Lavelle Capital LP Makes New $1.01 Million Investment in Salesforce Inc. $CRM

Lavelle Capital LP acquired a new stake in Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) in the first quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor acquired 5,431 shares of the CRM provider’s stock, valued at approximately $1,014,000.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also modified their holdings of the company. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its holdings in Salesforce by 0.3% during the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 89,843,166 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $23,800,353,000 after purchasing an additional 270,913 shares during the last quarter. State Street Corp boosted its stake in Salesforce by 1.3% during 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 acquiring an additional 659,573 shares during the last quarter. J. Stern & Co. LLP grew its holdings in 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 acquiring an additional 47,189,352 shares in the last quarter. Capital International Investors raised its stake in shares of Salesforce by 13.3% in 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 purchasing an additional 2,669,891 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC grew its stake 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 worth $5,751,073,000 after purchasing an additional 791,345 shares in the last quarter. 80.43% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of research firms have commented on CRM. Phillip Securities downgraded shares of Salesforce from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating and decreased their price objective for the stock from $253.00 to $166.00 in a report on Monday, June 29th. Piper Sandler cut Salesforce from an “overweight” rating to a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, May 28th. Evercore reaffirmed an “outperform” rating on shares of Salesforce in a research report on Tuesday, July 14th. Citigroup upgraded shares of Salesforce from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, July 1st. Finally, DA Davidson dropped their price target on shares of Salesforce from $200.00 to $175.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, May 28th. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-four have issued a Buy rating, sixteen have given a Hold rating and four have issued a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Salesforce presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $249.51.

Salesforce Stock Performance

Salesforce stock opened at $184.34 on Friday. Salesforce Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $146.32 and a fifty-two week high of $269.11. The firm’s 50 day simple moving average is $170.34 and its 200-day simple moving average is $185.01. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.15, a current ratio of 0.79 and a quick ratio of 0.79. The company has a market cap of $150.98 billion, a P/E ratio of 21.34, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.00 and a beta of 1.18.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last issued 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. Salesforce had a net margin of 18.73% and a return on equity of 18.72%. The business had revenue of $11.13 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $11.05 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm earned $2.58 EPS. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 13.3% on a year-over-year basis. 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 research analysts predict that Salesforce Inc. will post 10.27 EPS for the current year.

Salesforce Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, July 2nd. Investors of record on Thursday, June 11th were given a dividend of $0.44 per share. This represents a $1.76 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.0%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, June 11th. Salesforce’s payout ratio 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.