United Asset Strategies Inc. Purchases 4,504 Shares of Salesforce Inc. $CRM

United Asset Strategies Inc. grew its holdings in Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) by 415.9% in the first quarter, HoldingsChannel.com reports. The institutional investor owned 5,587 shares of the CRM provider’s stock after acquiring an additional 4,504 shares during the period. United Asset Strategies Inc.’s holdings in Salesforce were worth $1,043,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other large investors have also recently modified their holdings of CRM. Temasek Holdings Private Ltd raised its position 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 purchasing an additional 24,332 shares in the last quarter. SFE Investment Counsel grew its holdings in shares of Salesforce by 82.7% during the fourth quarter. SFE Investment Counsel now owns 17,394 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $4,608,000 after buying an additional 7,871 shares during the last quarter. Van ECK Associates Corp increased its holdings in Salesforce by 8.9% in the 3rd quarter. Van ECK Associates Corp now owns 1,299,513 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $307,984,000 after buying an additional 106,107 shares during the period. Secured Retirement Advisors LLC purchased a new stake in Salesforce in the first quarter valued at $1,004,000. Finally, Eminence Capital LP boosted its stake in shares of Salesforce by 5.6% in the third quarter. Eminence Capital LP now owns 830,536 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $196,837,000 after buying an additional 43,888 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 80.43% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of research firms have recently commented on CRM. Sanford C. Bernstein cut their price objective on Salesforce from $194.00 to $173.00 and set an “underperform” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, May 28th. Barclays raised shares of Salesforce from an “overweight” rating to an “overweight” rating in a research note on Thursday, June 18th. Canaccord Genuity Group reissued a “buy” rating and issued a $225.00 price objective on shares of Salesforce in a report on Tuesday, June 16th. Truist Financial cut Salesforce from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Wednesday, July 1st. Finally, BTIG Research reiterated a “buy” rating and set a $255.00 price target on shares of Salesforce in a research report on Tuesday, May 26th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-eight have assigned a Buy rating, twelve have issued a Hold rating and four have issued a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, Salesforce presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $254.42.

Salesforce Stock Performance

NYSE:CRM opened at $169.41 on Wednesday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.15, a current ratio of 0.79 and a quick ratio of 0.79. The firm’s fifty day moving average price is $172.90 and its 200 day moving average price is $196.06. Salesforce Inc. has a 1-year low of $146.32 and a 1-year high of $276.80. The firm has a market cap of $138.75 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 19.61, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.03 and a beta of 1.18.

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

Salesforce Dividend Announcement

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, July 2nd. Investors of record on Thursday, June 11th were given a dividend of $0.44 per share. This represents a $1.76 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.0%. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, June 11th. Salesforce’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 20.37%.

Salesforce declared that its Board of Directors has authorized a stock buyback plan on Monday, March 16th that allows the company to repurchase $25.00 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization allows the CRM provider to repurchase up to 14.1% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock repurchase plans are generally a sign that the company’s board believes its stock is undervalued.

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.