David Blair Kirk Purchases 4,176 Shares of Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) Stock

Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) Director David Blair Kirk purchased 4,176 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on 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 completion of the transaction, the director owned 18,748 shares in the company, valued at $4,486,958.84. The trade was a 28.66% increase in their ownership of the stock. The purchase was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at this hyperlink.

Salesforce Price Performance

Salesforce stock traded down $1.41 on Monday, reaching $236.51. The company’s stock had a trading volume of 10,041,556 shares, compared to its average volume of 14,037,303. The business’s fifty day moving average price is $208.91 and its 200 day moving average price is $189.22. 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 company has a market cap of $194.65 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 21.56, a PEG ratio of 1.09 and a beta of 1.20. Salesforce Inc. has a twelve month low of $146.32 and a twelve month high of $269.11.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, August 26th. The CRM provider reported $5.90 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.27 by $2.63. The business had revenue of $11.35 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $11.33 billion. Salesforce had a return on equity of 24.90% and a net margin of 21.99%.The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 10.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the business posted $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. Equities analysts expect that Salesforce Inc. will post 12.82 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Salesforce Announces Dividend

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, October 8th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, September 17th will be given a dividend of $0.44 per share. This represents a $1.76 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.7%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, September 17th. Salesforce’s dividend payout ratio is presently 16.04%.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of analysts recently commented on CRM shares. Erste Group Bank upgraded Salesforce from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, August 5th. Cantor Fitzgerald restated an “overweight” rating and issued a $300.00 price objective on shares of Salesforce in a research report on Thursday. Wedbush initiated coverage on Salesforce in a research note on Wednesday, July 1st. They set an “outperform” rating for the company. BMO Capital Markets lifted their price target on Salesforce from $250.00 to $285.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Thursday. Finally, Freedom Broker boosted their price objective on shares of Salesforce from $230.00 to $295.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Thursday. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty have assigned a Buy rating, fourteen have assigned a Hold rating and three have issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $275.14.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the business. State Street Corp raised its stake in Salesforce by 1.3% in the fourth quarter. State Street Corp now owns 50,080,230 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $13,286,909,000 after purchasing an additional 659,573 shares in the last quarter. BlackRock Inc. bought a new position in Salesforce in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $11,396,844,000. Capital International Investors grew its position in Salesforce by 13.3% during the 4th quarter. Capital International Investors now owns 22,721,010 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $6,019,199,000 after acquiring an additional 2,669,891 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its stake in shares of Salesforce by 3.8% during the fourth quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 21,782,556 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $5,751,073,000 after purchasing an additional 791,345 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Capital World Investors boosted its position in Salesforce by 13.5% during the 4th quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 19,672,684 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $5,211,515,000 after buying an additional 2,347,478 shares during the period. 80.43% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

About Salesforce

Salesforce, Inc is a cloud-based software company that provides customer relationship management (CRM) technology and related enterprise applications. Its platform helps organizations manage sales, customer service, marketing, commerce, data analytics and business operations through subscription-based software and cloud services.

The company’s product portfolio includes Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Data Cloud and the Salesforce Platform. Salesforce also offers Slack for workplace collaboration, Tableau for data visualization and analytics, MuleSoft for application integration, and artificial intelligence capabilities, including its Agentforce platform for building and deploying AI agents.

Founded in 1999, Salesforce is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and serves businesses and organizations across a broad range of industries and geographic markets worldwide.