Salesforce plunges 15.1% YTD, but stabilizing growth, surging Agentforce adoption and a lower valuation support holding the stock for now.
If ever there was a stock that personified the promise and peril of the AI trade, it's Salesforce.
Zacks.com users have recently been watching Salesforce (CRM) quite a bit. Thus, it is worth knowing the facts that could determine the stock's prospects.
CRM's expanding AI bundles drive stronger Agentforce adoption and ARR growth, as customers move from trials toward broader AI purchases.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is dismantling the competitive advantages that entire market segments have relied on for decades. Understanding where competitive moats are disappearing versus where they are being reinforced due to AI may be one of the most important questions that investors can ask right now.
Shares of Salesforce Inc (NYSE:CRM, XETRA:FOO) were up 3.2% on Wednesday after the company signed a definitive agreement to acquire Listen Labs, an AI-powered customer research and human simulation platform. Listen Labs' AI agents design studies, conduct in-depth research and synthesize insights, shrinking a process that typically takes months down to days.
Salesforce shares have shed double digits this year while Wall Street quietly revised its earnings estimates sharply higher, creating a gap between price and fundamentals that few investors are watching closely enough.
Two AI software giants both reported strong agentic bookings this summer, but they sit at opposite ends of the valuation spectrum.
At 8:36 AM ET this morning, Meta (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction) published “Meta launches enterprise platform, MongoDB CEO exits” to its newsroom, confirming it hired MongoDB (NASDAQ:MDB) CEO CJ Desai as chief enterprise platform officer.
Salesforce leveraged the SaaSpocalypse selloff to repurchase $25 billion in stock, reducing diluted shares by 10% and boosting EPS. CRM's CEO Mark Benioff signaled recently that the Anthropic stake will be used to retire ASR debt, eliminating multi-decade interest expense and preserving a strong cash-generating business. Any potential stake sale will ease concerns about CRM's financial health, reframing the 'wrecked balance sheet' narrative that has weighed on Salesforce's stock.
Salesforce shares are down nearly 10% this year, and one investor keeps scheduling purchase after purchase anyway. The reasoning comes down to a single strategic asset that every AI model will eventually need to borrow.
Wall Street spent all year convinced AI would hollow out Salesforce's business model, and every time the stock dipped, one investor kept adding to the position anyway.