Goldman sees salesforce stock gaining from AI execution and digital labor market share

EditorEmilio Ghigini
Published 18/12/2024, 08:54 pm
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On Wednesday, Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) reaffirmed its Buy rating on Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) stock with a steady price target of $400. The endorsement follows the Agentforce 2.0 event, which showcased Salesforce's continued innovation and technical leadership in the customer relationship management (CRM) space.

With a market capitalization of $335.88 billion and trading near its 52-week high of $369, Salesforce demonstrates strong financial health, earning a perfect Piotroski Score of 9 according to InvestingPro analysis.

Salesforce's recent developments, including the upgraded Atlas (NYSE:ATCO) Reasoning Engine and the integration of Agentforce 2.0 within Slack, were highlighted as key drivers of the company's positive trajectory. These enhancements, which arrived shortly after Agentforce's initial release in September, are seen as significant steps in Salesforce's Gen-AI product roadmap, providing substantial productivity benefits. The analyst noted that Salesforce has internally resolved 83% of cases and achieved a 50% reduction in escalations to human operators.

The integration of Agentforce 2.0 is reported to seamlessly connect workflows across Salesforce's extensive product suite, including Multi-Clouds, Slack, Tableau, and Mulesoft. This interconnectivity is expected to bolster Salesforce's value proposition, extending its capabilities beyond those of a traditional CRM tool.

The company's ability to close over 1,000 Agentforce deals, with thousands more in the pipeline, was cited as evidence of Salesforce's product-market fit and its potential for long-term growth. The analyst suggested that Salesforce is poised to gain market share in the expanding digital labor market as general artificial intelligence (Gen-AI) technologies continue to enhance human capacity.

This growth potential is supported by impressive fundamentals, including a robust gross profit margin of 76.94% and steady revenue growth of 9.53%. For deeper insights into Salesforce's valuation and growth metrics, InvestingPro subscribers have access to over 30 additional financial indicators and expert analysis.

In addition to the long-term prospects, near-term tailwinds for Salesforce were identified. These include macroeconomic improvements, increased AI spending in the application layer, the Data Cloud's growing contribution nearing $1 billion, and expected cyclical improvements in the Marketing and Commerce Cloud that could lead to a reacceleration of growth to approximately 12% year-over-year.

Goldman Sachs expressed confidence in Salesforce's ability to maintain its top-line growth and the robustness of its data-driven value proposition, reinforcing the firm's positive outlook on the company's future performance. For comprehensive analysis of Salesforce's market position and detailed financial metrics, investors can access the full Pro Research Report available exclusively on InvestingPro, which provides in-depth analysis of this and 1,400+ other top US stocks.

In other recent news, Salesforce has seen a series of significant developments. BMO Capital Markets reiterated its Outperform rating on Salesforce, citing the company's growth prospects and the potential of its Agentforce platform. Meanwhile, Macquarie initiated coverage on Salesforce with a Neutral rating, acknowledging the balanced nature of potential upside and downside risks.

Salesforce has also revised its bylaws to streamline stockholder processes, a move that aligns with the current Delaware General Corporation Law. This commitment to robust and transparent corporate governance is noteworthy.

On the product front, the company recently launched Agentforce 2.0, which has seen substantial upsell activities among existing Service Cloud customers. However, Salesforce's outgoing CFO, Amy Weaver, indicated that it may still be early for Agentforce to significantly contribute to the company's financials.

Furthermore, the 2025 CIO Survey by Piper Sandler revealed a strong outlook for IT spending, with Salesforce identified as a company positioned to benefit from this increased expenditure. Analysts from firms including Goldman Sachs, Evercore ISI, Raymond (NS:RYMD) James, and Citi have expressed confidence in Salesforce's potential to achieve significant free cash flow per share in the coming years, supported by sustained top-line growth.

Lastly, Bernstein raised its target for Salesforce to $286, acknowledging the company's growth drivers but also expressing caution about the possibility of significant mergers and acquisitions activity. These are the recent developments for Salesforce.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.

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