Salesforce (CRM) Stock on December 3, 2025: Earnings Preview, Analyst Targets and AI-Driven Outlook

Published: December 3, 2025

Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE: CRM) heads into a critical earnings day with its share price stuck in the low‑$230s and sentiment unusually fragile for a software giant once priced as a high‑growth darling. As of early afternoon on December 3, 2025, Salesforce stock trades around $237, up slightly on the day but still down close to 30% year-to-date. ^[1]

With third‑quarter fiscal 2026 results due after the closing bell, Wall Street is laser‑focused on whether Salesforce’s expensive AI transformation can finally translate into visible growth — or whether the stock’s slide continues into 2026. ^[2]

Key Takeaways

• Earnings tonight (Q3 FY26): Consensus calls for $10.27–$10.30 billion in revenue (about 8–9% growth) and $2.85–$2.86 in adjusted EPS, with the call at 2:00 p.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. ET. ^[3]
• Big short‑term swing likely: Options pricing implies Salesforce shares could move around 7% up or down by week’s end after earnings. ^[4]
• Stock is beaten‑down but not hated: CRM is down ~29–30% in 2025, yet the average 12‑month analyst price target near $325–$330 implies roughly 35–40% upside from current levels, with most brokers rating it a Buy. ^[5]
• AI & Data Cloud are the swing factors: Salesforce reports over $1.2 billion in Data Cloud + AI annual recurring revenue (ARR), growing more than 120% year-over-year, but that’s still a small piece of total sales. ^[6]
• Agentforce verdict pending: Adoption of Salesforce’s flagship AI platform Agentforce is still limited (roughly 8% of customers, by management’s own commentary), but recent “record‑breaking” Cyber Week metrics show the technology can handle tens of billions of AI recommendations and millions of orders in production. ^[7]

1. Where Salesforce stock stands today

Price, performance and sentiment

Midday on December 3, 2025, Salesforce trades around $237 per share, roughly 0.9–1% higher on the day. ^[8]

Despite today’s bump, the backdrop is bruising:

• ~29–30% year‑to‑date decline, placing Salesforce among the worst performers in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and well behind peer software and AI names. ^[9]
• Multiple outlets describe Salesforce as “historically cheap,” with its forward P/E near ~19–20x, less than half of where it often traded when growth exceeded 20% annually and below the ~32x multiple of the broader tech sector. ^[10]

At the same time, underlying profitability is stronger than ever:

• Free‑cash‑flow (FCF) margins have climbed into the low‑30% range, versus roughly 20% only a couple of years ago. ^[11]
• Trefis estimates a last‑twelve‑months FCF margin of ~31.6% and operating margin of ~21.2%, both comfortably above the median S&P 500 software company. ^[12]

This combination — slower growth, better margins, lower multiple — is exactly why some analysts now call Salesforce a value stock rather than a classic high‑growth tech name. ^[13]

2. Why December 3, 2025 matters: Q3 FY26 earnings preview

Salesforce will report Q3 FY2026 (quarter ended October 31, 2025) results after the market close today, followed by its conference call at 2:00 p.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. ET. ^[14]

Street expectations

Across Barron’s, Investing.com and options‑market data, expectations are tight: ^[15]

• Revenue:
  • Around $10.27–$10.30 billion, up roughly 8.8–9% year over year.
• Adjusted EPS:
  • Consensus near $2.85–$2.86, up from about $2.41 in the same quarter last year.
• Growth context:
  • Salesforce grew revenue more than 20% annually for most of its history, but FY2025 and FY2026 are tracking at around 8.7–9% — a “new normal” that worries growth‑oriented investors. ^[16]

Options market: a 7% “earnings envelope”

Investopedia notes that options pricing implies roughly a 7% move in either direction by the end of this week. From a base around $235–$237, that sets a rough short‑term trading range of:

• Upside scenario: about $250–$252
• Downside scenario: about $218–$220, testing lows not seen in more than a year

In other words, tonight’s report is expected to re‑price the story, not just add a footnote. ^[17]

3. AI, Agentforce and Data Cloud: promise vs. reality

The central question for 2025’s Salesforce story is simple:

Can AI turn Salesforce back into a double‑digit grower, or has it just become a highly profitable “steady‑state” CRM utility?

What Salesforce has already delivered

From Salesforce’s Q2 FY26 report:

• Revenue: $10.2 billion, up 10% year‑over‑year
• Subscription & support revenue: $9.7 billion, up 11%
• Current remaining performance obligation (cRPO): $29.4 billion, up 11%
• Non‑GAAP operating margin:34.3%
• Capital returns: $2.6 billion returned to shareholders in the quarter, including $2.2 billion in buybacks and nearly $400 million in dividends, alongside a $20 billion expansion of the repurchase authorization (now $50 billion). ^[18]

Critically, the company highlighted the momentum in Data Cloud and AI:

• Data Cloud + AI ARR surpassed $1.2 billion, growing more than 120% year‑over‑year. ^[19]
• Salesforce has closed over 12,500 Agentforce deals, more than 6,000 of them paid, and more than 1.4 million support requests on Salesforce’s own help site are now handled by Agentforce. ^[20]

Salesforce Ben’s latest report adds more color: during Cyber Week 2025, Agentforce Commerce and related services powered tens of billions of AI product recommendations, tens of billions of marketing messages and over 60 million online orders, all with reported 100% uptime. ^[21]

For investors, that’s a rare concrete proof point that Agentforce can operate at massive scale in live production — exactly the kind of evidence the market has been demanding.

Where investors remain skeptical

Despite the impressive headline metrics, several recent analyses highlight the gaps:

• Agentforce adoption is still modest: at Dreamforce 2025, Salesforce said roughly 12,000 of 150,000 customers had adopted Agentforce in some form — around 8% penetration. ^[22]
• An Invezz/TradingView analysis notes that Salesforce now trades at a forward P/E around 19–20x, far below its 40–50x historical range, because the market worries it is stuck in “growth purgatory” — not growing fast enough to deserve a premium, but still spending heavily on AI and acquisitions. ^[23]
• Salesforce Ben and AInvest both stress that Wall Street wants to see AI revenue, not just AI demos: Agentforce deals, AI ARR and Data Cloud consumption have to scale faster to justify the company’s ambitious long‑term targets. ^[24]

Tonight’s earnings are widely framed as the first real post‑Dreamforce “check‑in” on whether that AI thesis is progressing from slideware to sustained revenue.

4. What Wall Street is saying now: ratings and price targets

Street consensus (classic 12‑month view)

According to StockAnalysis and Fintel/TipRanks‑based data: ^[25]

• Coverage: 30–40 analysts actively covering CRM
• Consensus rating:“Buy” / “Moderate Buy”
• Average 12‑month price target: around $326–$336
• Range of targets:
  • Low: about $221–$223 (slightly below current price)
  • High:$430–$464

From specific recent moves:

• Citizens reiterated a “Market Outperform” rating on December 2 with a $430 target, implying more than 80% upside from the ~$237 level. ^[26]
• Oppenheimer maintains an “Outperform” but cut its target from $315 to $300, reflecting concern about slower growth but confidence in long‑term AI upside. ^[27]
• KeyBanc stays Overweight with a $400 target, while BofA Securities calls Salesforce a Strong Buy with a slightly trimmed $305 target. ^[28]

StockAnalysis aggregates these to a consensus target of about $326.52, implying roughly 38% upside over the next year if Wall Street’s base case plays out. ^[29]

Longer‑term forecasts (out to 2030)

24/7 Wall St. recently published a 2025–2030 price projection built on Salesforce’s own numbers and industry trends: ^[30]

• They see a one‑year “fair value” around $302, roughly 30+% above current levels.
• Their longer‑term roadmap calls for a potential stock price near $494 by 2030, more than 100% upside over five years, assuming Salesforce executes on its AI, international and product expansion plans.

These long‑dated forecasts are naturally speculative, but they line up with Salesforce’s own Dreamforce 2025 framework, which points to:

• Revenue >$60 billion by fiscal 2030
• A return to double‑digit organic revenue growth starting around calendar 2026
• Continued expansion of already‑strong margins

Those targets were reiterated at the Dreamforce investor & analyst session in October. ^[31]

5. Technical picture: support zones and trading setup

Near term, Salesforce is trading exactly where many chart‑based analysts think risk/reward starts to tilt positive.

• Investing.com highlights $232–$227 as a key support band, with potential upside to $245–$253 if it holds, and downside to $212–$206 if it breaks. ^[32]
• Trefis identifies a slightly wider historical support zone between roughly $221–$244, noting that in the past decade, rebounds from this area have delivered an average peak gain of about 32% before topping out. ^[33]

In other words:

• If Q3 earnings and guidance beat expectations and AI metrics show real acceleration, this price region could again be a springboard.
• If Salesforce underwhelms, technical support could fail, and the stock may retest the low‑$200s that many investors hoped were in the rear‑view mirror.

AInvest’s pre‑earnings note goes further, describing CRM at $230-ish as a psychological “floor” after a year of tax‑loss selling and underperformance, with elevated short interest amplifying potential moves in either direction. ^[34]

6. Fundamental backdrop: slower growth, stronger machine

Zooming out from the AI narrative, Salesforce today looks very different from the company investors fell in love with a decade ago.

Growth deceleration

• From its 1999 founding through 2022, Salesforce delivered 20%+ annual revenue growth almost continuously. ^[35]
• Growth has since slowed to high‑single digits: about 8.7% in fiscal 2025 and a similar run‑rate so far in fiscal 2026. ^[36]

That slowdown is the main reason the stock has derated from a premium growth multiple to something closer to “solid, but not spectacular” software peers.

Profitability and cash flow

The other side of that coin: Salesforce is finally making as much money as its revenue scale suggests it should.

• Last 12 months revenue growth: ~8–10%, but with
  • Operating margin: ~21%
  • Free cash flow margin:~31–33% ^[37]
• Management expects nearly $15 billion in operating cash flow for FY26, a record for the company. ^[38]

Meanwhile, Salesforce has pivoted hard from pure growth to shareholder returns:

• First‑ever dividend introduced in 2024.
• Multi‑year buyback program now authorized up to $50 billion, which has already shrunk the share count by close to 4%. ^[39]

In Trefis’s words, Salesforce today is a “cash machine”: not the fastest grower, but a company capable of compounding earnings and cash flow even at single‑digit revenue growth — especially if AI and Data Cloud add incremental high‑margin revenue streams. ^[40]

7. Strategy and long‑term story: Dreamforce 2025 and beyond

At Dreamforce 2025, Salesforce tried to reset the narrative with a long‑term roadmap: ^[41]

• Revenue >$60 billion by FY2030
• A return to double‑digit organic revenue growth starting in 2026
• Sustained mid‑30s non‑GAAP operating margins
• A future where customers increasingly adopt “agentic” AI workflows, using Agentforce and Data Cloud as core infrastructure

AInvest’s pre‑earnings analysis calls tonight’s report the “first checkpoint” on that roadmap. Key proof points investors are watching include:

1. Agentforce monetization
   • Are deals moving from pilots and proofs‑of‑concept into full‑scale enterprise deployments?
   • Is AI + Data Cloud ARR growing faster than the already-strong 120% pace seen last quarter? ^[42]
2. Informatica acquisition and data strategy
   • Salesforce agreed to acquire data management specialist Informatica in an ~$8 billion deal earlier this year to strengthen its data pipeline capabilities — a key enabler for AI. ^[43]
   • Bulls see this as necessary “plumbing” for AI value creation; bears worry it’s another big-ticket acquisition used to pad top‑line growth. ^[44]
3. Guidance into FY27 and beyond
   • Any commentary pointing to re‑accelerating growth in calendar 2026, stronger AI and Data Cloud ARR, or improved cRPO trends will feed directly into long‑term valuation models. ^[45]

8. Risks and overhangs: AI execution, security, and competition

No modern Salesforce article is complete without acknowledging the risk side of the ledger.

AI execution & workforce shifts

Salesforce’s CEO Marc Benioff has been outspoken about AI transforming the company, but recent reporting underscores the human cost of that transition:

• In 2025, Salesforce cut roughly 4,000 customer support jobs, reducing its support workforce from about 9,000 to 5,000 as AI agents took over roughly half of all customer interactions, lowering support costs by about 17%. ^[46]

While these moves improve margins, they also expose Salesforce to cultural, reputational and regulatory scrutiny around automation and job losses.

Security worries: Gainsight supply‑chain breach

Salesforce also faces an ongoing security overhang tied to third‑party apps:

• A supply‑chain attack involving Gainsight, a customer success app integrating with Salesforce, led to data from more than 200 Salesforce customer orgs being accessed, according to Google’s Threat Intelligence Group. ^[47]
• Salesforce revoked Gainsight tokens and stresses the core platform was not breached, but the episode highlights the risk inherent in a vast ecosystem of connected apps that can become backdoors into customer data. ^[48]

For a company whose brand is tightly tied to trust and compliance, such incidents will remain closely watched by investors and regulators alike.

Competitive intensity

24/7 Wall St. and other analysts emphasize that Salesforce’s AI and CRM franchises are under constant competitive pressure from: ^[49]

• Microsoft Dynamics 365
• Oracle, SAP and ServiceNow
• Upstarts such as HubSpot and industry‑specific SaaS players

Meanwhile, the broader AI adoption picture remains murkier than headlines suggest. Recent reporting on Microsoft’s reduced AI sales quotas indicates that enterprise customers are moving more cautiously than tech marketing might imply — something that could affect Salesforce’s AI ramp as well. ^[50]

9. What to watch in tonight’s numbers

Pulling together today’s major previews and analyses, here’s a practical checklist for the Q3 FY26 earnings release:

1. Headline results vs. consensus
   • Revenue vs. the $10.27–$10.30B range
   • Adjusted EPS vs. $2.85–$2.86
   • Any surprise on margin (above or below the mid‑30s non‑GAAP level) ^[51]
2. Guidance
   • Updated FY26 guidance relative to prior ranges (revenue $41.1–$41.3B, non‑GAAP margin ~34.1%) ^[52]
   • Any early hints around FY27 or “calendar 2026” growth re‑acceleration
3. Data Cloud & AI metrics
   • Data Cloud + AI ARR: does it accelerate beyond $1.2B, and is growth still ~120% or higher? ^[53]
   • Agentforce adoption: paid vs. free customers, major reference wins, and evidence of scaled deployments beyond pilots ^[54]
4. cRPO and bookings
   • cRPO growth is a clean forward‑looking metric; anything in the high single‑digit to low double‑digit range with a positive trend will be viewed favorably. ^[55]
5. Informatica and M&A commentary
   • Clarity on how much of growth is coming from acquisitions vs. organic, and whether more deals are coming in AI and data infrastructure. ^[56]
6. Capital returns & balance sheet
   • Pace of buybacks and dividend policy
   • Any change to the $50B authorization or capital allocation priorities ^[57]

10. Bottom line for investors

As of December 3, 2025, Salesforce stock sits at a fascinating intersection:

• Valuation:
  • Cheaper than it has been in years on earnings metrics, with a forward P/E around 20x and average Street targets implying 30–40% upside. ^[58]
• Business quality:
  • Slower revenue growth but excellent margins, strong free cash flow, and a highly sticky, 94% subscription‑based revenue mix. ^[59]
• Narrative risk:
  • Execution on AI (Agentforce, Data Cloud), integration of acquisitions like Informatica, security incidents and intense competition all create real downside risk if the company stumbles. ^[60]

In simple terms:

• The bull case sees Salesforce as a temporarily unloved compounder: a dominant platform, improving economics, and a still‑early AI monetization runway that could push revenue back into double‑digit growth and expand margins further.
• The bear case says Salesforce has matured, its AI pivot is taking too long, competition is fierce, and the stock deserves only a market‑like multiple — meaning upside from here is limited and volatility around earnings remains high.

Tonight’s Q3 report won’t definitively settle that debate, but it will tell investors whether 2026 is shaping up as a turnaround year or just another “wait and see” chapter.

Important: This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice, investment recommendation, or a solicitation to buy or sell any security. Always do your own research and consider speaking with a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.

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