Wall Street Zen Downgrades Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) to Hold

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) was downgraded by research analysts at Wall Street Zen from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note issued on Saturday.

A number of other brokerages have also recently commented on CRM. HSBC boosted their target price on shares of Salesforce from $350.00 to $356.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, May 29th. Raymond James Financial restated a “strong-buy” rating on shares of Salesforce in a report on Tuesday, July 21st. BTIG Research reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $255.00 target price on shares of Salesforce in a research note on Tuesday, May 26th. DA Davidson lowered their target price on shares of Salesforce from $200.00 to $175.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, May 28th. Finally, Royal Bank Of Canada cut Salesforce from a “sector perform” rating to a “sector perform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, July 1st. Two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-four have given a Buy rating, sixteen have issued a Hold rating and four have given a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Salesforce presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $249.51.

Salesforce Stock Up 0.2%

CRM stock opened at $184.34 on Friday. Salesforce has a fifty-two week low of $146.32 and a fifty-two week high of $269.11. The business’s 50 day moving average price is $170.34 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $184.49. 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 has a market capitalization of $150.98 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 21.34, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.00 and a beta of 1.16.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, May 27th. The CRM provider reported $3.88 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.13 by $0.75. The company had revenue of $11.13 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $11.05 billion. Salesforce had a return on equity of 18.72% and a net margin of 18.73%.The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 13.3% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $2.58 EPS. 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, analysts forecast that Salesforce will post 10.27 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Salesforce

Several large investors have recently bought and sold shares of CRM. J. Stern & Co. LLP grew its stake 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 valued at $12,552,896,000 after purchasing an additional 47,189,352 shares during the period. Norges Bank purchased a new stake in Salesforce in the 4th quarter worth approximately $3,182,951,000. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership lifted its holdings in 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. Cardano Risk Management B.V. lifted its holdings in Salesforce by 924.7% during the fourth quarter. Cardano Risk Management B.V. now owns 3,883,610 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $1,028,807,000 after purchasing an additional 3,504,605 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Capital International Investors boosted its position in shares of Salesforce by 13.3% in the fourth quarter. Capital International Investors now owns 22,721,010 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $6,019,199,000 after purchasing an additional 2,669,891 shares during the period. 80.43% of the stock is currently 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.