Strs Ohio Lowers Position in Salesforce Inc. $CRM

Strs Ohio cut its stake in Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) by 2.1% in the 4th quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 388,576 shares of the CRM provider’s stock after selling 8,520 shares during the quarter. Strs Ohio’s holdings in Salesforce were worth $102,938,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

Several other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of CRM. Capital World Investors raised its stake in shares of Salesforce by 159.0% in the third quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 17,325,206 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $4,106,255,000 after purchasing an additional 10,636,161 shares during the last quarter. Hotchkis & Wiley Capital Management LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Salesforce during the third quarter valued at approximately $484,852,000. Alyeska Investment Group L.P. increased its position in shares of Salesforce by 285.4% during the third quarter. Alyeska Investment Group L.P. now owns 2,487,627 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $589,568,000 after acquiring an additional 1,842,117 shares during the last quarter. Generation Investment Management LLP purchased a new stake in shares of Salesforce during the third quarter valued at approximately $431,157,000. Finally, Capital International Investors increased its position in shares of Salesforce by 9.4% during the third quarter. Capital International Investors now owns 20,051,119 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $4,753,519,000 after acquiring an additional 1,729,440 shares during the last quarter. 80.43% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In related news, Director David Blair Kirk purchased 2,570 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, March 18th. The stock was purchased at an average cost of $194.62 per share, with a total value of $500,173.40. Following the completion of the acquisition, the director directly owned 13,689 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $2,664,153.18. The trade was a 23.11% increase in their ownership of the stock. The purchase was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. Also, Director Laura Alber purchased 2,571 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, March 19th. The stock was bought at an average cost of $194.58 per share, with a total value of $500,265.18. Following the completion of the acquisition, the director directly owned 9,530 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,854,347.40. This trade represents a 36.94% increase in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this purchase provides additional information. 3.00% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Salesforce News Summary

Here are the key news stories impacting Salesforce this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Launched Agentforce Operations to fix agent workflow failures — Salesforce unveiled Agentforce Operations to orchestrate and harden the workflows that break enterprise AI agents, addressing a core scalability and reliability issue for customers. This product move directly targets enterprise demand for reliable AI automation and can improve retention and upsell. Salesforce launches Agentforce Operations to fix the workflows breaking enterprise AI
• Positive Sentiment: Big AI hiring push and deeper ecosystem bets — Salesforce announced a program to recruit 1,000 new graduates into AI roles and is expanding partner bets (notably a deeper Google Cloud tie-up and an early Anthropic investment). Those moves bolster execution capacity and give Salesforce access to third‑party models/compute, supporting its positioning as an AI-first workflow platform. Salesforce Restructures As AI Hiring Drive And Partnerships Test Valuation
• Positive Sentiment: Crowdsourcing AI roadmap with customers — Salesforce is inviting customers into its AI roadmap process, which can accelerate product-market fit, shorten feedback loops, and lower execution risk for new AI features. That helps protect long‑term revenue trajectories as the company embeds AI into core CRM workflows. Salesforce is crowdsourcing its AI roadmap — with customers
• Positive Sentiment: AI being embedded across CRM workflows (industry validation) — Coverage noting Salesforce and Microsoft pushing AI deeper into CRM workflows signals broad market adoption and competitive validation of Salesforce’s strategy. That supports recurring revenue growth if customers adopt agentized workflows at scale. Salesforce and Microsoft push AI deeper into CRM workflows
• Neutral Sentiment: Wall‑street/sector context — Morgan Stanley remains bullish on select SaaS names amid the broader software pullback; this helps sector sentiment but is not an immediate company‑specific catalyst. Why is Morgan Stanley bullish on 2 SaaS stocks everyone sold?
• Neutral Sentiment: Antitrust/legal action around Slack vs Microsoft — Salesforce’s Slack unit has sued Microsoft in London alleging anticompetitive behavior; legal outcomes are uncertain and timing is long‑dated, so immediate revenue impact is unclear. Salesforce (CRM) Stock In Focus After Slack Targets Microsoft In Court
• Negative Sentiment: Organizational restructuring and workforce reductions — Salesforce is reorganizing with leadership changes and some reductions even as it hires for AI roles; layoffs and exec churn raise short‑term execution and morale risk. Salesforce Restructures As AI Hiring Drive And Partnerships Test Valuation
• Negative Sentiment: Recent short‑term weakness — reporting showed a recent close decline (~‑2.6% in a prior session), highlighting near‑term volatility as investors debate AI execution vs. valuation. Salesforce (CRM) Stock Sinks As Market Gains: Here’s Why

Salesforce Price Performance

Shares of NYSE CRM opened at $183.98 on Friday. The stock has a fifty day simple moving average of $186.67 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $220.45. Salesforce Inc. has a 1-year low of $163.52 and a 1-year high of $296.05. The firm has a market cap of $150.54 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 23.56, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.22 and a beta of 1.14. The company has a current ratio of 0.76, a quick ratio of 0.76 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.18.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, February 25th. The CRM provider reported $3.81 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.05 by $0.76. Salesforce had a return on equity of 15.38% and a net margin of 17.96%.The business had revenue of $11.20 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $11.18 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the company earned $2.78 earnings per share. Salesforce’s revenue was up 12.1% compared to the same quarter last year. Salesforce has set its FY 2027 guidance at 13.110-13.190 EPS and its Q1 2027 guidance at 3.110-3.130 EPS. Analysts anticipate that Salesforce Inc. will post 9.71 earnings per share for the current year.

Salesforce declared that its board has approved a share buyback program on Monday, March 16th that authorizes the company to repurchase $25.00 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization authorizes the CRM provider to repurchase up to 14.1% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase programs are usually a sign that the company’s board of directors believes its shares are undervalued.

Salesforce Increases Dividend

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, April 23rd. Stockholders of record on Thursday, April 9th were issued a $0.44 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, April 9th. This is an increase from Salesforce’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.42. This represents a $1.76 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.0%. Salesforce’s dividend payout ratio is 22.54%.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of brokerages recently commented on CRM. Truist Financial set a $280.00 price target on Salesforce in a research report on Thursday, February 26th. Mizuho decreased their price target on Salesforce from $280.00 to $265.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, February 26th. Wells Fargo & Company decreased their price target on Salesforce from $235.00 to $210.00 and set an “equal weight” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, February 26th. Northland Securities decreased their price target on Salesforce from $267.00 to $229.00 and set a “market perform” rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday, March 10th. Finally, Piper Sandler decreased their price target on Salesforce from $250.00 to $215.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday, April 14th. One analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-six have given a Buy rating, eleven have issued a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $279.18.

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.