State of Wisconsin Investment Board Sells 29,028 Shares of Salesforce Inc. $CRM

State of Wisconsin Investment Board lowered its position in shares of Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) by 5.5% in the 4th quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 494,369 shares of the CRM provider’s stock after selling 29,028 shares during the period. State of Wisconsin Investment Board owned approximately 0.05% of Salesforce worth $130,963,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

Several other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Captrust Financial Advisors increased its position in shares of Salesforce by 18.0% during the fourth quarter. Captrust Financial Advisors now owns 128,772 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $34,113,000 after acquiring an additional 19,614 shares in the last quarter. Artisan Partners Limited Partnership increased its position in shares of Salesforce by 3.8% during the fourth quarter. Artisan Partners Limited Partnership now owns 610,938 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $161,844,000 after acquiring an additional 22,351 shares in the last quarter. &PARTNERS increased its position in shares of Salesforce by 73.6% during the fourth quarter. &PARTNERS now owns 145,232 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $38,484,000 after acquiring an additional 61,589 shares in the last quarter. Siemens Fonds Invest GmbH increased its position in shares of Salesforce by 13.1% during the fourth quarter. Siemens Fonds Invest GmbH now owns 27,821 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $7,398,000 after acquiring an additional 3,212 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Mangrove Partners IM LLC bought a new stake in Salesforce in the 4th quarter worth approximately $1,101,000. Institutional investors own 80.43% of the company’s stock.

Insider Activity

In other Salesforce news, Director Laura Alber acquired 2,571 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, March 19th. The stock was purchased at an average price of $194.58 per share, with a total value of $500,265.18. Following the transaction, the director directly owned 9,530 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,854,347.40. The trade was a 36.94% increase in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. 3.50% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Key Stories Impacting Salesforce

Here are the key news stories impacting Salesforce this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Salesforce agreed to buy AI customer-service platform Fin for about $3.6 billion, a move that should strengthen its Agentforce strategy and expand its agentic AI capabilities across chat, email, WhatsApp, SMS and voice channels. Investors see this as a way to deepen Salesforce’s AI offering and potentially improve long-term growth. Reuters article
• Positive Sentiment: Several analysts remained constructive after the deal, with firms including Wedbush, Needham and Canaccord reaffirming bullish views and pointing to Salesforce’s cash generation, large buyback capacity and AI monetization potential as support for the investment case. Proactive Investors article
• Neutral Sentiment: Salesforce’s record cash flow, rising margins and $50 billion buyback plan continue to support shareholder-return arguments, but these positives are being weighed against broader concerns about the pace of growth reacceleration. Yahoo Finance article
• Neutral Sentiment: Some commentary remains mixed, with analysts trimming fair-value estimates and questioning how quickly Salesforce can monetize AI and reaccelerate revenue, which is contributing to cautious sentiment around CRM. Yahoo Finance article
• Negative Sentiment: Salesforce’s stock has been pressured by concerns that its acquisition-heavy strategy is not yet restoring growth fast enough, and one report noted the shares have fallen to annual lows amid Wall Street skepticism. Stocktwits article

Salesforce Trading Down 1.7%

Shares of CRM stock opened at $161.74 on Wednesday. Salesforce Inc. has a 1 year low of $160.50 and a 1 year high of $276.80. The firm has a fifty day moving average price of $179.14 and a 200-day moving average price of $205.79. 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 $132.47 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 18.72, a PEG ratio of 1.02 and a beta of 1.16.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, May 27th. The CRM provider reported $3.88 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.13 by $0.75. Salesforce had a net margin of 18.73% and a return on equity of 18.72%. The firm had revenue of $11.13 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $11.05 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm posted $2.58 EPS. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 13.3% compared to the same quarter last year. 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 predict that Salesforce Inc. will post 10.29 earnings per share for the current year.

Salesforce announced that its Board of Directors has initiated a share repurchase plan on Monday, March 16th that allows the company to buyback $25.00 billion in shares. This buyback authorization allows the CRM provider to reacquire up to 14.1% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares buyback plans are generally an indication that the company’s board of directors believes its stock is undervalued.

Salesforce Announces Dividend

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

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of research firms have commented on CRM. Northland Securities cut their target price 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. The Goldman Sachs Group reaffirmed a “buy” rating and issued a $281.00 target price on shares of Salesforce in a research report on Thursday, February 26th. Jefferies Financial Group reaffirmed a “buy” rating on shares of Salesforce in a research report on Monday. BMO Capital Markets cut their target price 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. Finally, Wall Street Zen raised shares of Salesforce from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Saturday, June 6th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-seven have assigned a Buy rating, nine have assigned a Hold rating and two have assigned a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $259.26.

About Salesforce

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.