Salesforce Inc. $CRM Shares Bought by Swiss National Bank

Swiss National Bank lifted its stake in shares of Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) by 5.4% during the 1st quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 2,749,777 shares of the CRM provider’s stock after purchasing an additional 140,900 shares during the period. Swiss National Bank owned 0.34% of Salesforce worth $513,301,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other institutional investors have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Commonwealth Retirement Investments LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Salesforce in the 4th quarter worth $25,000. Board of the Pension Protection Fund purchased a new stake in shares of Salesforce in the fourth quarter valued at about $26,000. Key Capital Management INC purchased a new position in Salesforce during the fourth quarter worth about $26,000. Gilpin Wealth Management LLC acquired a new position in Salesforce in the 4th quarter valued at about $26,000. Finally, Legacy Bridge LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Salesforce during the 4th quarter worth approximately $27,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 80.43% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several brokerages recently weighed in on CRM. Truist Financial lowered Salesforce from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Wednesday, July 1st. Macquarie Infrastructure cut their price objective on Salesforce from $200.00 to $190.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, May 28th. Cantor Fitzgerald reaffirmed an “overweight” rating and set a $250.00 target price on shares of Salesforce in a research note on Thursday, May 28th. DA Davidson reduced their price target on shares of Salesforce from $200.00 to $175.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, May 28th. Finally, KeyCorp cut shares of Salesforce from an “overweight” rating to a “sector weight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, July 8th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-seven have given a Buy rating, fourteen have issued a Hold rating and three have assigned a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $254.42.

Salesforce Price Performance

Shares of NYSE CRM opened at $171.20 on Friday. Salesforce Inc. has a 1-year low of $146.32 and a 1-year high of $274.00. The company has a market cap of $140.21 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 19.82, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.92 and a beta of 1.18. 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 stock’s 50-day moving average is $170.64 and its two-hundred day moving average is $191.20.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, May 27th. The CRM provider reported $3.88 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $3.13 by $0.75. Salesforce had a net margin of 18.73% and a return on equity of 18.72%. The company had revenue of $11.13 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $11.05 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business posted $2.58 EPS. The firm’s revenue was up 13.3% on a year-over-year basis. Salesforce has set its FY 2027 guidance at 14.060-14.120 EPS and its Q2 2027 guidance at 3.250-3.270 EPS. Analysts forecast that Salesforce Inc. will post 10.29 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Salesforce Announces Dividend

The company 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 was Thursday, June 11th. This represents a $1.76 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.0%. Salesforce’s payout ratio is presently 20.37%.

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.