Plato Investment Management Ltd Takes Position in Salesforce Inc. $CRM

Plato Investment Management Ltd purchased a new stake in Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) during the 2nd quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The institutional investor purchased 52,009 shares of the CRM provider’s stock, valued at approximately $8,100,000.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also bought and sold shares of the company. Temasek Holdings Private Ltd lifted its position in Salesforce by 3.7% during the fourth quarter. Temasek Holdings Private Ltd now owns 683,790 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $181,143,000 after purchasing an additional 24,332 shares during the period. SFE Investment Counsel raised its position in Salesforce by 82.7% during the fourth quarter. SFE Investment Counsel now owns 17,394 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $4,608,000 after purchasing an additional 7,871 shares in the last quarter. Fluent Financial LLC acquired a new position in shares of Salesforce during the 2nd quarter worth $2,265,000. Secured Retirement Advisors LLC bought a new stake in shares of Salesforce during the 1st quarter worth $1,004,000. Finally, Janus Henderson Group PLC boosted its stake in Salesforce by 2.5% in the first quarter. Janus Henderson Group PLC now owns 127,739 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $23,846,000 after buying an additional 3,125 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 80.43% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of equities analysts recently issued reports on CRM shares. B. Riley Financial upped their price objective on shares of Salesforce from $205.00 to $240.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Thursday, May 28th. HC Wainwright lowered Salesforce to a “negative” rating in a research note on Thursday, June 18th. DA Davidson decreased their target price on shares of Salesforce from $200.00 to $175.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, May 28th. Wolfe Research downgraded shares of Salesforce from an “outperform” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Wednesday, July 1st. Finally, Guggenheim upgraded shares of Salesforce from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $228.00 price objective for the company in a research report on Wednesday, July 1st. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-five have issued a Buy rating, seventeen have given a Hold rating and three have issued a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $249.05.

Trending Headlines about Salesforce

Here are the key news stories impacting Salesforce this week:

• Positive Sentiment: JPMorgan resumed coverage with an Overweight rating and a $250 price target, citing potential acceleration in Salesforce’s core business during the second half of the year. The target implies more than 24% upside from recent levels. JPMorgan bullish Salesforce coverage
• Positive Sentiment: Monness Crespi & Hardt raised its Salesforce price target to $222 from $200 and maintained a Buy rating. UBS and Wells Fargo also reportedly forecast strong appreciation, reinforcing improving sell-side sentiment. Monness Crespi Salesforce price target
• Positive Sentiment: Salesforce’s Agentforce platform is gaining traction, giving the company a way to use its large CRM customer base to compete with Microsoft and Oracle in enterprise “agentic” AI. Salesforce agentic AI analysis
• Positive Sentiment: A Seeking Alpha analysis argues that Salesforce’s $27.1 billion share-repurchase program, equivalent to an estimated 23% net buyback yield, could support earnings-per-share growth. The stock also appears inexpensive at roughly 14 times forward earnings, although buybacks have increased debt. Salesforce buyback analysis
• Neutral Sentiment: Salesforce has recently posted strong momentum, with reports noting three consecutive weeks of gains and substantial one-month appreciation. That run may be encouraging investors, but it also raises the possibility of profit-taking.
• Negative Sentiment: Parnassus Investments indicated that Salesforce has lost favor as AI opportunities shift toward competing or substitute technologies. Other commentary likewise warns that alternative software and AI-native tools threaten Salesforce’s traditional CRM franchise. Salesforce AI competition concerns

Salesforce Trading Down 0.2%

NYSE CRM opened at $195.86 on Monday. The stock has a market capitalization of $160.41 billion, a P/E ratio of 22.67, a P/E/G ratio of 1.06 and a beta of 1.16. The business has a 50 day simple moving average of $171.41 and a 200 day simple moving average of $181.95. 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 one year low of $146.32 and a one year high of $269.11.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, May 27th. The CRM provider reported $3.88 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.13 by $0.75. The firm had revenue of $11.13 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $11.05 billion. Salesforce had a return on equity of 18.72% and a net margin of 18.73%.The company’s revenue was up 13.3% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned $2.58 earnings per share. Salesforce has set its FY 2027 guidance at 14.060-14.120 EPS and its Q2 2027 guidance at 3.250-3.270 EPS. Research analysts expect that Salesforce Inc. will post 10.27 earnings per share for the current year.

Salesforce Dividend Announcement

The business also recently announced 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 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.9%. Salesforce’s dividend payout ratio is currently 20.37%.

Salesforce Company 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.