Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) Stock Price Down 2.9% – Here’s Why

Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) shares were down 2.9% during mid-day trading on Thursday . The company traded as low as $241.52 and last traded at $243.3550. 14,936,492 shares changed hands during trading, an increase of 7% from the average session volume of 13,987,302 shares. The stock had previously closed at $250.54.

More Salesforce News

Here are the key news stories impacting Salesforce this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Salesforce set a fiscal 2030 revenue target of more than $63 billion, ahead of analyst expectations. Management said accelerating demand for artificial-intelligence and data products should support long-term growth and help counter fears that AI could disrupt its core software business. Salesforce issues revenue target of over $63 billion for fiscal 2030
• Positive Sentiment: Stifel, Canaccord Genuity, BMO Capital and other firms raised their CRM price targets, with several now at $300. Analysts cited Dreamforce’s long-term outlook, improving AI demand and a more favorable re-rating setup.
• Positive Sentiment: The company introduced AIforce, a more direct agentic interface for its CRM platform, and Koa, a CRM reasoning model developed with NVIDIA technology. Salesforce also expanded integrations involving Claude, Slack, AWS and OpenAI, potentially broadening AI adoption and monetization. Salesforce unveils Koa CRM model developed with Nvidia Nemotron
• Positive Sentiment: Rising Slackbot usage, a $25 billion buyback and a new enterprise partnership with Snap for augmented-reality glasses provide additional support for sentiment and demand expectations.
• Neutral Sentiment: RBC described partner checks as incrementally positive for demand but mixed on pricing. That suggests customer interest is improving, while Salesforce may face pressure to prove that new AI capabilities can generate attractive incremental revenue.
• Negative Sentiment: A widespread Salesforce service outage occurred during Dreamforce, with users reporting severe delays, errors or inability to access portions of the cloud software suite. The timing heightened concerns about reliability and execution. Salesforce Service Outages Strike on Day 2 of Dreamforce Conference
• Negative Sentiment: Analysts and investors continue to question Agentforce’s return on investment and pricing. The Koa launch reportedly did not eliminate the gap between AI product enthusiasm and demonstrated customer value, limiting the immediate stock reaction to the conference.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

CRM has been the topic of several research analyst reports. Citizens Jmp reiterated a “market outperform” rating and issued a $315.00 price target on shares of Salesforce in a research note on Tuesday, August 25th. Stifel Nicolaus lifted their price objective on Salesforce from $275.00 to $300.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Thursday. Canaccord Genuity Group raised their target price on shares of Salesforce from $270.00 to $300.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Thursday. BTIG Research reissued a “buy” rating and issued a $300.00 price objective on shares of Salesforce in a research note on Wednesday, September 2nd. Finally, Barclays upped their target price on shares of Salesforce from $236.00 to $276.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Thursday, August 27th. Three analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-nine have given a Buy rating, fourteen have issued a Hold rating and three have given a Sell rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Salesforce currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $274.32.

Salesforce Price Performance

The stock has a 50 day moving average of $205.81 and a 200-day moving average of $188.56. The company has a current ratio of 0.84, a quick ratio of 0.84 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.02. The stock has a market capitalization of $200.28 billion, a P/E ratio of 22.18, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.17 and a beta of 1.20.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last released its earnings results 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 business had revenue of $11.35 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $11.33 billion. Salesforce had a return on equity of 24.90% and a net margin of 21.99%.The business’s revenue was up 10.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $2.91 earnings per share. Salesforce has set its FY 2027 guidance at 16.670-16.710 EPS and its Q3 2027 guidance at 3.420-3.440 EPS. On average, equities research analysts anticipate that Salesforce Inc. will post 12.83 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Salesforce Dividend Announcement

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, October 8th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, September 17th will be paid 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 is currently 16.04%.

Insider Buying and Selling at Salesforce

In related news, Director Craig Conway sold 4,500 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, September 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $260.61, for a total value of $1,172,745.00. Following the transaction, the director owned 5,437 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,416,936.57. This represents a 45.29% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Corporate insiders own 3.50% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. Anchor Investment Management LLC lifted its position in shares of Salesforce by 184.5% in the 2nd quarter. Anchor Investment Management LLC now owns 17,983 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $2,817,000 after purchasing an additional 11,663 shares during the period. Marathon Wealth Advisors LLC raised its position in shares of Salesforce by 1.2% in the 2nd quarter. Marathon Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 21,267 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $3,332,000 after acquiring an additional 260 shares in the last quarter. ABS Direct Equity Fund LLC bought a new stake in Salesforce during the second quarter valued at about $25,000. Van Hulzen Asset Management LLC lifted its position in shares of Salesforce by 73.0% during the second quarter. Van Hulzen Asset Management LLC now owns 2,136 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $335,000 after buying an additional 901 shares during the last quarter. Finally, MCF Advisors LLC grew its position in shares of Salesforce by 35.4% in the 2nd quarter. MCF Advisors LLC now owns 3,486 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $547,000 after buying an additional 912 shares during the last quarter. 80.43% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

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.