Midwest Trust Co Grows Stake in Salesforce Inc. $CRM

Midwest Trust Co increased its holdings in shares of Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) by 3.2% in the 1st quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 191,775 shares of the CRM provider’s stock after purchasing an additional 6,008 shares during the quarter. Midwest Trust Co’s holdings in Salesforce were worth $35,799,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

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

Key Headlines 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.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of equities research analysts have weighed in on CRM shares. Citizens Jmp reiterated a “market outperform” rating and issued a $315.00 price objective on shares of Salesforce in a research note on Thursday, May 28th. Weiss Ratings raised shares of Salesforce from a “sell (d+)” rating to a “hold (c-)” rating in a report on Tuesday. TD Cowen reiterated a “buy” rating on shares of Salesforce in a research report on Friday, June 12th. Wells Fargo & Company decreased their price target on shares of Salesforce from $210.00 to $200.00 and set an “equal weight” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, May 28th. Finally, Citigroup raised shares of Salesforce from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, July 1st. One analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-seven have given a Buy rating, fourteen have assigned a Hold rating and three have assigned a Sell rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Salesforce has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $254.42.

Salesforce Stock Performance

CRM traded up $0.84 during trading on Friday, reaching $163.34. The company’s stock had a trading volume of 8,316,028 shares, compared to its average volume of 15,336,670. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.15, a quick ratio of 0.79 and a current ratio of 0.79. The company’s fifty day moving average price is $171.89 and its 200-day moving average price is $194.51. Salesforce Inc. has a 52-week low of $146.32 and a 52-week high of $274.00. The company has a market capitalization of $133.77 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 18.90, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.02 and a beta of 1.18.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last posted its quarterly earnings results 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 return on equity of 18.72% and a net margin of 18.73%.The firm had revenue of $11.13 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $11.05 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $2.58 earnings per share. 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. On average, equities analysts forecast that Salesforce Inc. will post 10.29 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Salesforce Dividend Announcement

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

Salesforce announced that its board 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 repurchase up to 14.1% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback plans are generally an indication that the company’s management believes its shares are 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.