Salesforce Inc. $CRM Shares Purchased by Wealthcare Advisory Partners LLC

Wealthcare Advisory Partners LLC lifted its stake in Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) by 36.7% in the 2nd quarter, HoldingsChannel.com reports. The firm owned 17,364 shares of the CRM provider’s stock after acquiring an additional 4,664 shares during the period. Wealthcare Advisory Partners LLC’s holdings in Salesforce were worth $2,720,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

A number of other institutional investors also recently bought and sold shares of CRM. J. Stern & Co. LLP increased its stake in 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 in the last quarter. Norges Bank acquired a new stake in shares of Salesforce during the fourth quarter worth $3,182,951,000. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership lifted its stake in shares of Salesforce by 130.2% during the first quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 12,659,217 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $2,363,096,000 after buying an additional 7,160,302 shares during the period. Cardano Risk Management B.V. grew its holdings in shares of 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 buying an additional 3,504,605 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Capital International Investors grew its holdings in shares of Salesforce by 13.3% during the fourth quarter. Capital International Investors now owns 22,721,010 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $6,019,199,000 after buying an additional 2,669,891 shares during the last quarter. 80.43% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Salesforce Stock Down 2.2%

Shares of CRM opened at $193.20 on Thursday. The company has a market capitalization of $158.23 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 22.36, a PEG ratio of 1.07 and a beta of 1.16. Salesforce Inc. has a 52 week low of $146.32 and a 52 week high of $269.11. The stock’s 50-day moving average price is $170.96 and its 200-day moving average price is $182.38. The company has a quick ratio of 0.79, a current ratio of 0.79 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.15.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, May 27th. The CRM provider reported $3.88 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.13 by $0.75. Salesforce had a return on equity of 18.72% and a net margin of 18.73%.The company had revenue of $11.13 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $11.05 billion. During the same period last year, the business earned $2.58 earnings per share. Salesforce’s quarterly revenue was up 13.3% on a year-over-year basis. 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, sell-side analysts predict that Salesforce Inc. will post 10.27 EPS for the current year.

Salesforce Dividend Announcement

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, July 2nd. Investors of record on Thursday, June 11th were paid a $0.44 dividend. This represents a $1.76 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.9%. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, June 11th. Salesforce’s payout ratio is currently 20.37%.

Salesforce News Roundup

Here are the key news stories impacting Salesforce this week:

• Positive Sentiment: UBS raised its Salesforce price target from $185 to $210, while maintaining a neutral rating, and Wells Fargo lifted its target from $200 to $205 with an equal-weight rating. The revisions suggest analysts see upside from current levels despite a cautious stance. Benzinga
• Positive Sentiment: Short interest fell 36.7% in the second half of July to 29.4 million shares, reducing a potential source of selling pressure and indicating fewer investors are betting against CRM.
• Positive Sentiment: New Salesforce-related business activity, including Navatar’s governed AI framework using Agentforce and Claude and Strativera’s Salesforce AppExchange listing, highlights continued adoption of Salesforce’s ecosystem and AI tools. Navatar AI Framework
• Neutral Sentiment: The latest market-session report noted that CRM declined while the broader market advanced, reflecting relative underperformance rather than a new company-specific financial release. Zacks Salesforce Stock Report
• Negative Sentiment: UBS said Salesforce may temper expectations for accelerating revenue growth in the second half, raising concern that the company’s AI opportunity may not translate into faster near-term sales growth. UBS Revenue Growth Outlook
• Negative Sentiment: Curative reportedly dropped an approximately $600,000 annual Salesforce contract after building AI-based internal software, reinforcing fears that customers could replace portions of Salesforce functionality with cheaper in-house tools. Curative Salesforce Contract
• Negative Sentiment: Reports also raised concerns about leadership changes and Salesforce’s positioning in sensitive government AI workloads, as well as the loss of a major healthcare customer to an in-house AI CRM. These developments add competitive and execution risk to the AI transition. Salesforce Government AI Positioning

Analysts Set New Price Targets

CRM has been the subject of a number of research analyst reports. BTIG Research restated a “buy” rating and issued a $255.00 target price on shares of Salesforce in a research note on Tuesday, May 26th. BMO Capital Markets dropped their price target on Salesforce from $225.00 to $215.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, May 28th. TD Cowen reissued a “buy” rating on shares of Salesforce in a report on Friday, June 12th. CLSA started coverage on Salesforce in a research note on Monday, July 20th. They issued a “hold” rating and a $165.00 price objective for the company. Finally, KeyCorp downgraded Salesforce from an “overweight” rating to a “sector weight” rating in a report on Wednesday, July 8th. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-five have issued a Buy rating, sixteen have issued a Hold rating and four have assigned a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $250.28.

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.