Associated Banc Corp Increases Holdings in Salesforce Inc. $CRM

Key Points

• Associated Banc Corp increased its Salesforce stake by 10.1% in the first quarter, bringing holdings to 233,851 shares valued at about $43.7 million.
• Institutional ownership in Salesforce remains very high, with hedge funds and other institutions controlling 80.43% of the stock. Several large investors, including Vanguard and State Street, also added to their positions.
• Salesforce continues to attract mixed Wall Street views: analysts maintain a Moderate Buy consensus, even as some firms cut ratings or price targets amid skepticism about near-term growth from AI initiatives like Agentforce.

Associated Banc Corp boosted its stake in shares of Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM - Free Report) by 10.1% during the first quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The fund 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 investment portfolio, making the stock its 18th largest position. Associated Banc Corp's holdings in Salesforce were worth $43,653,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also modified their holdings of the company. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its position in shares of Salesforce by 0.3% during the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 89,843,166 shares of the CRM provider's stock valued at $23,800,353,000 after acquiring an additional 270,913 shares during the last quarter. State Street Corp boosted its holdings in Salesforce by 1.3% in the 4th quarter. State Street Corp now owns 50,080,230 shares of the CRM provider's stock valued at $13,286,909,000 after purchasing an additional 659,573 shares during the last quarter. J. Stern & Co. LLP increased its holdings in shares of 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 buying an additional 47,189,352 shares during the last quarter. Capital International Investors raised its position in shares of Salesforce by 13.3% during the 4th 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 period. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its holdings in Salesforce by 3.8% in 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 acquiring an additional 791,345 shares during the last quarter. 80.43% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Key Headlines Impacting Salesforce

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 analysts recently issued reports on the company. Bank of America started coverage on Salesforce in a research report on Monday, May 18th. They set an "underperform" rating and a $160.00 price objective for the company. Wolfe Research cut shares of Salesforce from an "outperform" rating to a "hold" rating in a research report on Wednesday, July 1st. Citigroup raised shares of Salesforce from a "hold" rating to a "buy" rating in a research note on Wednesday, July 1st. Macquarie Infrastructure lowered their price objective 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. Finally, Canaccord Genuity Group reissued a "buy" rating and issued a $225.00 target price on shares of Salesforce in a research report on Tuesday, June 16th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-seven have given a Buy rating, fourteen have issued a Hold rating and three have issued a Sell rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, Salesforce has a consensus rating of "Moderate Buy" and a consensus target price of $254.42.

Salesforce Stock Performance

CRM traded up $0.84 during trading on Friday, hitting $163.34. 8,316,028 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 15,336,670. The firm has a market capitalization of $133.77 billion, a P/E ratio of 18.90, a PEG ratio of 1.02 and a beta of 1.18. Salesforce Inc. has a 1-year low of $146.32 and a 1-year high of $274.00. The stock has a fifty day moving average price of $171.89 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $194.51. 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 - Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, May 27th. The CRM provider reported $3.88 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.13 by $0.75. The firm had revenue of $11.13 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $11.05 billion. Salesforce had a net margin of 18.73% and a return on equity of 18.72%. Salesforce's revenue for the quarter was up 13.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm earned $2.58 EPS. 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, sell-side analysts predict that Salesforce Inc. will post 10.29 earnings per share for the current year.

Salesforce announced that its board has authorized a share repurchase program on Monday, March 16th that authorizes the company to buyback $25.00 billion in shares. This buyback authorization authorizes the CRM provider to purchase up to 14.1% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares buyback programs are generally a sign that the company's management believes its shares are undervalued.

Salesforce Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently announced 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 was Thursday, June 11th. This represents a $1.76 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.1%. Salesforce's dividend payout ratio is 20.37%.

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.

This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to contact@marketbeat.com.