Wells Fargo’s Best Growth Stocks: 28 Stocks With The Highest Consensus EPS Growth Estimates

13. Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM)

Consensus Long-Term EPS Growth Estimate: 18%

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 117

Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is a customer relationship management software provider. A software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, its hypothesis depends on keeping margins high and earning stable recurring revenue through sizable contracts. The firm’s shares have demonstrated mixed-bag performance in 2024. From the start of the year to November 5th, they had delivered a modest 16% in gains. Since then, the shares have gained 9.33% to increase the year-to-date performance to 27%. Since Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is a CRM provider, it has benefited from introducing AI into its product mix. Its AI product Agentforce has enabled businesses to increase customer responses and handle billing among other tasks. Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) also benefits from providing customers with a use-based model as opposed to a seat-based model, with use-based charging customers only when the product is used. The firm is also one of the biggest customer relationship management software providers as it commanded a 21.7% market share in 2023.

Polen Capital mentioned Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) in its Q3 2024 investor letter. Here is what the fund said:

“In the third quarter, we purchased new positions in Apple and Oracle and eliminated our small positions in Nike and Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM). We exited our position in Salesforce to fund better opportunities in Shopify and MSCI. Salesforce is seeing slower revenue growth than we would have expected, given the weakening macroeconomic environment. Furthermore, since its core end markets in customer relationship management (“CRM”) and Service are fairly mature, a lower growth level versus our expectations could persist for some time.”