Salesforce Inc. $CRM Shares Sold by CastleKnight Management LP

CastleKnight Management LP lessened its stake in shares of Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) by 52.2% in the 4th quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 31,900 shares of the CRM provider’s stock after selling 34,900 shares during the quarter. CastleKnight Management LP’s holdings in Salesforce were worth $8,451,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other institutional investors have also modified their holdings of the stock. Cinctive Capital Management LP purchased a new stake in shares of Salesforce during the 4th quarter worth approximately $5,647,000. Claro Advisors Inc. lifted its position in shares of Salesforce by 4.7% during the 4th quarter. Claro Advisors Inc. now owns 2,862 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $758,000 after buying an additional 129 shares during the last quarter. Concentric Capital Strategies LP purchased a new stake in shares of Salesforce during the 4th quarter worth approximately $11,497,000. Contour Asset Management LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Salesforce during the 4th quarter worth approximately $300,518,000. Finally, Asset One Wealth Management LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Salesforce during the 4th quarter worth approximately $3,831,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 80.43% of the company’s stock.

Key Stories Impacting Salesforce

Here are the key news stories impacting Salesforce this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Salesforce announced a $3.6 billion acquisition of Fin, a customer AI agent platform, reinforcing its push into agentic AI and potentially expanding its automation and customer-service capabilities. Salesforce to acquire customer AI agent platform Fin for $3.6B
• Positive Sentiment: Some analysts remain constructive, with reaffirmed Buy ratings and targets well above the current share price, suggesting potential upside if Salesforce’s AI strategy and cash generation continue to improve. Analyst rating updates
• Neutral Sentiment: UBS reiterated a Neutral rating, reflecting a wait-and-see stance as investors assess whether Salesforce can convert its AI investments into faster growth. UBS sticks neutral
• Neutral Sentiment: Reports highlighting strong cash flow, rising margins, and a large buyback plan support the view that Salesforce still has financial flexibility to reward shareholders while investing in growth. CRM’s Record Cash Generation Support Robust Shareholder Returns
• Negative Sentiment: Multiple articles raised concerns that Salesforce’s acquisition-heavy strategy may not be translating into sustained growth reacceleration, with some analysts cutting fair value estimates and questioning AI monetization. Salesforce (CRM) Stock Sees Fair Value Cut As Analysts Question AI Growth Path
• Negative Sentiment: Commentary also pointed to “unit economic” concerns and recent share-price weakness, suggesting investors are worried the market is still paying closer attention to execution risk than to the long-term AI opportunity. Salesforce: Putting The Spotlight On The Unit Economic Concerns

Salesforce Stock Performance

Shares of Salesforce stock opened at $154.88 on Thursday. The firm’s fifty day simple moving average is $178.54 and its 200-day simple moving average is $205.28. The stock has a market capitalization of $126.85 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 17.93, a PEG ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 1.16. Salesforce Inc. has a 12 month low of $154.23 and a 12 month high of $276.80. 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 (NYSE:CRM) 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 business had revenue of $11.13 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $11.05 billion. Salesforce had a net margin of 18.73% and a return on equity of 18.72%. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 13.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $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, equities analysts forecast that Salesforce Inc. will post 10.29 earnings per share for the current year.

Salesforce declared that its board has authorized a share repurchase 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 repurchase up to 14.1% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock repurchase plans are generally an indication that the company’s board of directors believes its stock is undervalued.

Salesforce Announces Dividend

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, July 2nd. Stockholders of record on Thursday, June 11th will be issued a $0.44 dividend. This represents a $1.76 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.1%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, June 11th. Salesforce’s payout ratio is presently 20.37%.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several brokerages have recently weighed in on CRM. Northland Securities reduced their price objective on shares of Salesforce from $267.00 to $229.00 and set a “market perform” rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday, March 10th. BMO Capital Markets reduced their price objective on shares of Salesforce from $225.00 to $215.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, May 28th. Truist Financial set a $280.00 price objective on shares of Salesforce in a research report on Thursday, February 26th. The Goldman Sachs Group restated a “buy” rating and set a $281.00 price objective on shares of Salesforce in a research report on Thursday, February 26th. Finally, Wall Street Zen upgraded shares of Salesforce from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Saturday, June 6th. One analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-six have issued a Buy rating, ten have issued a Hold rating and two have issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Salesforce currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $259.26.

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.