Pittenger & Anderson Inc. Decreases Stock Position in Salesforce Inc. $CRM

Pittenger & Anderson Inc. cut its position in Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) by 89.3% during the first quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 6,540 shares of the CRM provider’s stock after selling 54,546 shares during the period. Pittenger & Anderson Inc.’s holdings in Salesforce were worth $1,221,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Several other large investors have also recently made changes to their positions in CRM. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its holdings in Salesforce by 0.3% in the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 89,843,166 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $23,800,353,000 after purchasing an additional 270,913 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp grew its holdings in shares of Salesforce by 1.3% during the fourth quarter. State Street Corp now owns 50,080,230 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $13,286,909,000 after buying an additional 659,573 shares in the last quarter. J. Stern & Co. LLP grew its holdings in shares of 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 buying an additional 47,189,352 shares in the last quarter. Capital International Investors raised its position in shares of Salesforce by 13.3% in the fourth quarter. Capital International Investors now owns 22,721,010 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $6,019,199,000 after buying an additional 2,669,891 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC raised its position in shares of Salesforce by 3.8% in 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 buying an additional 791,345 shares during the last quarter. 80.43% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Trending Headlines about Salesforce

Here are the key news stories impacting Salesforce this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Salesforce announced a $1 billion investment in Switzerland over five years to expand adoption of agentic AI, reinforcing its commitment to AI-led growth and potentially strengthening its international enterprise relationships.
• Positive Sentiment: A bullish deep-dive argued Salesforce is trading at a depressed valuation, with strong free-cash-flow generation and a large debt-funded buyback that reduced share count by more than 10%, signaling management confidence in the business.
• Neutral Sentiment: Salesforce also unveiled MCP-powered capabilities for Slackbot, which could improve product usefulness and customer engagement, but the market may need proof that these features translate into faster growth.
• Neutral Sentiment: Triveni Power Transmission’s partnership with Salesforce for customer engagement in manufacturing adds another example of industry adoption, though the near-term financial impact appears limited.
• Negative Sentiment: KeyBanc’s downgrade and slightly lower earnings forecast added to investor skepticism that Agentforce will become a major growth catalyst soon.
• Negative Sentiment: Several market commentaries highlighted that CRM has been a weak performer over the past year, and the recent pullback suggests investors remain cautious despite its lower valuation.

Salesforce Stock Performance

Salesforce stock opened at $163.34 on Monday. The firm has a 50 day simple moving average of $171.89 and a 200-day simple moving average of $194.02. The stock has a market cap of $133.77 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 18.90, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.88 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. Salesforce Inc. has a 1-year low of $146.32 and a 1-year high of $274.00.

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

Salesforce announced that its Board of Directors has initiated a stock repurchase plan on Monday, March 16th that authorizes the company to repurchase $25.00 billion in outstanding shares. This repurchase authorization authorizes the CRM provider to purchase up to 14.1% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock repurchase plans are often an indication that the company’s management believes its shares are undervalued.

Salesforce Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, July 2nd. Stockholders of record on Thursday, June 11th were paid a $0.44 dividend. This represents a $1.76 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.1%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, June 11th. Salesforce’s dividend payout ratio is 20.37%.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of equities analysts recently weighed in on the stock. The Goldman Sachs Group began coverage on shares of Salesforce in a research report on Thursday, June 18th. They set a “neutral” rating on the stock. Daiwa Securities Group cut their price objective on shares of Salesforce from $295.00 to $280.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Tuesday, June 2nd. Wolfe Research lowered shares of Salesforce from an “outperform” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Wednesday, July 1st. Barclays upgraded Salesforce from an “overweight” rating to an “overweight” rating in a report on Thursday, June 18th. Finally, Royal Bank Of Canada lowered Salesforce from a “sector perform” rating to a “sector perform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, July 1st. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-seven have issued a Buy rating, fourteen have given a Hold rating and three have issued a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $254.42.

Salesforce Company 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.