Conning Inc. Buys 4,231 Shares of Salesforce Inc. $CRM

Conning Inc. boosted its holdings in shares of Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) by 21.2% in the first quarter, according to its most recent filing with the SEC. The firm owned 24,208 shares of the CRM provider’s stock after acquiring an additional 4,231 shares during the period. Conning Inc.’s holdings in Salesforce were worth $4,519,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently modified their holdings of the company. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its stake in Salesforce by 0.3% in the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 89,843,166 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $23,800,353,000 after buying an additional 270,913 shares during the period. State Street Corp lifted its stake in shares of Salesforce by 1.3% in the fourth quarter. State Street Corp now owns 50,080,230 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $13,286,909,000 after acquiring an additional 659,573 shares during the period. J. Stern & Co. LLP boosted its position in Salesforce by 24,056.7% during 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 acquiring an additional 47,189,352 shares during the last quarter. Capital International Investors increased its stake in Salesforce by 13.3% in 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 purchasing an additional 2,669,891 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC grew its holdings in shares of Salesforce by 3.8% during the fourth quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 21,782,556 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $5,751,073,000 after buying an additional 791,345 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 80.43% of the company’s stock.

Salesforce Price Performance

Shares of CRM stock opened at $163.34 on Friday. Salesforce Inc. has a one year low of $146.32 and a one year high of $274.00. The company has a market capitalization of $133.77 billion, a P/E ratio of 18.90, a P/E/G ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 1.18. The company’s 50-day simple moving average is $171.89 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $194.51. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.15, a current ratio of 0.79 and a quick ratio of 0.79.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, May 27th. The CRM provider reported $3.88 earnings per share (EPS) 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 business had revenue of $11.13 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $11.05 billion. During the same quarter last year, the firm earned $2.58 EPS. The business’s revenue for the quarter 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. As a group, equities analysts anticipate that Salesforce Inc. will post 10.29 EPS for the current year.

Salesforce declared that its board has initiated a stock repurchase plan on Monday, March 16th that permits the company to repurchase $25.00 billion in outstanding shares. This repurchase authorization permits the CRM provider to purchase up to 14.1% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase plans are often an indication that the company’s board of directors believes its shares are undervalued.

Salesforce Dividend Announcement

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, July 2nd. Investors of record on Thursday, June 11th were given a $0.44 dividend. This represents a $1.76 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.1%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, June 11th. Salesforce’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 20.37%.

More Salesforce News

Here are the key news stories impacting Salesforce this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Salesforce announced a $1 billion investment in Switzerland over five years to expand adoption of agentic AI, reinforcing its commitment to AI-led growth and potentially strengthening its international enterprise relationships.
• Positive Sentiment: A bullish deep-dive argued Salesforce is trading at a depressed valuation, with strong free-cash-flow generation and a large debt-funded buyback that reduced share count by more than 10%, signaling management confidence in the business.
• Neutral Sentiment: Salesforce also unveiled MCP-powered capabilities for Slackbot, which could improve product usefulness and customer engagement, but the market may need proof that these features translate into faster growth.
• Neutral Sentiment: Triveni Power Transmission’s partnership with Salesforce for customer engagement in manufacturing adds another example of industry adoption, though the near-term financial impact appears limited.
• Negative Sentiment: KeyBanc’s downgrade and slightly lower earnings forecast added to investor skepticism that Agentforce will become a major growth catalyst soon.
• Negative Sentiment: Several market commentaries highlighted that CRM has been a weak performer over the past year, and the recent pullback suggests investors remain cautious despite its lower valuation.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of brokerages have commented on CRM. Bank of America initiated coverage on Salesforce in a research note on Monday, May 18th. They issued an “underperform” rating and a $160.00 price target on the stock. Guggenheim raised Salesforce from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $228.00 target price on the stock in a report on Wednesday, July 1st. Macquarie Infrastructure cut their target price on shares of Salesforce from $200.00 to $190.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, May 28th. TD Cowen reaffirmed a “buy” rating on shares of Salesforce in a research report on Friday, June 12th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company decreased their target price on Salesforce from $210.00 to $200.00 and set an “equal weight” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, May 28th. One analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-seven have assigned a Buy rating, fourteen have assigned a Hold rating and three have given a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Salesforce has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $254.42.

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.