Conning Inc. Raises Stake in Salesforce Inc. $CRM

Conning Inc. boosted its holdings in shares of Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) by 21.2% in the first quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 24,208 shares of the CRM provider’s stock after buying an additional 4,231 shares during the quarter. Conning Inc.’s holdings in Salesforce were worth $4,519,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other institutional investors and hedge funds have also bought and sold shares of CRM. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its position in Salesforce by 0.3% during the fourth 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 during the period. State Street Corp raised its stake in shares of Salesforce by 1.3% during the 4th quarter. State Street Corp now owns 50,080,230 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $13,286,909,000 after buying an additional 659,573 shares during the last quarter. J. Stern & Co. LLP lifted its holdings in shares of Salesforce by 24,056.7% in the 4th quarter. J. Stern & Co. LLP now owns 47,385,511 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $12,552,896,000 after buying an additional 47,189,352 shares during the period. Capital International Investors lifted its holdings in shares of Salesforce by 13.3% in the 4th 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 period. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its stake 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 worth $5,751,073,000 after buying an additional 791,345 shares during the last quarter. 80.43% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Salesforce Stock Performance

Shares of CRM stock opened at $163.34 on Friday. The company has a current ratio of 0.79, a quick ratio of 0.79 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.15. Salesforce Inc. has a 12-month low of $146.32 and a 12-month high of $274.00. The business’s 50 day moving average is $171.89 and its two-hundred day moving average is $194.51. The company has a market capitalization of $133.77 billion, a P/E ratio of 18.90, a P/E/G ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 1.18.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, May 27th. The CRM provider reported $3.88 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $3.13 by $0.75. Salesforce had a return on equity of 18.72% and a net margin of 18.73%.The business had revenue of $11.13 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $11.05 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted $2.58 EPS. The business’s quarterly 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 expect that Salesforce Inc. will post 10.29 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Salesforce Announces Dividend

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, July 2nd. Shareholders of record on Thursday, June 11th were given 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 yield of 1.1%. Salesforce’s dividend payout ratio is currently 20.37%.

Salesforce announced that its board has approved a share repurchase program on Monday, March 16th that authorizes the company to buyback $25.00 billion in shares. This buyback authorization authorizes the CRM provider to reacquire up to 14.1% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares buyback programs are usually a sign that the company’s leadership believes its shares are undervalued.

Key Stories Impacting 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.

Analyst Ratings Changes

CRM has been the subject of several recent research reports. Jefferies Financial Group upgraded Salesforce from a “buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, July 1st. Roth Capital restated a “buy” rating and issued a $325.00 price objective on shares of Salesforce in a research report on Thursday, May 28th. Guggenheim raised shares of Salesforce from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $228.00 price objective on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, July 1st. TD Cowen reiterated a “buy” rating on shares of Salesforce in a research note on Friday, June 12th. Finally, Royal Bank Of Canada downgraded shares of Salesforce from a “sector perform” rating to a “sector perform” rating in a report on Wednesday, July 1st. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-seven have issued a Buy rating, fourteen have assigned a Hold rating and three have given a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $254.42.

Salesforce 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.