Is salesforce.com (CRM) a Great Investment Pick?

ClearBridge Investments, an investment management firm, published its “Sustainability Leaders Strategy” fourth quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. The ClearBridge Sustainability Leaders Strategy outperformed its Russell 3000 Index benchmark during the fourth quarter. On an absolute basis, the Strategy had gains in nine of 10 sectors in which it was invested (out of 11 sectors total). The main contributors were the IT, consumer discretionary, and health care sectors. The communication services sector was the sole detractor. Spare some time to check the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a clue about their top bets for 2022.

ClearBridge Investments Sustainability Leaders Strategy, in its Q4 2021 investor letter, mentioned salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) and discussed its stance on the firm. Founded in 1999, salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) is a San Francisco, California-based cloud-based software company with a $216.6 billion market capitalization, and is currently spearheaded by its CEO, Marc Benioff. salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) delivered a -13.88% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -1.01%. The stock closed at $218.85 per share on April 04, 2022.

Here is what ClearBridge Investments Sustainability Leaders Strategy has to say about salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) in its Q4 2021 investor letter:

“We believe the weakness created an opportunity for us to add to an exceptionally high-quality payments franchise with attractive growth and free cash flow profile and little credit or interest rate exposure. It also supported our efforts to maintain diversified IT exposure in a narrowing market; additions to our software-as-a-service (SaaS) holding salesforce.com during the quarter also bolstered this diversification, in which we seek to balance exposure to more widely owned mega cap names…”

Our calculations show that salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) ranks 12th on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) was in 110 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, compared to 119 funds in the previous quarter. salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) delivered a -11.84% return in the past 3 months.

In February 2022, we published an article that includes salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) in the 10 Technology Stocks Hedge Funds Are Talking About. You can find more than 100 investor letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2021 Q4 page.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.