4. salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 119
salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) is one of the top Dow stocks to buy now, according to hedge funds. salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) is a software company from California, recognized for its cloud-based solutions. The company is a customer relationship management (CRM) service, provider. salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM)’s has applications that offer services including marketing automation, customer service, application development, and data analytics. The acquisition of Slack for $27.7 billion on July 21 was a tactical move on salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM)’s part, since it greatly contributed to the company’s profit margins.
Out of the 867 hedge funds monitored keenly by Insider Monkey as of Q3 2021, 119 funds were long salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM), up from 108 hedge funds in the previous quarter.
salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) issued its earnings report for the third quarter of 2021 on November 23. The reported EPS was $1.27, beating estimates by $0.35. The company’s revenue of $6.86 billion also exceeded the estimated revenue by $59.66 million.
Rishi Jaluria, an RBC Capital analyst, kept an Outperform rating on salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) on September 24. He raised the price target to $325 from $310. According to Jaluria, salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) is a market leader in several areas, and Dreamforce and Slack will add to its next year’s margins significantly.
RV Capital Management mentioned salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) in its Q2 2021 investor letter. Here is what they had to say:
“Part 5: A New Investment in Salesforce.com
The assertion that mega caps can also be mispriced is a good segue to our second new investment in Salesforce.com. Salesforce is one of the largest software companies in the world with a market value of around US$ 250 bn. It is best known for its customer relationship management or “CRM” solution, known as its Sales Cloud. It has three additional clouds (“Service,” “Marketing” and “Commerce”) as well as a thriving platform business with both owned and 3rd party software solutions.
I first came across Salesforce in 2013. I was invested in Bechtle, a German company that provides companies with their in-house IT. I kept hearing about a strange new concept called “the Cloud” and wanted to get up to speed on the topic in case it was a risk to Bechtle. As a result, I picked up a copy of “Behind the Cloud”. It documents how Salesforce.com pioneered cloud-based software and revolutionised the software industry.
Since then, I have followed Salesforce from a distance and visited it several times in San Francisco. I did not consider it seriously as an investment though as for much of the period, I had not yet overcome my aversion to loss-making companies.
This changed in December last year when Salesforce announced the acquisition of Slack (a former investment of the Business Owner Fund, described in my 2020 half-year letter) for US$ 27 bn. On the date of announcement, Salesforce’s market value fell by around US$ 20 bn. Effectively, the market was saying that Slack was almost worthless, which, as an enthusiastic owner of Slack, I disagreed with. Initially, I decided to keep our Slack stock and roll it into Salesforce (as part of the consideration was in Salesforce’s own stock). As Salesforce’s price fell further in the subsequent months, I bought its stock directly to make it a full-size position post the closing of the Slack acquisition…” (Click here to see the full text)
