Teachers Retirement System of The State of Kentucky Has $35.12 Million Stake in Salesforce Inc. $CRM

Teachers Retirement System of The State of Kentucky raised its stake in Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) by 44.1% in the first quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 188,165 shares of the CRM provider’s stock after acquiring an additional 57,600 shares during the quarter. Teachers Retirement System of The State of Kentucky’s holdings in Salesforce were worth $35,125,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently made changes to their positions in CRM. Temasek Holdings Private Ltd grew its position in Salesforce by 3.7% during the 4th quarter. Temasek Holdings Private Ltd now owns 683,790 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $181,143,000 after acquiring an additional 24,332 shares during the last quarter. SFE Investment Counsel raised its position in Salesforce by 82.7% in 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 during the last quarter. Secured Retirement Advisors LLC bought a new position in Salesforce in the first quarter valued at about $1,004,000. Eminence Capital LP boosted its stake in shares of Salesforce by 5.6% during the third quarter. Eminence Capital LP now owns 830,536 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $196,837,000 after purchasing an additional 43,888 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Hilton Head Capital Partners LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Salesforce during the fourth quarter valued at about $997,000. 80.43% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

CRM has been the subject of several recent research reports. HSBC upped their price objective on Salesforce from $350.00 to $356.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, May 29th. Canaccord Genuity Group reissued a “buy” rating and set a $225.00 target price on shares of Salesforce in a report on Tuesday, June 16th. BTIG Research restated a “buy” rating and issued a $255.00 price target on shares of Salesforce in a research report on Tuesday, May 26th. Sanford C. Bernstein dropped their price target on shares of Salesforce from $194.00 to $173.00 and set an “underperform” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, May 28th. Finally, Cantor Fitzgerald reaffirmed an “overweight” rating and set a $250.00 price target on shares of Salesforce in a research note on Thursday, May 28th. One analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-seven have issued a Buy rating, fourteen have given a Hold rating and three have assigned a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $254.42.

Key Salesforce News

Here are the key news stories impacting Salesforce this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Salesforce announced a $1 billion investment in Switzerland over five years to expand adoption of agentic AI, reinforcing its commitment to AI-led growth and potentially strengthening its international enterprise relationships.
• Positive Sentiment: A bullish deep-dive argued Salesforce is trading at a depressed valuation, with strong free-cash-flow generation and a large debt-funded buyback that reduced share count by more than 10%, signaling management confidence in the business.
• Neutral Sentiment: Salesforce also unveiled MCP-powered capabilities for Slackbot, which could improve product usefulness and customer engagement, but the market may need proof that these features translate into faster growth.
• Neutral Sentiment: Triveni Power Transmission’s partnership with Salesforce for customer engagement in manufacturing adds another example of industry adoption, though the near-term financial impact appears limited.
• Negative Sentiment: KeyBanc’s downgrade and slightly lower earnings forecast added to investor skepticism that Agentforce will become a major growth catalyst soon.
• Negative Sentiment: Several market commentaries highlighted that CRM has been a weak performer over the past year, and the recent pullback suggests investors remain cautious despite its lower valuation.

Salesforce Trading Up 0.0%

CRM opened at $163.34 on Monday. Salesforce Inc. has a twelve month low of $146.32 and a twelve month high of $274.00. The company has a quick ratio of 0.79, a current ratio of 0.79 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.15. The company has a fifty day moving average of $171.89 and a 200-day moving average of $194.02. The stock has a market cap of $133.77 billion, a PE ratio of 18.90, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.88 and a beta of 1.18.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, May 27th. The CRM provider reported $3.88 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.13 by $0.75. The business had revenue of $11.13 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $11.05 billion. Salesforce had a net margin of 18.73% and a return on equity of 18.72%. Salesforce’s quarterly revenue was up 13.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last 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. On average, sell-side analysts predict that Salesforce Inc. will post 10.29 EPS for the current year.

Salesforce Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, July 2nd. Stockholders of record on Thursday, June 11th were given a $0.44 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, June 11th. This represents a $1.76 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.1%. Salesforce’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 20.37%.

Salesforce announced that its board has approved a stock repurchase program 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 programs are typically a sign that the company’s board of directors believes its stock is undervalued.

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.