Citizens Financial Group Inc. RI Has $6.73 Million Position in Salesforce Inc. $CRM

Key Points

• Citizens Financial Group Inc. RI cut its stake in Salesforce by 56% in Q4, selling 32,382 shares and retaining 25,393 shares valued at about $6.73 million.
• Salesforce is accelerating its AI push — launching Agentforce Operations, recruiting 1,000 AI hires and deepening partnerships (e.g., Google Cloud, Anthropic) to cement its position as an AI‑first CRM workflow platform.
• The company beat quarterly EPS and revenue estimates, authorized a $25 billion share buyback and raised its dividend, though shares have shown near‑term volatility despite a recent ~4.2% gain.

Citizens Financial Group Inc. RI cut its stake in shares of Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM - Free Report) by 56.0% during the 4th quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 25,393 shares of the CRM provider's stock after selling 32,382 shares during the quarter. Citizens Financial Group Inc. RI's holdings in Salesforce were worth $6,727,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently bought and sold shares of the stock. Aspire Growth Partners LLC lifted its holdings in Salesforce by 1.2% during the 3rd quarter. Aspire Growth Partners LLC now owns 3,355 shares of the CRM provider's stock worth $795,000 after buying an additional 39 shares during the period. Abacus Planning Group Inc. lifted its holdings in Salesforce by 3.1% during the 3rd quarter. Abacus Planning Group Inc. now owns 1,420 shares of the CRM provider's stock worth $337,000 after buying an additional 43 shares during the period. Byrne Asset Management LLC lifted its holdings in Salesforce by 1.0% during the 4th quarter. Byrne Asset Management LLC now owns 4,331 shares of the CRM provider's stock worth $1,147,000 after buying an additional 43 shares during the period. Code Waechter LLC lifted its holdings in Salesforce by 5.3% during the 3rd quarter. Code Waechter LLC now owns 871 shares of the CRM provider's stock worth $209,000 after buying an additional 44 shares during the period. Finally, Mathes Company Inc. lifted its holdings in Salesforce by 0.4% during the 3rd quarter. Mathes Company Inc. now owns 12,558 shares of the CRM provider's stock worth $2,976,000 after buying an additional 45 shares during the period. 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: Launched Agentforce Operations to fix agent workflow failures — Salesforce unveiled Agentforce Operations to orchestrate and harden the workflows that break enterprise AI agents, addressing a core scalability and reliability issue for customers. This product move directly targets enterprise demand for reliable AI automation and can improve retention and upsell. Salesforce launches Agentforce Operations to fix the workflows breaking enterprise AI
• Positive Sentiment: Big AI hiring push and deeper ecosystem bets — Salesforce announced a program to recruit 1,000 new graduates into AI roles and is expanding partner bets (notably a deeper Google Cloud tie-up and an early Anthropic investment). Those moves bolster execution capacity and give Salesforce access to third‑party models/compute, supporting its positioning as an AI-first workflow platform. Salesforce Restructures As AI Hiring Drive And Partnerships Test Valuation
• Positive Sentiment: Crowdsourcing AI roadmap with customers — Salesforce is inviting customers into its AI roadmap process, which can accelerate product-market fit, shorten feedback loops, and lower execution risk for new AI features. That helps protect long‑term revenue trajectories as the company embeds AI into core CRM workflows. Salesforce is crowdsourcing its AI roadmap — with customers
• Positive Sentiment: AI being embedded across CRM workflows (industry validation) — Coverage noting Salesforce and Microsoft pushing AI deeper into CRM workflows signals broad market adoption and competitive validation of Salesforce’s strategy. That supports recurring revenue growth if customers adopt agentized workflows at scale. Salesforce and Microsoft push AI deeper into CRM workflows
• Neutral Sentiment: Wall‑street/sector context — Morgan Stanley remains bullish on select SaaS names amid the broader software pullback; this helps sector sentiment but is not an immediate company‑specific catalyst. Why is Morgan Stanley bullish on 2 SaaS stocks everyone sold?
• Neutral Sentiment: Antitrust/legal action around Slack vs Microsoft — Salesforce’s Slack unit has sued Microsoft in London alleging anticompetitive behavior; legal outcomes are uncertain and timing is long‑dated, so immediate revenue impact is unclear. Salesforce (CRM) Stock In Focus After Slack Targets Microsoft In Court
• Negative Sentiment: Organizational restructuring and workforce reductions — Salesforce is reorganizing with leadership changes and some reductions even as it hires for AI roles; layoffs and exec churn raise short‑term execution and morale risk. Salesforce Restructures As AI Hiring Drive And Partnerships Test Valuation
• Negative Sentiment: Recent short‑term weakness — reporting showed a recent close decline (~‑2.6% in a prior session), highlighting near‑term volatility as investors debate AI execution vs. valuation. Salesforce (CRM) Stock Sinks As Market Gains: Here's Why

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, Director Laura Alber purchased 2,571 shares of the company's stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, March 19th. The shares were acquired at an average cost of $194.58 per share, with a total value of $500,265.18. Following the purchase, the director owned 9,530 shares in the company, valued at $1,854,347.40. This represents a 36.94% increase in their ownership of the stock. The acquisition was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, Director David Blair Kirk purchased 2,570 shares of the company's stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, March 18th. The shares were purchased at an average cost of $194.62 per share, for a total transaction of $500,173.40. Following the completion of the purchase, the director owned 13,689 shares in the company, valued at $2,664,153.18. This trade represents a 23.11% increase in their position. Additional details regarding this purchase are available in the official SEC disclosure. 3.00% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Salesforce Stock Up 4.2%

Shares of NYSE:CRM opened at $183.98 on Friday. The company has a market capitalization of $150.54 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 23.56, a P/E/G ratio of 1.22 and a beta of 1.14. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.18, a current ratio of 0.76 and a quick ratio of 0.76. The business's 50-day moving average is $186.67 and its 200-day moving average is $220.45. Salesforce Inc. has a 1 year low of $163.52 and a 1 year high of $296.05.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM - Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, February 25th. The CRM provider reported $3.81 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of $3.05 by $0.76. Salesforce had a return on equity of 15.38% and a net margin of 17.96%.The company had revenue of $11.20 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $11.18 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $2.78 EPS. The firm's revenue was up 12.1% compared to the same quarter last year. Salesforce has set its FY 2027 guidance at 13.110-13.190 EPS and its Q1 2027 guidance at 3.110-3.130 EPS. Equities research analysts predict that Salesforce Inc. will post 9.71 earnings per share for the current year.

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

Salesforce Increases Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, April 23rd. Investors of record on Thursday, April 9th were paid a dividend of $0.44 per share. This is an increase from Salesforce's previous quarterly dividend of $0.42. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, April 9th. This represents a $1.76 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.0%. Salesforce's dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 22.54%.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

CRM has been the topic of several recent research reports. Barclays cut their target price on Salesforce from $265.00 to $252.00 and set an "overweight" rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, February 26th. Truist Financial set a $280.00 target price on Salesforce in a report on Thursday, February 26th. Wells Fargo & Company cut their target price on Salesforce from $235.00 to $210.00 and set an "equal weight" rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, February 26th. KeyCorp dropped their price objective on Salesforce from $400.00 to $300.00 and set an "overweight" rating on the stock in a research note on Tuesday, February 24th. Finally, Wedbush reissued an "outperform" rating and issued a $375.00 price objective on shares of Salesforce in a research note on Tuesday, February 24th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-six have assigned a Buy rating, eleven have issued a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Salesforce has a consensus rating of "Moderate Buy" and an average target price of $279.18.

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.

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