Associated Banc Corp Boosts Holdings in Salesforce Inc. $CRM

Associated Banc Corp grew its position in shares of Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) by 10.1% in the first quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The institutional investor owned 233,851 shares of the CRM provider’s stock after buying an additional 21,540 shares during the period. Salesforce accounts for 1.2% of Associated Banc Corp’s holdings, making the stock its 18th biggest holding. Associated Banc Corp’s holdings in Salesforce were worth $43,653,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other large investors have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in CRM. J. Stern & Co. LLP increased its position 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 worth $12,552,896,000 after purchasing an additional 47,189,352 shares during the period. Norges Bank purchased a new stake in shares of Salesforce in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $3,182,951,000. Cardano Risk Management B.V. grew its holdings in 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 worth $1,028,807,000 after acquiring an additional 3,504,605 shares during the period. Capital International Investors lifted its holdings 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 acquiring an additional 2,669,891 shares during the period. Finally, Capital World Investors increased its holdings in shares of Salesforce by 13.5% in the 4th quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 19,672,684 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $5,211,515,000 after purchasing an additional 2,347,478 shares in the last quarter. 80.43% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of equities research analysts recently weighed in on CRM shares. BTIG Research restated a “buy” rating and issued a $255.00 price target on shares of Salesforce in a report on Tuesday, May 26th. Susquehanna started coverage on Salesforce in a report on Wednesday, July 1st. They set a “neutral” rating for the company. Roth Capital reissued a “buy” rating and issued a $325.00 target price on shares of Salesforce in a report on Thursday, May 28th. B. Riley Financial raised their price target on Salesforce from $205.00 to $240.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Thursday, May 28th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company decreased their price objective on shares of Salesforce from $210.00 to $200.00 and set an “equal weight” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, May 28th. One analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-seven have given a Buy rating, fourteen have given a Hold rating and three have assigned a Sell rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $254.42.

Key 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.

Salesforce Trading Up 0.5%

Shares of NYSE CRM traded up $0.84 during midday trading on Friday, reaching $163.34. 8,316,028 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 15,336,670. Salesforce Inc. has a 52-week low of $146.32 and a 52-week high of $274.00. The stock has a 50 day moving average price of $171.89 and a 200-day moving average price of $194.51. The company has a market capitalization of $133.77 billion, a P/E ratio of 18.90, a P/E/G ratio of 1.02 and a beta of 1.18. The company has a current ratio of 0.79, a quick ratio of 0.79 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.15.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, May 27th. The CRM provider reported $3.88 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $3.13 by $0.75. Salesforce had a net margin of 18.73% and a return on equity of 18.72%. The firm had revenue of $11.13 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $11.05 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $2.58 EPS. Salesforce’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. Equities research analysts expect that Salesforce Inc. will post 10.29 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Salesforce Dividend Announcement

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, July 2nd. Stockholders of record on Thursday, June 11th were paid a dividend of $0.44 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, June 11th. This represents a $1.76 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.1%. Salesforce’s dividend payout ratio is currently 20.37%.

Salesforce declared that its board has authorized a share buyback program on Monday, March 16th that authorizes the company to buyback $25.00 billion in outstanding shares. This buyback authorization authorizes the CRM provider to buy up to 14.1% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares buyback programs are typically an indication that the company’s leadership believes its stock is undervalued.

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.