Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group Inc. Reduces Holdings in Salesforce Inc. $CRM

09 Jul 2026, 07:25 by Doug Wharley · The Cerbat Gem

Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group Inc. lowered its position in shares of Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM – Free Report) by 7.0% during the first quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The firm owned 2,306,173 shares of the CRM provider’s stock after selling 172,691 shares during the quarter. Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group Inc.’s holdings in Salesforce were worth $430,493,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

Other large investors have also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Temasek Holdings Private Ltd boosted its holdings in shares of Salesforce by 3.7% in the fourth quarter. Temasek Holdings Private Ltd now owns 683,790 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $181,143,000 after acquiring an additional 24,332 shares in the last quarter. SFE Investment Counsel raised its holdings in Salesforce by 82.7% during the fourth quarter. SFE Investment Counsel now owns 17,394 shares of the CRM provider’s stock worth $4,608,000 after purchasing an additional 7,871 shares in the last quarter. Secured Retirement Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in Salesforce in the first quarter valued at about $1,004,000. Eminence Capital LP boosted its holdings in Salesforce by 5.6% in the 3rd quarter. Eminence Capital LP now owns 830,536 shares of the CRM provider’s stock valued at $196,837,000 after purchasing an additional 43,888 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Hilton Head Capital Partners LLC acquired a new position in Salesforce during the 4th quarter worth approximately $997,000. 80.43% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Salesforce Stock Performance

NYSE CRM opened at $166.60 on Thursday. Salesforce Inc. has a 1-year low of $146.32 and a 1-year high of $275.56. The company has a market capitalization of $136.44 billion, a P/E ratio of 19.28, a PEG ratio of 1.06 and a beta of 1.18. The business has a 50 day moving average price of $172.63 and a 200 day moving average price of $195.42. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.15, a current ratio of 0.79 and a quick ratio of 0.79.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM – Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, May 27th. The CRM provider reported $3.88 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $3.13 by $0.75. The firm had revenue of $11.13 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $11.05 billion. Salesforce had a return on equity of 18.72% and a net margin of 18.73%.Salesforce’s revenue was up 13.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $2.58 earnings per share. Salesforce has set its FY 2027 guidance at 14.060-14.120 EPS and its Q2 2027 guidance at 3.250-3.270 EPS. Sell-side analysts expect that Salesforce Inc. will post 10.29 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Salesforce declared that its board has authorized a stock buyback plan on Monday, March 16th that allows the company to buyback $25.00 billion in shares. This buyback authorization allows the CRM provider to repurchase up to 14.1% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback plans are generally a sign that the company’s management believes its stock is undervalued.

Salesforce Announces Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, July 2nd. Stockholders of record on Thursday, June 11th were paid a dividend of $0.44 per share. This represents a $1.76 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.1%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, June 11th. Salesforce’s payout ratio is 20.37%.

Salesforce News Roundup

Here are the key news stories impacting Salesforce this week:

Positive Sentiment: Salesforce said the U.S. Air Force is using its Missionforce National Security platform to manage a $13.5 billion vehicle fleet, a high-profile government contract that highlights demand for its software in mission-critical operations. Article Title
Positive Sentiment: Guggenheim upgraded Salesforce to Buy from Neutral and set a $228 price target, arguing the AI bear case looks overdone and suggesting meaningful upside if the market re-rates the shares. Article Title
Positive Sentiment: Salesforce also announced a $1 billion investment in Switzerland over five years to accelerate adoption of agentic AI, reinforcing its push into AI-led growth and enterprise automation. Article Title
Positive Sentiment: New commentary around Slackbot pulling CRM data, generating charts, and sending DocuSign agreements from chat messages points to deeper product integration across Salesforce’s ecosystem, which could improve stickiness and sales productivity. Article Title
Neutral Sentiment: Several articles reiterated that Salesforce remains a favored “beaten-down” software name with analyst support and potential upside, but they did not add materially new financial details beyond reinforcing the existing bullish narrative. Article Title
Negative Sentiment: Despite the positive news flow, investors are still focused on Salesforce’s heavy AI spending and margin pressure, which has kept the stock near recent lows and capped enthusiasm. Article Title

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of analysts recently weighed in on CRM shares. Monness Crespi & Hardt upgraded Salesforce from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $200.00 price target on the stock in a research note on Thursday, June 18th. Citizens Jmp reissued a “market outperform” rating and issued a $315.00 target price on shares of Salesforce in a report on Thursday, May 28th. Scotiabank lowered shares of Salesforce from a “sector outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating in a research report on Thursday, June 18th. Wolfe Research cut shares of Salesforce from an “outperform” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Wednesday, July 1st. Finally, Weiss Ratings upgraded shares of Salesforce from a “sell (d+)” rating to a “hold (c-)” rating in a report on Tuesday. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-seven have assigned a Buy rating, fourteen have issued a Hold rating and three have issued a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Salesforce currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $254.42.

Check Out Our Latest Stock Analysis on Salesforce

About Salesforce

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Salesforce, founded in 1999 and headquartered in San Francisco, is a global provider of cloud-based software focused on customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise applications. The company popularized the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model for CRM and has built a broad portfolio of products designed to help organizations manage sales, service, marketing, commerce and analytics through a unified, cloud-first platform.