Community Trust & Investment Co. Purchases 12,985 Shares of Salesforce Inc. $CRM

Community Trust & Investment Co. grew its position in shares of Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) by 11.2% in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 129,253 shares of the CRM provider’s stock after acquiring an additional 12,985 shares during the quarter. Salesforce comprises 1.0% of Community Trust & Investment Co.’s holdings, making the stock its 29th largest holding. Community Trust & Investment Co.’s holdings in Salesforce were worth $20,249,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

A number of other large investors also recently modified their holdings of CRM. Temasek Holdings Private Ltd lifted its stake in Salesforce by 3.7% during the 4th quarter. Temasek Holdings Private Ltd now owns 683,790 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $181,143,000 after acquiring an additional 24,332 shares in the last quarter. SFE Investment Counsel grew its stake in shares of Salesforce by 82.7% in the 4th quarter. SFE Investment Counsel now owns 17,394 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $4,608,000 after acquiring an additional 7,871 shares in the last quarter. Secured Retirement Advisors LLC bought a new stake in shares of Salesforce in the 1st quarter worth $1,004,000. Janus Henderson Group PLC raised its holdings in shares of Salesforce by 2.5% in the first quarter. Janus Henderson Group PLC now owns 127,739 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $23,846,000 after purchasing an additional 3,125 shares during the last quarter. Finally, TAM Capital Management Inc. bought a new position in shares of Salesforce during the first quarter valued at about $40,945,000. 80.43% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of equities research analysts have issued reports on the stock. B. Riley Financial upped their price objective on shares of Salesforce from $205.00 to $240.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Thursday, May 28th. Wolfe Research cut shares of Salesforce from an “outperform” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Wednesday, July 1st. Weiss Ratings lowered Salesforce from a “hold (c-)” rating to a “sell (d+)” rating in a report on Friday, July 24th. Monness Crespi & Hardt raised Salesforce from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $200.00 price target for the company in a research report on Thursday, June 18th. Finally, Sanford C. Bernstein dropped their price target on Salesforce from $194.00 to $173.00 and set an “underperform” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, May 28th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-five have issued a Buy rating, sixteen have assigned a Hold rating and four have issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, Salesforce presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $249.51.

Salesforce Stock Up 3.1%

CRM opened at $192.48 on Friday. The company has a quick ratio of 0.79, a current ratio of 0.79 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.15. The stock has a market cap of $157.64 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 22.28, a PEG ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 1.16. Salesforce Inc. has a twelve month low of $146.32 and a twelve month high of $269.11. The company’s 50-day moving average price is $171.23 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $183.26.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, May 27th. The CRM provider reported $3.88 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $3.13 by $0.75. The company had revenue of $11.13 billion during 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%. Salesforce’s quarterly revenue was up 13.3% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $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. As a group, equities analysts expect that Salesforce Inc. will post 10.27 earnings per share for the current year.

Salesforce Announces Dividend

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, July 2nd. Shareholders of record on Thursday, June 11th were paid a $0.44 dividend. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, June 11th. This represents a $1.76 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.9%. 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.