Citizens Financial Group Inc. RI Lowers Stock Holdings in Salesforce Inc. $CRM

Citizens Financial Group Inc. RI lowered its stake in Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM - Free Report) by 13.5% during the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 21,954 shares of the CRM provider's stock after selling 3,439 shares during the period. Citizens Financial Group Inc. RI's holdings in Salesforce were worth $4,098,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other large investors have also modified their holdings of CRM. Commonwealth Retirement Investments LLC purchased a new position in Salesforce in the 4th quarter valued at $25,000. Board of the Pension Protection Fund purchased a new position in Salesforce during the 4th quarter worth $26,000. Key Capital Management INC acquired a new stake in shares of Salesforce in the 4th quarter worth $26,000. Gilpin Wealth Management LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Salesforce in the fourth quarter valued at about $26,000. Finally, Legacy Bridge LLC acquired a new position in Salesforce during the 4th quarter worth approximately $27,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 80.43% of the company's stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of equities analysts have recently weighed in on the stock. Piper Sandler cut shares of Salesforce from an "overweight" rating to a "neutral" rating in a research note on Thursday, May 28th. Royal Bank Of Canada cut Salesforce from a "sector perform" rating to a "sector perform" rating in a report on Wednesday, July 1st. Raymond James Financial downgraded Salesforce from a "strong-buy" rating to a "moderate buy" rating in a research note on Wednesday, July 1st. HSBC lifted their price objective on Salesforce from $350.00 to $356.00 and gave the stock a "buy" rating in a report on Friday, May 29th. Finally, KeyCorp lowered Salesforce from an "overweight" rating to a "sector weight" rating in a report on Wednesday. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-seven have assigned a Buy rating, fourteen have given a Hold rating and three have given a Sell rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Salesforce currently has a consensus rating of "Moderate Buy" and an average price target of $254.42.

Salesforce News Roundup

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 0.0%

Shares of Salesforce stock opened at $163.34 on Monday. 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 Inc. has a 1 year low of $146.32 and a 1 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 0.88 and a beta of 1.18. The business has a 50 day moving average price of $171.89 and a 200 day moving average price of $194.02.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM - Get Free Report) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, May 27th. The CRM provider reported $3.88 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of $3.13 by $0.75. The firm had revenue of $11.13 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts' expectations of $11.05 billion. Salesforce had a return on equity of 18.72% and a net margin of 18.73%.Salesforce's quarterly revenue 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. Sell-side analysts anticipate that Salesforce Inc. will post 10.29 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Salesforce declared that its board has initiated a share buyback 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 stock through open market purchases. Stock repurchase plans are generally an indication that the company's management believes its shares are undervalued.

Salesforce Announces Dividend

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, July 2nd. Investors 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 (DPR) is presently 20.37%.

Salesforce 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.

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