Salesforce Inc. $CRM Position Lifted by M&G PLC

M&G PLC raised its position in shares of Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) by 6.6% in the third quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The fund owned 515,996 shares of the CRM provider’s stock after buying an additional 31,928 shares during the quarter. M&G PLC’s holdings in Salesforce were worth $118,679,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Fluent Financial LLC acquired a new position in Salesforce in the second quarter worth $2,265,000. TAM Capital Management Inc. bought a new stake in Salesforce during the first quarter valued at $40,945,000. Janus Henderson Group PLC raised its holdings in shares of Salesforce by 2.5% during the first quarter. Janus Henderson Group PLC now owns 127,739 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $23,846,000 after purchasing an additional 3,125 shares during the period. Anchor Investment Management LLC raised its holdings in shares of Salesforce by 184.5% during the second quarter. Anchor Investment Management LLC now owns 17,983 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $2,817,000 after purchasing an additional 11,663 shares during the period. Finally, Next Capital Management LLC bought a new position in shares of Salesforce in the 1st quarter worth about $2,119,000. 80.43% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Salesforce Stock Up 0.5%

Shares of CRM stock opened at $214.62 on Tuesday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.02, a quick ratio of 0.84 and a current ratio of 0.84. The business’s fifty day moving average is $238.69 and its 200-day moving average is $198.60. Salesforce Inc. has a 1 year low of $146.32 and a 1 year high of $269.11. The stock has a market cap of $176.63 billion, a PE ratio of 19.56, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.03 and a beta of 1.24.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, August 26th. The CRM provider reported $5.90 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.27 by $2.63. Salesforce had a net margin of 21.99% and a return on equity of 24.90%. The firm had revenue of $11.35 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $11.33 billion. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $2.91 EPS. The company’s revenue was up 10.8% on a year-over-year basis. Salesforce has set its FY 2027 guidance at 16.670-16.710 EPS and its Q3 2027 guidance at 3.420-3.440 EPS. Equities analysts expect that Salesforce Inc. will post 12.82 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Salesforce Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, October 8th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, September 17th were given a $0.44 dividend. This represents a $1.76 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.8%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, September 17th. Salesforce’s payout ratio is currently 16.04%.

Insider Activity at Salesforce

In other news, Director Craig Conway sold 4,500 shares of the stock in a transaction on Friday, September 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $260.61, for a total transaction of $1,172,745.00. Following the transaction, the director owned 5,437 shares in the company, valued at $1,416,936.57. This represents a 45.29% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, Director David Blair Kirk purchased 4,176 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, September 18th. The shares were acquired at an average price of $239.33 per share, for a total transaction of $999,442.08. Following the acquisition, the director directly owned 18,748 shares in the company, valued at $4,486,958.84. This represents a 28.66% increase in their position. Additional details regarding this purchase are available in the official SEC disclosure. Insiders own 3.50% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of brokerages have commented on CRM. UBS Group restated a “buy” rating on shares of Salesforce in a research note on Friday, September 11th. Wells Fargo & Company cut Salesforce from a “buy” rating to a “strong sell” rating in a research report on Monday, October 12th. Bank of America raised Salesforce from an “underperform” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their price target for the stock from $160.00 to $285.00 in a report on Monday, October 12th. Sanford C. Bernstein restated an “outperform” rating on shares of Salesforce in a research report on Thursday, August 27th. Finally, Weiss Ratings upgraded Salesforce from a “hold (c-)” rating to a “hold (c)” rating in a research note on Thursday, September 24th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-two have assigned a Buy rating, thirteen have assigned a Hold rating and three have assigned a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $278.98.

Salesforce Company Profile

Salesforce, Inc is a cloud-based software company best known for customer relationship management (CRM) tools. Its platform helps businesses manage sales, customer service, marketing, commerce and customer data, and includes products such as Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Data Cloud and Agentforce.

The company also offers Slack for workplace collaboration, Tableau for data analytics and visualization, and MuleSoft for connecting applications and data. Salesforce’s products are used by organizations across a range of industries and are available to customers around the world.

Founded in 1999 by Marc Benioff and other co-founders, Salesforce is headquartered in San Francisco.