Salesforce’s (CRM) stock price has started to rise again as the company bounces back from a challenging start to the year.
The cloud software business delivered robust second-quarter earnings that beat many analysts’ expectations.
Analysts believe CRM shares could rise further over the coming months, especially if its new Agentforce AI platform is successful.
In our Salesforce stock forecast for 2024 and 2025, we examine the company’s latest earnings results and reveal the CRM price target of Wall Street analysts for the coming year.
We also look at the outlook for salesforce stock over the next five years to gauge whether it’s a stock that investors should consider holding in their portfolios.
Key Takeaways
- Second quarter results came in ahead of many analysts’ expectations.
- CRM stock price hit an all-time high in March but is now trading 21% lower.
- Salesforce management is excited about its Agentforce AI platform launch.
- The company declared its first-ever dividend earlier this year.
- Wall Street analysts believe CRM stock price could rise almost 23%.
- Show Full Guide
Summary of the Latest Salesforce Stock Predictions
Salesforce Stock Forecast (as of September 4, 2024) |
1-Year Forecast | 2027 (January) | 5-Year Forecast (August 2029) |
---|---|---|---|
MarketBeat | $304.41 | – | – |
WalletInvestor | $260.64 | $268.35 | $289.80 |
TipRanks | $305.37 | – | – |
CoinCodex | $297.92
(Jan 2025) |
$429.36 | $742.87
(Jan 2030) |
Salesforce Stock Analysis
It’s fair to say that Salesforce’s stock price has been on quite a journey in 2024, and how long investors have held CRM shares will dictate whether it’s been a positive or negative year.
The CRM stock price stood at $256.13 at the start of January 2024 and then rose 23% to an all-time high closing price of $315.96 on March 1, 2024.
However, those gains started ebbing away before disappointing first-quarter results saw the Salesforce stock price tumble 20% from $271.62 to $218.01.
The stock then started to recover, and by the time the better-than-expected second-quarter results were announced in late August 2024, it had risen 21% to $263.52.
Although CRM stock slipped to $248.06 as the market closed on September 3, 2024, this is still 13% higher than the $218.69 level it was a year ago.
The Latest Salesforce News & Key Drivers to Consider
Second Quarter Results
The latest Salesforce news concerns its financial results that beat many analysts’ expectations after a challenging start of 2024.
The company recently announced revenue of $9.33 billion for the second quarter of fiscal year 2025 (ending July 31, 2024), which was 8% up year-over-year.
It also said the GAAP operating margin was 19.11%, while second-quarter operating cash flow was up 10% year-over-year to $0.89 billion.
The period also saw $4.3 billion returned to stockholders in the form of share repurchases and $0.4 billion in dividend payments.
In a statement, Marc Benioff, the Salesforce chair and chief executive, said: “In Q2, we delivered strong performance across revenue, cash flow, margin and cRPO, and raised our fiscal year non-GAAP operating margin and cash flow growth guidance.”
Is Agentforce the Key to Salesforce Success?
The Salesforce stock expectations of the company’s management are closely aligned with their expectations of Agentforce, its new AI product.
Benioff said:
“With our new Agentforce AI platform, we’re reimagining enterprise software for a new world where humans with autonomous Agents drive customer success together. Salesforce is the only company with the leading apps, trusted data and agent-first platform to deliver this vision at scale and help companies realize the incredible benefits of AI.”
In a separate post on X, Benioff declared that the new service would enable anyone to “create, test, and scale” custom generative AI Agents. He stated: “The future of AI Agent and App Dev is in your hands!”
Build your own Gen AI Agents with Salesforce’s new Agentforce platform—anyone can create, test, and scale custom Gen AI Agents using our unique Einstein1 low-code platform—deeply integrated with our Einstein1 platform. The future of AI Agent and App Dev is in your hands!
With… pic.twitter.com/h8vbbQT0WE
— Marc Benioff (@Benioff) August 12, 2024
In his latest note, Dan Romanoff, senior equity analyst at Morningstar, highlighted the enthusiasm of Salesforce towards Agentforce.
“We think it represents a good long-term opportunity to transition from a mostly human agent labor force to a mostly virtual agent pool over time,” he said.
Future Guidance
Salesforce gave revenue guidance of $9.31 billion to $9.36 billion for the upcoming third quarter of the year.
It also reaffirmed that the total revenue figure for the full year 2025 should be between $37.7 billion and $38 billion.
In a statement, Amy Weaver, Salesforce president and chief financial officer, said the company’s capital return program remained a priority.
“We continue to deliver disciplined profitable growth and this quarter, operating margins closed at record highs with GAAP operating margin of 19.1%, up 190 basis points year-over-year,” she said.
All Change: Amy Weaver Steps Down
Amy Weaver, the president and chief financial officer of Salesforce, is stepping down “after nearly 11 wonderful years” at the company. However, she will remain as an advisor to the company.
She wrote in a Linkedin post:
“My time at Salesforce has been an incredible experience – from joining as General Counsel, to leading the legal and corporate affairs teams, to taking the truly unprecedented step to jump over to become CFO.”
Weaver also expressed gratitude for Marc Benioff’s “expansive vision” for her career and said she was excited about her next chapter and the new opportunities ahead.
She added: “I’ll be at the company while we conduct an internal and external search so no goodbyes for now!”
In a statement, Benioff praised Weaver as “an incredible executive” who had led many of the company’s most important strategic and operational initiatives.
He said: “Among her many contributions, Amy oversaw our successful financial transformation over the past several years – which has resulted in unprecedented margin expansion, increased operational excellence, and financial discipline across our organization.”
Salesforce Stock Forecast: Analyst Views
Crucial to any Salesforce stock outlook are the views of analysts and industry observers covering the stock and the broader sector.
Here we take a look at the Salesforce stock forecast of these individuals as they can be used by retail investors to help form an opinion on the company.
Dan Romanoff, senior equity analyst at Morningstar, has increased his fair value Salesforce price target to $290 per share from $285.
In his Salesforce share price forecast on August 29, 2024, he wrote:
“Macroeconomic conditions continue to weigh on growth, even as the company delivered upside relative to our expectations on both the top and bottom lines.”
He also noted the continuation of recent trends, with “multicloud deals and vertical domain sales” driving relative strength compared with expectations.
“We see some upside to shares still, but the window has narrowed over the last three months,” he added as he shares his view on Salesforce’s expected stock price.
Romanoff pointed out that revenue has “rebounded nicely” from last quarter’s sluggishness.
“Strength was evenly distributed across solutions, with multicloud performing well and certain verticals, such as health and life sciences, and communications and media, also providing resiliency,” he said.
Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, said Salesforce had “enthused investors” with its latest earnings beat, which has led to a profit upgrade.
She told Techopedia:
“It’s the world’s largest customer relationship management platform and so it has a deep well of company data to leverage.”
“Although the economic landscape is still uncertain for its customers, and may continue to hold back sales growth to some extent, the business is still in a good position to benefit from new AI advancements.
“It’s estimated that around 75% of the benefits from AI will come from front-office tasks like customer operations and marketing, areas where Salesforce has a dominant position.”
According to Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell, the company is upbeat about its future prospects.
She told Techopedia:
“It’s been a slow burn, but Salesforce is bullish that it’s on the cusp of turning AI hype into AI reality thanks to its Agentforce platform.”
Hewson believes the service could deliver the kind of sales growth that has been lacking in the company, which has matured into a solid workhorse.
“But solid isn’t sexy in a tech world that’s been seduced by the sparkle of AI magic and investors will be watching to see if the hype lives up to the reality,” she added.
Salesforce Stock Predictions for 2024, 2025 & 2030
So, is Salesforce a buy, hold, or sell?
The CRM stock is rated a “moderate buy,” according to the Salesforce stock predictions of 35 Wall Street analysts compiled by MarketBeat as of September 4, 2024.
However, opinions vary.
While 26 have ‘buy’ recommendations in place, and one sees it as a ‘strong buy,’ eight analysts view it as a ‘hold.’
Their consensus is that the price could rise 22.72% to $304.41 over the coming year, although predictions ranged from $236 to $365.
It was a similarly mixed outlook from the 35 analysts’ opinions put together by TipRanks. While 26 believe the stock is a ‘buy,’ eight classify it as a ‘hold’ and one as a ‘sell.’
Their consensus Salesforce stock forecast is that the price could reach $305.37 over the next 12 months. This would be a 23.10% increase over the $248.06 closing price on September 3, 2024.
The following table shows the latest analysts’ Salesforce future stock price predictions as of August 30, 2024.
Date | Analyst Firm | Action | Rating Change | Price Target | Percentage Change |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
8/30/2024 | Phillip Securities | Reiterated Rating | Buy ? Accumulate | $305.00 | +20.72% |
8/30/2024 | Truist Financial | Reiterated Rating | Buy ? Buy | $300.00?
$300.00 |
+17.74% |
8/29/2024 | Wedbush | Reiterated Rating | Outperform ? Outperform | $315.00?
$315.00 |
+21.64% |
8/29/2024 | Sanford C. Bernstein | Boost Target | Outperform ? Outperform | $234.00 ? $236.00 | -8.87% |
8/29/2024 | TD Cowen | Boost Target | Hold ? Hold | $285.00 ? $290.00 | +11.12% |
8/29/2024 | Roth Mkm | Reiterated Rating | Buy ? Buy | $335.00 ? $335.00 | +28.58% |
8/29/2024 | Stifel Nicolaus | Boost Target | Buy ? Buy | $300.00 ? $320.00 | +24.25% |
8/29/2024 | DA Davidson | Boost Target | Neutral ? Neutral | $230.00 ? $250.00 | -2.93% |
8/29/2024 | Canaccord Genuity Group | Boost Target | Buy ? Buy | $300.00 ? $315.00 | +22.31% |
Source: MarketBeat
So, where will the CRM stock price go further?
Wallet Investor’s algorithmic forecast is less optimistic. In its Salesforce stock forecast 2025 it suggests that the price will only nudge up 5% to $260.64 over the coming year.
As far as a Salesforce stock forecast 2030 is concerned, Coincodex has the CRM price reaching $742.87 by the beginning of 2030, based on its previous average yearly growth.
Note that analysts’ and algorithm-based projections might prove to be wrong and analysts usually refrain from giving Salesforce stock long-term forecasts.
The Bottom Line: Should I Invest in Salesforce?
A decision as to whether or not you should invest in the company after reading our Salesforce stock prediction 2025 will depend on your views of the company’s prospects.
The consensus Salesforce stock projections of 35 Wall Street analysts is that the CRM price could rise 22.72% to $304.41 over the coming year, according to MarketBeat.
However, CRM predictions ranged enormously. While the most pessimistic warned that the price could slip to $236, the most optimistic believe it could go as high as $365.
Of course, analysts can be wrong. Our Salesforce stock forecast also illustrates what can happen to the stock price of even profitable businesses when expectations are too high.
The CRM stock has taken investors on something of a rollercoaster this year and a lot will depend on the success of Agentforce, its soon-to-be-launched AI platform.
Do your own research and always remember your investment decision depends on your attitude to risk, your expertise in the stock market, the spread of your portfolio, and how comfortable you feel about losing money.
The information in this article does not constitute investment advice and is meant for informational purposes only.
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References
- Salesforce – 20 Year Stock Price History | CRM | MacroTrends (Macrotrends)
- Salesforce Announces Second Quarter Fiscal 2025 Results (S23.q4cdn)
- Amy Weaver Bio | Salesforce US (Salesforce)
- Amy Weaver on LinkedIn: Today, Salesforce announced our Q2 earnings with beats across revenue… | 569 comments (Linkedin)
- Salesforce (CRM) Stock Forecast and Price Target 2024 (Marketbeat)
- Salesforce (CRM) Stock Forecast, Price Targets and Analysts Predictions – TipRanks.com (Tipranks)
- Salesforce Stock Forecast: up to 260.645 USD! – CRM Stock Price Prediction, Long-Term & Short-Term Share Revenue Prognosis with Smart Technical Analysis (Walletinvestor)
- Salesforce (CRM) Stock Forecast & Price Prediction 2025, 2030 | CoinCodex (Coincodex)