Royal Bank Of Canada Reiterates "Sector Perform" Rating for Salesforce (NYSE:CRM)

Key Points

• Royal Bank of Canada reiterated its “Sector Perform” rating on Salesforce and maintained a $250 price target, implying approximately 3% upside from the reported share price.
• Analyst sentiment remains broadly positive, with Salesforce holding a consensus “Moderate Buy” rating and an average price target of $272.55; several firms recently raised targets to $300 or higher.
• Salesforce reported quarterly adjusted earnings of $5.90 per share, well above the $3.27 consensus estimate, while revenue reached $11.35 billion and increased 10.8% year over year.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM - Get Free Report)'s stock had its "sector perform" rating reiterated by stock analysts at Royal Bank Of Canada in a report released on Thursday, Benzinga reports. They currently have a $250.00 target price on the CRM provider's stock. Royal Bank Of Canada's target price suggests a potential upside of 3.00% from the stock's current price.

CRM has been the topic of several other research reports. Jefferies Financial Group lifted their target price on Salesforce from $250.00 to $300.00 and gave the company a "buy" rating in a research report on Thursday, August 27th. Canaccord Genuity Group increased their price target on Salesforce from $270.00 to $300.00 and gave the company a "buy" rating in a research report on Thursday. Scotiabank cut Salesforce from a "sector outperform" rating to a "sector perform" rating in a research note on Thursday, June 18th. Morgan Stanley set a $315.00 price target on shares of Salesforce in a research report on Wednesday, September 2nd. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group restated a "buy" rating on shares of Salesforce in a report on Thursday, August 27th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-eight have assigned a Buy rating, fourteen have given a Hold rating and three have assigned a Sell rating to the company's stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Salesforce has an average rating of "Moderate Buy" and an average price target of $272.55.

Salesforce Stock Performance

CRM opened at $242.73 on Thursday. Salesforce has a 1-year low of $146.32 and a 1-year high of $269.11. The company has a market cap of $199.76 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 22.45, a PEG ratio of 1.17 and a beta of 1.20. The company's fifty day moving average price is $205.81 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $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.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM - Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, August 26th. The CRM provider reported $5.90 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of $3.27 by $2.63. Salesforce had a net margin of 21.99% and a return on equity of 24.90%. The firm had revenue of $11.35 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts' expectations of $11.33 billion. During the same period last year, the company earned $2.91 earnings per share. The business's revenue was up 10.8% on a year-over-year basis. 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, analysts expect that Salesforce will post 12.83 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity

In other news, Director Craig Conway sold 4,500 shares of the company's stock in a transaction on Friday, September 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $260.61, for a total transaction 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 position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. 3.50% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Institutional Trading of Salesforce

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the business. Anchor Investment Management LLC lifted its position in shares of Salesforce by 184.5% during the second quarter. Anchor Investment Management LLC now owns 17,983 shares of the CRM provider's stock worth $2,817,000 after acquiring an additional 11,663 shares in the last quarter. Marathon Wealth Advisors LLC grew its position in shares of Salesforce by 1.2% in the second quarter. Marathon Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 21,267 shares of the CRM provider's stock valued at $3,332,000 after purchasing an additional 260 shares in the last quarter. ABS Direct Equity Fund LLC bought a new stake in shares of Salesforce during the 2nd quarter valued at $25,000. Van Hulzen Asset Management LLC lifted its holdings in Salesforce by 73.0% during the 2nd quarter. Van Hulzen Asset Management LLC now owns 2,136 shares of the CRM provider's stock worth $335,000 after purchasing an additional 901 shares in the last quarter. Finally, MCF Advisors LLC boosted its stake in 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 purchasing an additional 912 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 80.43% of the company's stock.

More Salesforce News

Here are the key news stories impacting Salesforce this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Salesforce projected fiscal 2030 revenue of more than $63 billion, above Wall Street expectations. The outlook suggests that AI, data products and Agentforce can reaccelerate growth and counter fears that generative AI could disrupt Salesforce’s core software business. Salesforce issues revenue target of over $63 billion for fiscal 2030
• Positive Sentiment: Salesforce introduced AIforce, a new interface layer intended to let users interact with CRM data and applications through AI agents rather than traditional software navigation. It also unveiled Koa, a CRM reasoning model developed with NVIDIA, and expanded integrations involving Anthropic, Slack, Amazon and OpenAI. These initiatives could increase premium-product adoption and customer spending. Salesforce unleashes AIForce to enable headless SaaS
• Positive Sentiment: Analysts became more constructive: BMO raised its target to $285, Canaccord lifted its target to $300 with a Buy rating, Cantor Fitzgerald reiterated Overweight at $300, and Mizuho raised its target to $280. The upgrades reinforce confidence in Salesforce’s AI monetization prospects.
• Positive Sentiment: Investors are also highlighting Salesforce’s $25 billion share-repurchase authorization, while unusually heavy call-option activity indicates increased speculative bullish interest.
• Neutral Sentiment: A partnership with Snap will bring Salesforce and other enterprise tools to Snap’s augmented-reality glasses. The deal could broaden Salesforce’s distribution, although its near-term financial impact is unclear. Snap targets enterprises with Salesforce, Nvidia AI tools
• Negative Sentiment: A widespread service outage during Dreamforce caused delays and intermittent access problems for customers, creating reputational and execution concerns at a closely watched investor event. Salesforce Service Outages Strike on Day 2 of Dreamforce Conference

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.

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