Salesforce, Inc. (CRM) - Company Research

Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE: CRM) is the world's largest customer relationship management (CRM) software company and positions itself as the "#1 AI CRM," delivering cloud-based applications for sales, service, marketing, commerce, analytics, integration and collaboration (Slack), now wrapped around its Agentforce agentic-AI platform and Data 360. For fiscal 2026 (year to 31 January 2026) the company reported revenue of $41.5bn, GAAP operating income of $8.331bn (a 20.1% GAAP operating margin) and free cash flow of $14.4bn, with GAAP diluted EPS of $7.80 (revenue, net income and EPS per the FY2026 10-K, filed 2026-03-02; operating income per EDGAR XBRL OperatingIncomeLoss; FCF per yfinance annual financials, pulled 2026-05-31). On 27 May 2026 Salesforce reported record first-quarter fiscal 2027 results: revenue of $11.1bn (+13% year over year) and GAAP diluted EPS of $2.42 (+52%). The shares trade at $191.10, within a 52-week range of $163.52 to $276.80 (per yfinance, pulled 2026-05-31). The next earnings report (Q2 FY2027) is expected in early September 2026.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Name	Salesforce, Inc.
Ticker / Exchange	CRM / New York Stock Exchange
Sector / Industry	Technology / Application Software (per yfinance)
Market cap	$156.5bn (per yfinance, pulled 2026-05-31)
Enterprise value	$187.2bn (per yfinance, pulled 2026-05-31)
FY2026 revenue	$41.525bn (per the FY2026 10-K, filed 2026-03-02)
FY2026 operating income (EDGAR XBRL)	$8.331bn GAAP (per EDGAR XBRL OperatingIncomeLoss; yfinance reports $8.917bn, which excludes restructuring)
FY2026 free cash flow	$14.402bn (operating cash flow $14.996bn less capex $0.594bn, per yfinance annual financials)
Gross margin	77.6% (per yfinance, TTM)
Net margin	18.7% (per yfinance, TTM)
Employees	approximately 83,000 (per yfinance, pulled 2026-05-31)
CEO	Marc Benioff, Chair & Chief Executive Officer (co-founder)
Headquarters	Salesforce Tower, 415 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94105, USA
Website	https://www.salesforce.com
Fiscal year-end	31 January
Next earnings	Early September 2026 — Q2 FY2027 (date not yet confirmed)
Dividend yield	0.92% (per yfinance, pulled 2026-05-31)
52-week high	$276.80 (per yfinance, pulled 2026-05-31)
52-week low	$163.52 (per yfinance, pulled 2026-05-31)
Short interest	62.7m shares short; short ratio 5.0 days (per yfinance, pulled 2026-05-31)

2. Bull Case vs Bear Case

Bull Case

• Growth re-accelerated in Q1 FY2027. Per the Q1 FY2027 earnings release (27 May 2026), revenue grew 13% year over year to $11.1bn and current remaining performance obligation (cRPO) rose 14% to $33.6bn, an acceleration aided by Agentforce, Data 360, Slack and the Informatica acquisition ($444m of Q1 revenue).

• AI products are scaling into real revenue. Per the Q1 FY2027 earnings release (27 May 2026), Agentforce annual recurring revenue (ARR) reached $1.2bn, up 205% year over year, and combined AI and Data ARR reached approximately $3.4bn, up over 200%, evidencing early monetisation of the agentic-AI strategy.

• Margins and cash flow keep expanding. Per the Q1 FY2027 earnings release (27 May 2026), non-GAAP operating margin hit a record 34.8% (GAAP 21.1%), and FY2026 free cash flow was $14.4bn (per yfinance annual financials), funding large buybacks.

• Aggressive capital returns. Per the Q1 FY2027 earnings release (27 May 2026), Salesforce returned $27.5bn to shareholders in the quarter, including a new $25bn accelerated share repurchase that delivered 103m shares upfront, plus $365m of dividends.

• Durable subscription base with high gross margins. Per the FY2026 10-K (filed 2026-03-02), subscription & support revenue was $39.4bn of $41.5bn total (95%), at a company gross margin of 77.6% (per yfinance), underpinning predictable, recurring cash generation.

Bear Case

• Headline revenue growth has slowed to low-double-digits. Per the FY2026 10-K (filed 2026-03-02), FY2026 revenue grew 10% to $41.525bn (FY2025: $37.895bn), well below Salesforce's historical 20%+ rates; much of the Q1 FY2027 acceleration was acquisition-aided.

• Growth is increasingly bought, not organic. Per the Q1 FY2027 earnings release (27 May 2026), Informatica contributed $444m of Q1 revenue, and management guided that acquisitions add several points to FY2027 growth; the $25bn buyback was funded partly by a $25bn debt issuance.

• Balance-sheet leverage has risen. Per the FY2026 10-K (filed 2026-03-02), total debt rose to $17.2bn (FY2025: $11.4bn), and per yfinance the current ratio is 0.79 and debt-to-equity 124%, reflecting the debt-funded ASR.

• Intense competition across every product line. Per the FY2026 10-K (Item 1A, filed 2026-03-02), Salesforce competes with much larger platform vendors (including Microsoft and Oracle) and specialised rivals, with AI lowering switching barriers in some categories.

• The stock has de-rated over the past year. Per yfinance (pulled 2026-05-31), the shares sit at $191.10 versus a 52-week high of $276.80, a decline of roughly 31% from the high that reflects investor caution on the growth trajectory.

3. What Does Salesforce Actually Do?

Salesforce sells cloud-based enterprise software on a subscription basis, organised around customer-facing "clouds" and a common platform. Revenue by service offering (the company renamed several offerings around Agentforce in Q3 FY2026) is shown below (per the FY2026 10-K, filed 2026-03-02; $m).

Service offering	FY2025	FY2026	YoY
Sales	8,322	9,028	+8%
Service	9,054	9,818	+8%
Agentforce 360 Platform, Slack and Other	7,247	8,882	+23%
Agentforce Marketing and Agentforce Commerce	5,281	5,428	+3%
Agentforce Integration and Agentforce Analytics	5,775	6,232	+8%
Subscription & support (total)	35,679	39,388	+10%
Professional services & other	2,216	2,137	-4%
Total revenue	37,895	41,525	+10%

In plain English: Sales and Service clouds are Salesforce's core CRM applications for managing sales pipelines and customer support. The Agentforce 360 Platform, Slack and Other line bundles the low-code app platform, the Slack collaboration tool and the Agentforce agentic-AI layer. Marketing and Commerce covers campaign and e-commerce tools, while Integration and Analytics covers MuleSoft (integration), Tableau (analytics) and, increasingly, Data 360/Informatica data management. Across all of these, the strategic thrust is Agentforce — autonomous AI "agents" embedded across the product suite.

Geographic split (per the FY2026 10-K, filed 2026-03-02; $m): Americas $27,193 (FY2025: $25,143), Europe $10,017 (FY2025: $8,891), and Asia Pacific $4,315 (FY2025: $3,861). The Americas remain roughly two-thirds of revenue.

4. The Business Model

Salesforce operates a subscription software-as-a-service (SaaS) model: customers pay recurring fees, typically multi-year, for access to its clouds, with pricing by user (seat) and increasingly by AI consumption. Per the FY2026 10-K (filed 2026-03-02), 95% of revenue is subscription & support ($39.4bn of $41.5bn), which produces high visibility — remaining performance obligation (RPO) was $67.9bn and current RPO $33.6bn at the end of Q1 FY2027 (per the Q1 FY2027 earnings release, 27 May 2026).

The moat rests on switching costs (CRM is deeply embedded in customers' sales and service workflows and data), a large partner/app ecosystem (AppExchange), and a broad, integrated product suite that is hard to replicate. Distribution is direct enterprise sales supplemented by consulting partners and resellers. Unit economics are attractive: a 77.6% gross margin (per yfinance), a GAAP operating margin of 20.1% in FY2026 rising toward a non-GAAP 34.8% in Q1 FY2027 (per the Q1 FY2027 earnings release, 27 May 2026), and free cash flow of $14.4bn in FY2026 (per yfinance). Growth is delivered through new product attach (cross-sell of additional clouds), price/seat expansion, AI consumption, and acquisitions (most recently Informatica). Capital is returned aggressively via buybacks and a dividend introduced in FY2025.

5. Financial Health

Five-year trend (fiscal years to 31 January; $bn unless stated). Operating income is the GAAP figure per EDGAR XBRL; revenue, net income and diluted EPS per EDGAR/the 10-K; FCF per yfinance.

Metric	FY2022	FY2023	FY2024	FY2025	FY2026
Revenue	26.49	31.35	34.86	37.90	41.53
Operating income (GAAP, EDGAR)	0.55	1.03	5.01	7.21	8.33
Net income	1.44	0.21	4.14	6.20	7.46
Diluted EPS ($)	1.48	0.21	4.20	6.36	7.80
Free cash flow	not disclosed	6.31	9.50	12.43	14.40

Source: revenue/operating income/net income/diluted EPS per EDGAR XBRL and the FY2026 10-K (filed 2026-03-02); FCF per yfinance annual financials (pulled 2026-05-31).

Balance sheet (fiscal year-ends; $bn):

Metric	FY2023	FY2024	FY2025	FY2026
Cash & short-term investments	12.51	14.19	14.03	9.57
Total debt	14.09	12.59	11.39	17.18
Total stockholders' equity	58.36	59.65	61.17	59.14
Shares outstanding (period-end, bn)	0.981	0.971	0.962	0.929
Share repurchases ($bn)	4.00	7.62	7.83	12.60

Source: yfinance annual financials (pulled 2026-05-31).

Quarterly trend (last five quarters; GAAP; $bn except EPS):

Quarter (period end)	Revenue	Operating income	Net income	Diluted EPS ($)
Q1 FY2026 (30 Apr 2025)	9.829	1.942	1.541	1.59
Q2 FY2026 (31 Jul 2025)	10.236	2.332	1.887	1.96
Q3 FY2026 (31 Oct 2025)	10.259	2.188	2.086	2.19
Q4 FY2026 (31 Jan 2026)	11.201	1.869*	1.943*	2.06*
Q1 FY2027 (30 Apr 2026)	11.133	2.347	2.107	2.42

Source: 10-Q periods per EDGAR XBRL; Q4 FY2026 revenue per the Q4 FY2026 earnings release (25 February 2026). *Q4 FY2026 operating income, net income and EPS are derived as the FY2026 full year less the first nine months and are approximate. Directionally, revenue and profitability have risen steadily, with Q1 FY2027 marking the highest quarterly revenue and EPS in the series.

6. Valuation & Market Data

Raw market data only — no commentary on cheap or expensive.

Metric	Value (per yfinance, pulled 2026-05-31)
Share price	$191.10
Previous close	$176.17
Day range	$180.02 – $194.14
52-week high / low	$276.80 / $163.52
Market cap	$156.5bn
Enterprise value	$187.2bn
Shares outstanding	819m
Float	793.7m
Average daily volume (10d)	16.79m shares
Volume (date)	not disclosed in this report's source data
Beta	1.14
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	22.1x
Forward P/E	12.3x
P/S (TTM)	3.65x
P/B	4.57x
EV/Revenue	4.37x
EV/EBITDA	14.52x
P/FCF	not disclosed in this report's source data
Gross margin (TTM)	77.6%
Operating margin (TTM, GAAP)	21.8%
Net margin (TTM)	18.7%
ROE	16.9%
ROA	5.7%
Debt-to-equity	124.3%
Current ratio	0.79x
Dividend yield	0.92%
Short interest	62.7m shares (short ratio 5.0 days)
Put/call ratio	not disclosed in this report's source data

7. What Are They Building / What's Coming

Salesforce's roadmap is centred on agentic AI. Per the Q1 FY2027 earnings release (27 May 2026), Agentforce — autonomous AI agents embedded across every Customer 360 application — reached $1.2bn ARR (+205% year over year), with 3.8 billion "Agentic Work Units" delivered to date and Agentforce/Data 360 ARR of approximately $3.4bn. The company has reorganised its product naming around Agentforce and Data 360 (its unified data layer), and reported Data 360 ingesting 52 trillion records in the quarter.

On M&A, Salesforce completed its acquisition of data-management vendor Informatica, which contributed $444m of Q1 FY2027 revenue and approximately $1.1bn of Cloud ARR (per the Q1 FY2027 earnings release, 27 May 2026); Informatica strengthens the Data 360 and integration portfolio. Capital allocation is a stated priority: per the same release, Salesforce entered a $25bn accelerated share repurchase and continues to pay a quarterly dividend (raised to $0.44 per share in 2026). For the full year, management raised FY2027 revenue guidance to $45.9bn–$46.2bn (+11%) and guided to non-GAAP operating margin of 34.3% and GAAP diluted EPS of $7.93–$7.99 (per the Q1 FY2027 earnings release, 27 May 2026). No third-party analyst forecasts are used in this report.

8. Competitive Landscape

Salesforce competes with both large platform vendors and specialised application providers. Peer market data (per yfinance, pulled 2026-05-31):

Company	Ticker	Market cap	Revenue (TTM)	Gross margin	P/S
Salesforce	CRM	$156.5bn	$41.5bn	77.6%	3.65x
Microsoft	MSFT	$3,344.6bn	$318.3bn	68.3%	10.51x
Oracle	ORCL	$649.4bn	$64.1bn	67.1%	10.13x
SAP	SAP	€214.3bn	€37.3bn	73.7%	5.74x
Adobe	ADBE	$104.8bn	$24.5bn	89.4%	4.28x
ServiceNow	NOW	$128.3bn	$14.0bn	76.6%	9.19x
Workday	WDAY	$36.1bn	$9.9bn	75.8%	3.66x

Footnote on currency: SAP figures are reported in euros; all other companies are reported in US dollars. Figures are not FX-converted and are not directly comparable across currencies.

Salesforce is the largest pure-play CRM/enterprise-application vendor by revenue, though it is dwarfed by Microsoft and Oracle in market capitalisation. It trades on a notably lower price-to-sales multiple (3.65x) than higher-growth peers such as ServiceNow (9.19x) and the mega-cap platform vendors, reflecting its slower revenue growth. No view is offered here on relative winners or losers.

9. Leadership and Ownership

Marc Benioff, who co-founded Salesforce in 1999, serves as Chair and Chief Executive Officer (per the FY2026 10-K, filed 2026-03-02). Robin Washington serves as President, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, and represented the company on the Q1 FY2027 earnings release (27 May 2026). Detailed individual tenures and compensation are set out in the company's proxy statement and are not fully reproduced in this report's source data.

Ownership is overwhelmingly institutional. Per yfinance (pulled 2026-05-31), institutions hold approximately 94.2% and insiders approximately 3.0%. The largest reported institutional holders (per yfinance, as at 31 March 2026):

Holder	Stake	Shares
BlackRock, Inc.	9.74%	79.7m
Vanguard (Capital Mgmt)	7.25%	59.3m
State Street Corporation	5.98%	49.0m
Morgan Stanley	3.87%	31.7m
Geode Capital Management	2.72%	22.2m

Recent specific insider transactions are not disclosed in this report's source data.

10. Risks and Challenges

• Intense competition (Competitive): Per the FY2026 10-K (Item 1A, filed 2026-03-02), Salesforce faces intense competition from larger, better-capitalised platform vendors (including Microsoft and Oracle) and from specialised application and AI providers, which could pressure pricing, growth and margins.
• AI execution and adoption (Market & Demand): Per the FY2026 10-K (Item 1A, filed 2026-03-02), the company's strategy depends heavily on customer adoption and monetisation of generative and agentic AI (Agentforce, Data 360); if adoption disappoints or AI does not deliver expected returns, growth could suffer.
• Acquisition integration (Operational): Per the FY2026 10-K (Item 1A, filed 2026-03-02), Salesforce has grown through large acquisitions (including Slack, Tableau, MuleSoft and Informatica) that carry integration, retention and write-down risk.
• Cybersecurity and data breaches (Cyber & Physical): Per the FY2026 10-K (Item 1A, filed 2026-03-02), the company stores vast amounts of sensitive customer data; a security breach or service outage could cause liability, customer loss and reputational harm.
• Data privacy and AI regulation (Regulatory): Per the FY2026 10-K (Item 1A, filed 2026-03-02), evolving privacy laws (such as GDPR and US state laws) and emerging AI regulation increase compliance costs and could constrain products.
• Macroeconomic sensitivity of IT spending (Market & Demand): Per the FY2026 10-K (Item 1A, filed 2026-03-02), demand for Salesforce's software is tied to customers' willingness to invest in IT, which can weaken in economic downturns and lengthen sales cycles.
• Leverage and capital-return funding (Financial): Per the FY2026 10-K (Item 1A, filed 2026-03-02) and the Q1 FY2027 earnings release (27 May 2026), debt has risen (total debt $17.2bn at FY2026; a $25bn debt issuance funded the accelerated share repurchase), increasing financial risk if cash flows weaken.
• Foreign-currency exposure (Financial): Per the FY2026 10-K (Item 1A, filed 2026-03-02), roughly one third of revenue is international, exposing results to currency movements that the company reports on a constant-currency basis.

11. Recent Developments

Most recent first.

• 27 May 2026 — Record Q1 FY2027 results: Salesforce reported first-quarter revenue of $11.1bn (+13% Y/Y), GAAP diluted EPS of $2.42 (+52%), non-GAAP EPS of $3.88 (+50%), cRPO of $33.6bn (+14%) and a record non-GAAP operating margin of 34.8%; it raised full-year FY2027 revenue guidance to $45.9bn–$46.2bn. Source: Salesforce Q1 FY2027 earnings release.
• 27 May 2026 — $25bn accelerated share repurchase: Alongside results, Salesforce announced a $25bn accelerated share repurchase, with 103m shares delivered upfront (about 80% of the total expected), funded in part by a $25bn debt issuance, and said it returned $27.5bn to shareholders in the quarter. Source: Salesforce Q1 FY2027 earnings release.

12. Key Dates Coming Up

• 2 July 2026: Quarterly dividend payment date ($0.44 per share). Source: yfinance dividend calendar (pulled 2026-05-31).
• Early September 2026: Q2 FY2027 earnings (quarter to 31 July 2026). Date not yet confirmed in this report's source data; Q2 FY2026 was reported on 3 September 2025.
• Mid-July 2026: Next quarterly dividend ex-date (approximate). Not yet confirmed in this report's source data; the prior ex-dividend date was 9 April 2026.

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