74,875 Shares in Salesforce Inc. $CRM Bought by Punch & Associates Investment Management Inc.

Punch & Associates Investment Management Inc. acquired a new position in Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) in the second quarter, HoldingsChannel.com reports. The institutional investor acquired 74,875 shares of the CRM provider’s stock, valued at approximately $11,730,000.

Other hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of the company. BlackRock Inc. bought a new position in shares of Salesforce in the 2nd quarter worth about $11,396,844,000. J. Stern & Co. LLP boosted its stake in Salesforce by 24,056.7% during the fourth 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. Bank of America Corp DE bought a new stake in Salesforce during the second quarter worth about $1,914,086,000. Norges Bank purchased a new stake in Salesforce in the fourth quarter worth about $3,182,951,000. Finally, Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership grew its holdings in Salesforce by 130.2% in the first quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 12,659,217 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $2,363,096,000 after purchasing an additional 7,160,302 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 80.43% of the company’s stock.

Trending Headlines about Salesforce

Here are the key news stories impacting Salesforce this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Salesforce reported adjusted earnings of $5.90 per share, well above the $3.27 analyst consensus and up from $2.91 a year earlier. Revenue increased 10.8% year over year to $11.35 billion, narrowly exceeding estimates. Salesforce Q2 Earnings and Revenues Top Estimates
• Positive Sentiment: The company raised fiscal 2027 guidance to $46.1 billion-$46.4 billion in revenue and $16.67-$16.71 in EPS. Third-quarter guidance calls for $11.4 billion-$11.5 billion in revenue and $3.42-$3.44 in EPS, with the profit forecast above consensus. Salesforce Raises Annual Revenue Forecasts
• Positive Sentiment: Management cited momentum in AI-powered autonomous agents as a reason for increased confidence in future growth. Salesforce also recorded a roughly $2.6 billion gain on strategic investments, helped by the rising value of its Anthropic stake, boosting reported profitability. Salesforce Stock Jumps on AI Growth
• Positive Sentiment: Salesforce and Anthropic expanded their partnership through “Claudeforce,” integrating Claude with Salesforce data, workflows and governance. The offering includes prebuilt sales skills and could strengthen adoption of Salesforce’s Agentforce platform. Salesforce and Anthropic Announce Claudeforce
• Neutral Sentiment: CEO Marc Benioff rejected “SaaSpocalypse” concerns, arguing that AI is expanding rather than destroying Salesforce’s software opportunity. Investors will still look for sustained subscription growth and Agentforce monetization in coming quarters. Salesforce CEO Responds to SaaSpocalypse Concerns
• Negative Sentiment: Despite the earnings beat, quarterly revenue growth remained near 11%, so the stock’s longer-term performance depends on whether AI products produce a meaningful reacceleration rather than simply offsetting pressure on Salesforce’s core business.

Salesforce Stock Performance

Shares of CRM opened at $206.01 on Thursday. The company has a market cap of $168.72 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 23.84, a P/E/G ratio of 1.11 and a beta of 1.16. The business’s fifty day simple moving average is $177.13 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $181.60. Salesforce Inc. has a 12 month low of $146.32 and a 12 month high of $269.11. The company has a current ratio of 0.79, a quick ratio of 0.79 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.15.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, August 26th. The CRM provider reported $5.90 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $3.27 by $2.63. The firm had revenue of $11.35 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $11.33 billion. Salesforce had a return on equity of 18.72% and a net margin of 18.73%.The company’s revenue was up 10.8% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $2.91 earnings per share. Salesforce has set its FY 2027 guidance at 16.670-16.710 EPS and its Q3 2027 guidance at 3.420-3.440 EPS. Research analysts anticipate that Salesforce Inc. will post 10.27 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several research firms have recently issued reports on CRM. Susquehanna began coverage on shares of Salesforce in a report on Wednesday, July 1st. They set a “neutral” rating for the company. The Goldman Sachs Group began coverage on Salesforce in a research note on Thursday, June 18th. They set a “neutral” rating for the company. Monness Crespi & Hardt boosted their target price on Salesforce from $200.00 to $222.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Thursday, August 13th. B. Riley Financial increased their target price on Salesforce from $205.00 to $240.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Thursday, May 28th. Finally, Barclays upgraded Salesforce from an “overweight” rating to an “overweight” rating in a report on Thursday, June 18th. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-five have issued a Buy rating, seventeen have issued a Hold rating and three have assigned a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $248.72.

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.