4. Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 154
Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) has established itself as a leading player in cloud computing. As a top provider of both CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software platforms and enterprise collaboration tools, Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) enjoys a prominent position in the modern market.
Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE: CRM) reported a strong first quarter of fiscal year 2024. Revenue reached $8.25 billion, reflecting an 11% year-over-year increase. The company maintained a healthy operating margin of 27.6%. Moreover, the current remaining performance obligation grew 12% year-over-year to $24.1 billion, indicating strong future customer commitments.
Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) stock has an average “Moderate Buy” rating from analysts, based on 40 recommendations in the past 3 months. The average 12-month price target for Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) sits at $297.11, suggesting a potential upside of 17.19% from the current price.
Here’s what Harding Loevner said about Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) in its Q1 2024 investor letter:
“Leading software companies have the advantage of high switching costs and the ability to incorporate new features into products customers already use. For example, Microsoft has added its Copilot chatbot functionality to everything from search (Bing Chat, recently renamed to just Copilot) to coding (GitHub Copilot) and workplace applications (Copilot for Microsoft 365). Software sold by Microsoft and other companies such as Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM), SAP, and ServiceNow are also already deeply integrated into their customers’ operations and workflow.
As large enterprises search for the right balance, Salesforce’s Data Cloud, a flagship offering, is designed to address a critical issue for them so they can make better use of AI tools. After a hectic buildout over the last few years of “data warehouses” and “data lakes”—two types of repositories for storing and processing data—across the various business units of large companies, many companies are left with what feels like islands of trapped data. Data Cloud solves this by creating a single platform to access and leverage all of an enterprise’s data, eliminating the need to constantly duplicate large amounts of information across different platforms. Users are then able to apply generative-AI technology, such as Salesforce’s Einstein tool, to a more comprehensive dataset, which enables them to better glean customers’ intentions, personalize marketing messages, and automate the processing of customer-service requests. As users build these systems, Einstein’s copiloting functionality helps their programmers work more efficiently so that IT departments with limited budgets and manpower can still develop the necessary tools. Salesforce’s management projects that revenue and earnings will climb about 9% and 45%, respectively, in fiscal 2025, citing the company’s operating leverage and cost discipline. We think these figures are achievable given the renewed focus on profitable growth, and so we added to the stock during the quarter.”
At the end of Q1 2024, 154 hedge funds reported owning a stake in Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM), making it one of the best cloud computing stocks to buy now.
