Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) Stock Jumps 1.8% Following Analyst Upgrade

Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) shares were up 1.8% on Tuesday after Bank of America upgraded the stock from an underperform rating to a buy rating. Bank of America now has a $285.00 price target on the stock, up from their previous price target of $160.00. Salesforce traded as high as $245.06 and last traded at $238.1370. 8,801,394 shares were traded during trading, a decline of 35% from the average session volume of 13,637,842 shares. The stock had previously closed at $233.92.

CRM has been the topic of several other reports. BMO Capital Markets increased their target price on shares of Salesforce from $250.00 to $285.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Thursday, September 17th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised their target price on Salesforce from $250.00 to $265.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Thursday, August 27th. Wall Street Zen cut Salesforce from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Saturday, August 1st. Scotiabank downgraded Salesforce from a “sector outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating in a research note on Thursday, June 18th. Finally, DA Davidson set a $225.00 price target on Salesforce in a research note on Thursday, September 17th. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-one have assigned a Buy rating, thirteen have assigned a Hold rating and three have given a Sell rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $278.12.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In related news, Director David Blair Kirk purchased 4,176 shares of Salesforce stock in a transaction on Friday, September 18th. The stock was purchased at an average cost of $239.33 per share, with a total value of $999,442.08. Following the acquisition, the director directly owned 18,748 shares in the company, valued at approximately $4,486,958.84. This trade represents a 28.66% increase in their ownership of the stock. The acquisition was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. Also, Director Craig Conway sold 4,500 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Friday, September 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $260.61, for a total transaction of $1,172,745.00. Following the completion of the sale, the director owned 5,437 shares in the company, valued at $1,416,936.57. This represents a 45.29% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Insiders own 3.50% of the company’s stock.

Trending Headlines about Salesforce

Here are the key news stories impacting Salesforce this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Bank of America upgraded Salesforce from Underperform to Buy and raised its price target to $285 from $160. The rare double upgrade reflects BofA’s view that AI can deepen customer reliance on Salesforce’s enterprise software platform and support stronger demand. Salesforce Just Got a Rare Double Upgrade—What Changed?
• Positive Sentiment: Salesforce agreed to acquire Loops, an AI-powered analytics platform, for approximately $30 million. Loops is expected to strengthen Tableau and Slack by proactively identifying business trends, explaining anomalies and recommending actions. The deal supports Salesforce’s strategy of embedding agentic AI into customer workflows and is expected to close in November. Salesforce to buy AI-powered analytics platform Loops
• Positive Sentiment: Agentforce adoption and shareholder returns are supporting the investment case. Recent coverage cited Agentforce annual recurring revenue above $1.5 billion, remaining performance obligations of roughly $33.5 billion and Salesforce’s $25 billion share-repurchase program. These factors could improve revenue visibility and earnings per share while the company shifts toward usage-based AI pricing. Bear to bull: A double upgrade of Salesforce
• Positive Sentiment: Salesforce expanded its partnership with DocuSign. DocuSign’s Intelligent Agreement Management platform will be integrated natively across Salesforce, Agentforce and Slack, potentially increasing platform functionality and customer stickiness. DocuSign and Salesforce launch intelligent agreement management
• Neutral Sentiment: Salesforce’s latest quarterly results showed a substantial earnings beat and approximately 10.8% year-over-year revenue growth, but investors continue to debate whether AI adoption will translate into sustained organic revenue acceleration rather than simply offset pressure on traditional software seats. Q2 Earnings Highs and Lows: Salesforce vs. the Rest of the Sales Software Stocks
• Negative Sentiment: Risks include Loops integration and monetization uncertainty, elevated short interest, and concerns that AI could cannibalize seat-based software demand. Investors will look for evidence that Agentforce and the Loops technology generate durable subscription growth.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Large investors have recently modified their holdings of the company. Crumly & Associates Inc. increased its stake in Salesforce by 1.5% in the third quarter. Crumly & Associates Inc. now owns 3,396 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $780,000 after acquiring an additional 50 shares during the period. HBW Advisory Services LLC raised its position in Salesforce by 0.4% in the first quarter. HBW Advisory Services LLC now owns 13,098 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $2,445,000 after purchasing an additional 57 shares in the last quarter. Prentice Wealth Management LLC raised its position in Salesforce by 1.8% in the first quarter. Prentice Wealth Management LLC now owns 3,274 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $611,000 after purchasing an additional 58 shares in the last quarter. Focused Wealth Management Inc raised its position in Salesforce by 5.5% in the first quarter. Focused Wealth Management Inc now owns 1,126 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $210,000 after purchasing an additional 59 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Strata Wealth Advisors LLC lifted its stake in Salesforce by 4.3% during the first quarter. Strata Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 1,442 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $269,000 after purchasing an additional 59 shares during the period. 80.43% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Salesforce Trading Up 1.8%

The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.02, a current ratio of 0.84 and a quick ratio of 0.84. The business’s 50 day simple moving average is $227.50 and its 200 day simple moving average is $193.27. The stock has a market cap of $195.99 billion, a P/E ratio of 21.71, a PEG ratio of 1.05 and a beta of 1.26.

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

Salesforce Announces Dividend

The business also recently declared 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 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.7%. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, September 17th. Salesforce’s dividend payout ratio is 16.04%.

Salesforce Company Profile

Salesforce, Inc (NYSE: CRM) develops cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) software and enterprise applications. Its platform helps organizations manage sales, customer service, marketing, commerce, analytics, data integration and collaboration through subscription-based services.

The company’s product portfolio includes Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Salesforce Platform, Data Cloud and Tableau. Salesforce also offers MuleSoft integration technology, Slack collaboration software and artificial intelligence capabilities through its Einstein platform.