Shares in Salesforce Inc. (CRM) stock are up after receiving a buy rating from analysts at Goldman Sachs last week. The software company saw its Q1 earnings beat expectations, but shares fell shortly afterwards. It appears that Wall Street doesn’t see that happening for Q2 earnings, forecasting the stock to rebound. Indeed, Goldman Sachs maintained its $385 price target and Buy rating on Salesforce, Inc. in response to the company’s Agentforce 3.0 launch.
Goldman Sachs claims that transparency, compatibility, and time-to-value are all significantly improved by the new Agentforce platform. The bank also praises Salesforce for expanding its adoption paths by introducing roughly 100 prebuilt actions with usage-based cost at $0.10 per action and an unlimited-use license for internal agents. Additionally, Salesforce grew its net income at a significant rate of 26% in the last five years, a promising number despite a low return on equity.
Furthermore, Salesforce (CRM) CEO Marc Benioff gave a very pro-AI insight into the company’s future in an interview with Bloomberg last week. Benioff described the rise of artificial intelligence as a ‘digital labor revolution’, and stated that it accounts for between 30% to 50% of the work at Salesforce. The company laid off roughly 1,000 staff in February but simultaneously beefed up its AI sales force around products like Agentforce. Meanwhile, Data Cloud and Agentforce’s annualized recurring revenue has topped $1 billion, up 120% year-over-year, with 4,000 paying customersevidence that Benioff’s internal AI playbook is resonating externally.
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Currently, CRM is trading near the bottom of its 52-week range and below its 200-day simple moving average. CRM is most likely to perform in line with market averages over the next 12 months, according to CNN analysts. Its market cap is competing with some of the top companies in the technological services and software sector. CNN analysts are bullish, projecting Salesforce CRM stock to climb as much as 60% in the next 12 months. Out of 58 analysts surveyed at the firm, 81% suggest buying the stock now.