.440 EPS. On average, sell-side analysts predict that Salesforce Inc. will post 12.82 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Salesforce Dividend Announcement

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, October 8th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, September 17th will be issued a $0.44 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, September 17th. This represents a $1.76 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.7%. Salesforce’s dividend payout ratio is 16.04%.

Insider Transactions at Salesforce

In other Salesforce news, Director Craig Conway sold 4,500 shares of Salesforce stock in a transaction dated Friday, September 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $260.61, for a total transaction of $1,172,745.00. Following the transaction, the director directly owned 5,437 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,416,936.57. The trade was a 45.29% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. 3.50% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Salesforce

Several large investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in CRM. Temasek Holdings Private Ltd lifted its holdings in Salesforce by 3.7% during the fourth quarter. Temasek Holdings Private Ltd now owns 683,790 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $181,143,000 after purchasing an additional 24,332 shares in the last quarter. Fluent Financial LLC acquired a new position in shares of Salesforce during the 2nd quarter worth approximately $2,265,000. Secured Retirement Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Salesforce in the first quarter valued at approximately $1,004,000. TAM Capital Management Inc. purchased a new position in Salesforce during the first quarter worth approximately $40,945,000. Finally, Janus Henderson Group PLC lifted its position in Salesforce by 2.5% during the first quarter. Janus Henderson Group PLC now owns 127,739 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $23,846,000 after buying an additional 3,125 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 80.43% of the company’s stock.

Salesforce Company Profile

Salesforce, Inc is a cloud-based software company that provides customer relationship management (CRM) technology and related enterprise applications. Its platform helps organizations manage sales, customer service, marketing, commerce, data analytics and business operations through subscription-based software and cloud services.

The company’s product portfolio includes Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Data Cloud and the Salesforce Platform. Salesforce also offers Slack for workplace collaboration, Tableau for data visualization and analytics, MuleSoft for application integration, and artificial intelligence capabilities, including its Agentforce platform for building and deploying AI agents.

Founded in 1999, Salesforce is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and serves businesses and organizations across a broad range of industries and geographic markets worldwide.