Salesforce (CRM) Stock Before the Bell: AI Bets, Informatica Deal and Cybersecurity Risks

Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE: CRM) heads into Friday’s post‑Thanksgiving session under pressure but loaded with catalysts, as investors weigh a sharp year‑to‑date sell‑off against a big bet on artificial intelligence, a freshly closed Informatica acquisition, and a live cybersecurity incident tied to third‑party integrations.

As of Wednesday’s close (November 26), Salesforce stock finished at $228.27, down about 2.5% on the day and roughly 30% year‑to‑date, according to MarketBeat and Smartkarma data. ^[1] That slump sets the stage for an important stretch: Q3 fiscal 2026 earnings on December 3, ongoing fallout from a Gainsight-related security breach, and growing debate over whether Salesforce’s AI strategy can justify its valuation.

Below is what traders and longer‑term investors should know before the market opens on Friday, November 28, 2025.

Salesforce stock recap: price action and valuation heading into November 28

Last close: $228.27 on November 26, 2025, with extended trading around $228.24. ^[2]
Intraday move: Roughly ‑2.5% on Wednesday’s session. ^[3]
YTD performance: Around ‑30% in 2025, underperforming the broader tech sector and the S&P 500 by a wide margin. ^[4]

Fundamental valuation metrics have compressed alongside the sell‑off:

GuruFocus now pegs Salesforce’s P/E ratio near 33, with P/S of about 5.6 and P/B around 3.6, all close to multi‑year lows for the stock. ^[5]
Technicals show an RSI in the mid‑30s, suggesting shares are edging toward oversold territory. ^[6]
Simply Wall St’s discounted cash flow model estimates fair value around $374 per share, implying Salesforce could be undervalued by roughly 39% at current prices. ^[7]

That said, volatility is high: Salesforce’s beta of ~1.5 means the stock tends to swing more than the market, and a string of negative headlines this fall has amplified those moves. ^[8]

Earnings countdown: Q3 FY26 expectations for Salesforce stock

Salesforce has already told investors when the next big data point lands. The company will report third‑quarter fiscal 2026 results on Wednesday, December 3, 2025, after the close, followed by a conference call at 2:00 p.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. ET. ^[9]

Wall Street’s Q3 setup looks fairly tight:

Company guidance: Q3 revenue between $10.24 billion and $10.29 billion, implying roughly 8–9% year‑over‑year growth, and adjusted EPS of $2.84–$2.86. ^[10]
Consensus forecasts: Analysts are looking for about $10.27 billion in revenue and $2.85 in EPS, essentially at the midpoint of Salesforce’s own range. ^[11]

The Q3 guidance came after a strong Q2 FY26:

Q2 FY26 revenue: $10.2–10.24 billion, up 10% year over year, slightly ahead of expectations. ^[12]
Q2 EPS: Adjusted EPS of $2.91, beating consensus (~$2.78) and up low‑teens percent year over year. ^[13]
Margins & cash return: Non‑GAAP operating margin at 34.3% and a $20 billion top‑up to Salesforce’s buyback program, bringing total authorization to $50 billion. ^[14]
AI & Data Cloud: Data Cloud and AI annual recurring revenue (ARR) surpassed $1.2 billion, up about 120% year over year, with over 12,500 Agentforce deals closed since launch, more than 6,000 of them paid. ^[15]

Despite the beat, the stock dropped after Q2 as investors balked at what CEO Marc Benioff called an “appropriately conservative” outlook for Q3. ^[16] The upcoming report is widely seen as a referendum on whether Salesforce’s AI narrative can translate into sustained double‑digit growth.

AI, Agentforce 360 and the Informatica deal: Salesforce’s new growth engine

Salesforce’s investment case in late 2025 is increasingly tied to its “agentic” AI strategy and the evolution of its platform:

Agentforce 360 and Dreamforce 2025

At Dreamforce 2025, Salesforce repositioned its entire stack around autonomous AI agents: ^[17]

Agentforce Platform – A suite for building, testing and deploying AI agents that can automate sales, service and marketing workflows.
Data 360 – A rebranded, upgraded version of Data Cloud that acts as the “brains” of the platform, turning scattered documents and structured data into usable context for AI.
Slack as an “Agentic OS” – Slack is pitched as the collaboration hub where humans and agents work together, aided by a more capable AI companion.
OpenAI partnership – Salesforce and OpenAI announced deeper integration, including native access to GPT‑5 inside Salesforce and the ability for ChatGPT to surface Agentforce data for secure, context‑rich answers. ^[18]

These moves are meant to differentiate Salesforce from generic LLM tools by embedding AI directly into enterprise workflows and CRM data.

Informatica acquisition closes

On November 18, 2025, Salesforce officially completed its $8 billion acquisition of Informatica, a leader in cloud data management and integration. ^[19]

According to Salesforce and follow‑up analyses, the deal is designed to: ^[20]

Strengthen Data 360 with more robust data governance and quality tools.
Deepen integration between MuleSoft and Informatica to create an end‑to‑end data and integration fabric for AI.
Provide richer, more reliable data feeds for Agentforce 360 and Tableau, improving the context AI agents work with.

In short, the acquisition is a big swing at owning the data layer underpinning AI agents. Bulls argue this could cement Salesforce’s moat as enterprises standardize on a single, trusted data foundation; skeptics worry about integration risk, cost, and whether customers will pay enough to justify the price tag. ^[21]

Cybersecurity overhang: Gainsight and OAuth‑based attacks

While Salesforce promotes itself as a trusted AI platform, security headlines are complicating the story.

The Gainsight incident

In late November, Salesforce disclosed “unusual activity” involving Gainsight‑published applications integrated with its platform, potentially exposing customer data through compromised OAuth tokens rather than a flaw in Salesforce’s core systems. ^[22]

Key details from recent reporting:

Salesforce revoked affected access and refresh tokens and temporarily removed Gainsight apps from the AppExchange as a containment measure. ^[23]
Gainsight has since expanded the list of impacted customers, with some security researchers suggesting hundreds of organizations could be affected. ^[24]
The incident is tied to a broader campaign where the ShinyHunters / Scattered Spider group has been abusing OAuth tokens and SaaS integrations to access Salesforce instances and other cloud environments. ^[25]

Salesforce stresses that its core platform wasn’t directly exploited, but the episode underscores a key risk: in an ecosystem reliant on third‑party apps and AI‑driven integrations, the attack surface shifts to connected services and tokens rather than the main CRM itself.

Market impact

So far, there hasn’t been a single catastrophic disclosure tied specifically to Salesforce’s own infrastructure, but repeated SaaS‑supply‑chain breaches (Drift/Salesloft earlier this year and now Gainsight) have made investors more sensitive to security risk and could weigh on sentiment in the near term. ^[26]

For Friday’s session and the week ahead, traders may watch for:

New updates on the scope of the Gainsight incident,
Any regulatory disclosures from large Salesforce customers, and
Whether Salesforce offers more guidance on security posture ahead of, or on, the Q3 earnings call.

Cyber Week and AI commerce: a near‑term demand catalyst

On a more positive note, Salesforce’s holiday‑shopping data paints a strong backdrop for its commerce and AI products.

Salesforce’s commerce insights team expects a 6% year‑over‑year increase in global Cyber Week sales to about $334 billion, with U.S. sales around $78 billion. The company reports a 119% year‑over‑year jump in AI‑assistant‑driven traffic, and estimates that AI will influence roughly $73 billion in global online sales, or about 22% of orders this season. ^[27]

For Salesforce stock, those numbers matter because they:

Showcase real‑world AI usage, not just demos,
Support the thesis that AI‑powered recommendations and agents enhance conversion, and
Provide data points investors can compare with Q3 and Q4 commentary on Commerce Cloud and Agentforce Commerce.

If Salesforce highlights stronger‑than‑expected AI‑influenced holiday demand on the upcoming earnings call, it could help counter some of the current skepticism around AI monetization.

Wall Street sentiment: Moderate Buy, but AI execution is under scrutiny

Despite the sell‑off, analysts remain broadly positive on CRM stock, even as they trim expectations.

Consensus rating and price targets

MarketBeat shows a “Moderate Buy” consensus based on 39 analyst ratings:
- 25 Buy
- 13 Hold
- 1 Sell. ^[28]
The average 12‑month price target is $322.86, implying about 41% upside from Wednesday’s close. The range spans $221 on the low end to $430 at the high end. ^[29]

Other aggregators tell a similar story:

24/7 Wall St. cites a median one‑year target near $330, with 30 Buys, 9 Holds and one Sell. ^[30]
Simply Wall St’s DCF‑based fair value (~$374) again suggests substantial upside if its assumptions hold. ^[31]

Recent rating moves

Recent analyst actions highlight both optimism and caution: ^[32]

Citigroup (Tyler Radke) cut its target from $276 to $253 and maintains a Hold, warning that AI could just as easily disrupt Salesforce as enhance it and that upcoming earnings may not dispel those fears. ^[33]
Cantor Fitzgerald reiterated an Overweight rating with a $325 target.
Bank of America reduced its target from $325 to $305 but kept a Buy / Strong Buy stance.
Mizuho trimmed its target from $350 to $340, retaining a Buy rating.
JMP Securities remains one of the most bullish, reiterating “Market Outperform” with a $430 price target.

A WebProNews analysis framed the setup as a “high‑stakes AI gamble”, noting that while Q2 showed solid growth and fast‑rising AI/Data Cloud revenue, Salesforce’s premium valuation still needs more proof of durable Agentforce adoption. ^[34]

And a recent Barron’s piece went further, pointing out that CRM is down about 30% this year and roughly 5% over five years, underperforming the S&P 500 by more than 90 percentage points, and arguing that investors need clearer evidence AI can reignite growth above the high‑single‑digit level. ^[35]

Institutional flows: fresh buying into Salesforce stock

One supporting factor heading into Friday’s open: institutional appetite appears intact.

Recent regulatory filings summarized by MarketBeat show several investors boosting their Salesforce positions, including: ^[36]

Inceptionr LLC,
Korea Investment CORP,
Vinva Investment Management Ltd, and
The State Board of Administration of the Florida Retirement System.

While the absolute share counts are modest relative to Salesforce’s market cap, the breadth of new or increased positions reinforces GuruFocus data indicating institutional ownership above 80%. ^[37]

Competition and the AI agent race: Sierra and others

Salesforce’s AI push doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Competition in AI agents and enterprise automation is heating up:

Sierra, a well‑funded startup co‑founded by former Salesforce co‑CEO Bret Taylor and ex‑Google exec Clay Bavor, just held its first customer conference on November 5. The company unveiled its Agent Data Platform and highlighted hundreds of enterprise customers deploying goal‑driven AI agents powered by models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta. ^[38]
Analysts note that while Sierra emphasizes bespoke, brand‑tuned agents, Salesforce is going the other way—pushing deeply pre‑integrated agents tied tightly to Customer 360, Data 360 and Slack. ^[39]

This competitive backdrop is part of why some Wall Street voices want more detailed metrics on Agentforce adoption, pricing and attach rates in Q3.

Key things to watch for Salesforce (CRM) before Friday’s open – and into Q3 earnings

Heading into the November 28 session and the Q3 FY26 report next week, here are the main issues likely to drive Salesforce stock:

1. Sentiment after the recent pullback

With CRM now trading near $228 and almost 30% below where it started 2025, any incremental positive news—on security containment, AI metrics or holiday demand—could fuel a relief rally, especially with consensus targets clustered in the low‑to‑mid‑$300s. ^[40]

2. Security disclosures around Gainsight and OAuth abuses

Investors will be watching for:

New disclosures from Salesforce or large customers,
Regulatory filings that quantify data exposure, and
Any commentary suggesting increased security spending or potential churn.

Given the broader pattern of OAuth‑based attacks on Salesforce integrations this year, clearer messaging on third‑party risk management could be a key swing factor for sentiment. ^[41]

3. Evidence of AI monetization

On or before the Q3 call, markets will want updates on:

Growth in Data Cloud & AI ARR (already >$1.2B and growing triple digits). ^[42]
The number of customers and deals tied to Agentforce 360, especially large deals over $1 million. ^[43]
Early read‑outs from AI‑driven commerce during Cyber Week. ^[44]

If Salesforce can show that AI agents are becoming a meaningful driver of incremental revenue and upsell, it strengthens the bull case built into those $300‑plus price targets.

4. Informatica integration and cost profile

Investors will be sensitive to:

Comments on integration timelines and costs,
Expected impact on operating margins, and
How Informatica is being packaged and sold alongside Data 360, MuleSoft and Tableau. ^[45]

A clear synergy roadmap could help justify the acquisition and reassure those worried about Salesforce returning to a heavy M&A playbook.

5. Guidance for FY26 and beyond

Finally, markets will look for:

Any updates to FY26 revenue and EPS guidance (currently pointing to roughly 10% revenue growth and EPS in the low‑to‑mid‑$11 range). ^[46]
Commentary on longer‑term goals (Benioff has previously floated targets near $60 billion in revenue and 40% margins by fiscal 2030). ^[47]

Stronger guidance—or at least a more confident tone around AI and data‑driven growth—could shift the risk‑reward profile meaningfully.

Bottom line

Before Friday’s open on November 28, 2025, Salesforce stock sits at a crossroads:

Bullish side: Double‑digit revenue growth, expanding margins, surging Data Cloud and AI ARR, a major data‑platform acquisition (Informatica), and a hefty buyback underpin a case that CRM is undervalued after a 30% drawdown. ^[48]
Bearish side: Slower top‑line growth than in the past, ongoing AI skepticism from some analysts, intensifying competition in AI agents, and fresh cybersecurity concerns tied to Gainsight and other integrations. ^[49]

For traders and investors watching CRM tomorrow and into the Q3 print, the key question is whether Salesforce can convert its AI and data narrative into visible, durable growth without sacrificing security or profitability.

As always, this article is informational only and does not constitute investment advice. Anyone considering an investment in Salesforce should evaluate their own financial situation and risk tolerance or consult a qualified financial adviser.