Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) Stock Price Down 2% – Should You Sell?

Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM)’s share price dropped 2% during mid-day trading on Wednesday . The stock traded as low as $243.45 and last traded at $244.1920. Approximately 11,813,968 shares were traded during trading, a decline of 16% from the average session volume of 14,091,065 shares. The stock had previously closed at $249.12.

Salesforce News Roundup

Here are the key news stories impacting Salesforce this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Salesforce completed its acquisition of Fin, formerly Intercom, adding an AI customer-agent platform, an experienced technical team and more than 30,000 customer companies. The deal strengthens Salesforce’s Agentforce and customer-service offerings. Salesforce Completes Acquisition of Fin
• Positive Sentiment: Salesforce is reportedly in preliminary discussions to acquire AI-powered customer-research company Listen Labs for approximately $2 billion. The potential purchase could broaden Salesforce’s customer-insights and enterprise-AI capabilities, although no transaction has been finalized. Salesforce Eyes $2 Billion Acquisition of AI-Powered Platform Listen Labs
• Positive Sentiment: New AI initiatives, including Salesforce’s enterprise AI harness and its Claude integration with Anthropic, support the company’s effort to make Agentforce useful across multiple models, agents and business workflows. This reinforces the investment case that Salesforce can benefit from, rather than lose to, the AI transition. Salesforce’s New Enterprise AI Harness
• Neutral Sentiment: Salesforce’s latest quarter significantly exceeded earnings expectations, with $5.90 in adjusted earnings per share versus a $3.27 consensus estimate and revenue of $11.35 billion. Revenue increased 10.8% year over year, helping drive a roughly 23% gain over the past month, but investors are looking for evidence that AI products can sustain growth ahead of Dreamforce.
• Negative Sentiment: Microsoft is targeting Salesforce customers with an AI-powered Dynamics 365 migration tool, potentially lowering switching costs and intensifying competition in customer-relationship and enterprise software. Microsoft Targets Salesforce Customers
• Negative Sentiment: Analysts and technical commentators caution that the stock’s sharp recent rally may have outpaced fundamentals. Salesforce is more profitable but also more indebted, while chart resistance could limit further gains or prompt profit-taking. A potential $2 billion Listen Labs purchase would also increase concerns about acquisition costs and execution.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several equities analysts recently commented on CRM shares. Piper Sandler lowered Salesforce from an “overweight” rating to a “neutral” rating in a report on Thursday, May 28th. Citizens Jmp reaffirmed a “market outperform” rating and set a $315.00 price target on shares of Salesforce in a report on Tuesday, August 25th. Raymond James Financial reaffirmed a “strong-buy” rating on shares of Salesforce in a research report on Thursday, August 27th. Erste Group Bank upgraded Salesforce from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, August 5th. Finally, Morgan Stanley set a $315.00 target price on Salesforce in a research report on Wednesday, September 2nd. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-eight have issued a Buy rating, fourteen have issued a Hold rating and three have assigned a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $267.12.

Salesforce Price Performance

The company has a 50-day moving average of $198.91 and a 200-day moving average of $186.75. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.02, a quick ratio of 0.84 and a current ratio of 0.84. The stock has a market cap of $203.62 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 22.57, a PEG ratio of 1.13 and a beta of 1.20.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, August 26th. The CRM provider reported $5.90 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.27 by $2.63. The company had revenue of $11.35 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $11.33 billion. Salesforce had a return on equity of 24.90% and a net margin of 21.99%.The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 10.8% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the firm earned $2.91 EPS. Salesforce has set its FY 2027 guidance at 16.670-16.710 EPS and its Q3 2027 guidance at 3.420-3.440 EPS. As a group, equities research analysts predict that Salesforce Inc. will post 12.65 earnings per share for the current year.

Salesforce Dividend Announcement

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, October 8th. Investors of record on Thursday, September 17th will be given a $0.44 dividend. This represents a $1.76 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.7%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, September 17th. Salesforce’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 16.04%.

Insider Transactions at Salesforce

In other Salesforce news, Director Craig Conway sold 4,500 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Friday, September 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $260.61, for a total transaction of $1,172,745.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director owned 5,437 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,416,936.57. This represents a 45.29% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Corporate insiders own 3.50% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the company. California State Teachers Retirement System raised its stake in shares of Salesforce by 13,260.5% during the 2nd quarter. California State Teachers Retirement System now owns 188,085,056 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $29,465,405,000 after buying an additional 186,677,290 shares in the last quarter. BlackRock Inc. purchased a new stake in shares of Salesforce in the second quarter valued at approximately $11,396,844,000. J. Stern & Co. LLP boosted its stake in shares of Salesforce by 24,056.7% in the fourth quarter. J. Stern & Co. LLP now owns 47,385,511 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $12,552,896,000 after buying an additional 47,189,352 shares in the last quarter. Bank of America Corp DE acquired a new position in Salesforce during the second quarter worth $1,914,086,000. Finally, Norges Bank purchased a new position in Salesforce in the fourth quarter worth $3,182,951,000. 80.43% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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.