Pittenger & Anderson Inc. Has $16.18 Million Stock Holdings in Salesforce Inc. $CRM

Key Points

• Pittenger & Anderson Inc. trimmed its stake in Salesforce by 7.5%, selling 4,924 shares and now holding 61,086 shares valued at about $16.18 million.
• Salesforce beat expectations with $3.81 EPS (vs. $3.05 est.) and $11.20B revenue (up 12.1% YoY), gave FY‑2027 EPS guidance of 13.110–13.190, and authorized a $25 billion share buyback.
• Management is accelerating its AI push—launching Agentforce Operations, hiring 1,000 AI graduates and expanding partnerships—while concurrent restructuring and some layoffs create short‑term execution and morale risks.

Pittenger & Anderson Inc. lessened its position in shares of Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM - Free Report) by 7.5% during the 4th quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 61,086 shares of the CRM provider's stock after selling 4,924 shares during the quarter. Pittenger & Anderson Inc.'s holdings in Salesforce were worth $16,182,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other large investors have also made changes to their positions in CRM. Marquette Asset Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of Salesforce during the third quarter valued at $26,000. Board of the Pension Protection Fund acquired a new position in shares of Salesforce during the fourth quarter valued at $26,000. Key Capital Management INC acquired a new position in shares of Salesforce during the fourth quarter valued at $26,000. Legacy Bridge LLC acquired a new position in shares of Salesforce during the fourth quarter valued at $27,000. Finally, Texas Capital Bancshares Inc TX acquired a new position in shares of Salesforce during the third quarter valued at $28,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 80.43% of the company's stock.

Salesforce Stock Up 4.2%

NYSE:CRM opened at $183.98 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.18, a quick ratio of 0.76 and a current ratio of 0.76. The company has a market cap of $150.54 billion, a PE ratio of 23.56, a PEG ratio of 1.28 and a beta of 1.14. Salesforce Inc. has a 52-week low of $163.52 and a 52-week high of $296.05. The stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $186.67 and a 200 day simple moving average of $220.25.

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

Salesforce Increases Dividend

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

Salesforce declared that its board has authorized a share buyback plan on Monday, March 16th that authorizes the company to repurchase $25.00 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization authorizes the CRM provider to purchase up to 14.1% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock repurchase plans are typically an indication that the company's leadership believes its shares are undervalued.

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

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities analysts have weighed in on CRM shares. Jefferies Financial Group cut their target price on Salesforce from $375.00 to $250.00 and set a "buy" rating on the stock in a research note on Monday, February 23rd. Wall Street Zen lowered Salesforce from a "buy" rating to a "hold" rating in a research note on Saturday, April 18th. Stifel Nicolaus cut their target price on Salesforce from $300.00 to $250.00 and set a "buy" rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, February 26th. Sanford C. Bernstein cut their target price on Salesforce from $223.00 to $194.00 and set an "underperform" rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, February 26th. Finally, BTIG Research reissued a "buy" rating and issued a $255.00 target price on shares of Salesforce in a research note on Friday, April 17th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-six have given a Buy rating, eleven have given a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company has an average rating of "Moderate Buy" and a consensus target price of $279.18.

Insider Transactions at Salesforce

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

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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