As of December 4, 2025, Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE: CRM) shares are trading around $238.72, up roughly 1.7% on the day as investors digest fresh third‑quarter fiscal 2026 results and a higher full‑year outlook powered by the company’s AI platform Agentforce and its Data 360 data stack. [1]
The numbers show a company that is no longer just talking about AI, but starting to monetize it at scale. Salesforce delivered record Q3 revenue of about $10.3 billion, up 9% year over year, with adjusted EPS of $3.25, well ahead of analyst expectations near $2.86 per share. [2]
Alongside the beat, management raised full‑year fiscal 2026 guidance for both revenue and profit, citing accelerating demand for AI agents built on Agentforce and data products branded under Data 360. [3]
Q3 FY26: Salesforce’s Key Numbers at a Glance
For the quarter ended October 31, 2025, Salesforce reported: [4]
- Revenue: about $10.3 billion, up 9% year over year (roughly $10.26 billion vs. Street estimates near $10.27 billion).
- Subscription & support revenue:$9.7 billion, up 10% year over year.
- GAAP EPS:$2.19, with net income around $2.1 billion, up more than 35% from a year ago.
- Non‑GAAP (adjusted) EPS:$3.25, easily topping consensus of about $2.86. [5]
- GAAP operating margin:21.3%.
- Non‑GAAP operating margin:35.5%, ahead of many pre‑earnings expectations and a key reason traders pushed the stock higher. [6]
- Operating cash flow:$2.3 billion, up 17% year over year.
- Free cash flow:$2.2 billion, up 22%.
- Current Remaining Performance Obligation (cRPO):$29.4 billion, up 11% year over year.
- Total RPO:$59.5 billion, up 12%.
Salesforce also leaned into shareholder returns, deploying $4.2 billion in capital during the quarter, including $3.8 billion in share repurchases and about $395 million in dividends. [7]
AI as the Growth Engine: Agentforce and Data 360 ARR Surges
The stand‑out storyline from this earnings print is the acceleration in AI‑driven revenue, particularly from Agentforce 360 and Data 360 (formerly known as Data Cloud).
Management disclosed that Agentforce and Data 360 together have reached nearly $1.4 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR), representing about 114% year‑over‑year growth. [8]
Within that:
- Agentforce ARR has surpassed $500 million, having more than quadrupled in a year (roughly +330% year over year). [9]
- Salesforce has now closed over 18,500 Agentforce deals, including more than 9,500 paid Agentforce customers, up about 50% quarter over quarter. [10]
- Agentforce accounts in production rose around 70% quarter over quarter, showing that customers are moving beyond pilots into full deployments. [11]
- The platform has processed more than 3.2 trillion tokens through Salesforce’s AI gateway, making Salesforce a heavy consumer of foundation models from vendors like OpenAI and Anthropic. [12]
On the data side, Data 360 is becoming the substrate the agents run on:
- Data 360 ingested about 32 trillion records in Q3, up 119% year over year.
- Zero‑copy integrations contributed 15 trillion records, up more than 340%. [13]
This combination of AI agents (Agentforce 360) and a unified data layer (Data 360) is central to Salesforce’s “Agentic Enterprise” strategy, which aims to embed autonomous or semi‑autonomous agents across sales, service, marketing, commerce, IT, and industry‑specific workflows. [14]
Crucially for investors, multiple large deals are now anchored by AI:
- Several reports highlight that six of Salesforce’s ten largest deals in the quarter involved Agentforce, and that roughly half of Q3 Agentforce/Data 360 bookings came from existing customers expanding usage, underscoring strong upsell potential. [15]
Guidance Raised: Double‑Digit Growth Still on the Table
In response to this AI momentum, Salesforce raised its full‑year FY26 outlook: [16]
- Fiscal 2026 revenue guidance is now $41.45–$41.55 billion, up from a prior range of $41.1–$41.3 billion, implying 9–10% year‑over‑year growth. Around 80 basis points of this is expected to come from the Informatica acquisition.
- Adjusted EPS guidance was lifted to $11.75–$11.77, up from $11.33–$11.37 previously.
- The company updated its FY26 GAAP operating margin outlook to about 20.3%, while keeping its non‑GAAP margin target at 34.1%.
- Expected operating cash flow growth for FY26 is now 13–14% year over year.
For the current fourth quarter (Q4 FY26), Salesforce guided to: [17]
- Revenue of $11.13–$11.23 billion, implying roughly 11–12% year‑over‑year growth and exceeding consensus estimates near $10.9 billion before the release.
- Adjusted EPS of $3.02–$3.04 per share.
- Q4 cRPO growth guidance of about 13%, including roughly 4 percentage points from the Informatica acquisition.
Taken together, these figures indicate that Salesforce expects double‑digit top‑line growth to persist into 2026, while maintaining high‑thirty‑percent non‑GAAP operating margins — a combination many large‑cap software investors still prize. [18]
Management is also reiterating its previously communicated ambition to generate more than $60 billion in annual revenue by 2030, positioning AI as the main driver of that long‑term target. [19]
How the Market Is Reacting: Bounce After a Tough Year
Despite the positive print, 2025 has been a volatile year for CRM stock:
- Salesforce shares are still down roughly 28–29% year to date, even after the post‑earnings pop, significantly underperforming broader tech benchmarks. [20]
- Over the last 52 weeks, the stock has traded as high as about $367, compared with the high‑$230s today. [21]
Pre‑market and extended‑hours trading after the release saw CRM up around 2%, as investors reacted to the EPS beat, robust cash flow, and better‑than‑feared AI monetization trajectory. [22]
Commentary from outlets focused on Salesforce’s ecosystem suggests sentiment has shifted from “prove AI is real” to “how fast can AI scale?”. Analysts at Salesforce‑focused publications highlighted that Q3 may be a tipping point for Agentforce adoption as more customers expand from pilots to large‑scale deployments. [23]
Wall Street’s Take: Target Cuts at the Margin, but Still Broadly Bullish
December 4, 2025 has brought a wave of updated analyst views on Salesforce, blending modest target trims with reaffirmed bullish ratings.
Fresh rating and target moves today
- BMO Capital Markets cut its price target from $280 to $275, but maintained an “Outperform” rating. The firm still sees roughly 15% upside vs. the prior close and notes that Salesforce’s Q3 EPS of $3.25 beat expectations, while revenue was roughly in line. [24]
- Wolfe Research reduced its target from $310 to $300, also keeping an Outperform rating. Wolfe flagged that guidance looks somewhat conservative given the strength of cRPO and AI ARR, and called fiscal 2027 the “next material catalyst” as Agentforce scales. [25]
- Needham reiterated a Buy rating with a $400 target, signalling that it still sees substantial upside as Salesforce executes on AI and data strategy. [26]
Recent days have also seen:
- Citizens reaffirm a Market Outperform view with a target initially at $430, later trimmed to $405, still implying very large upside vs. today’s price. [27]
- Oppenheimer maintain an Outperform rating while lowering its target from $315 to $300.
- Citigroup keep a Neutral stance with a target cut from $276 to $253. [28]
Consensus picture
Different data aggregators are broadly aligned on Salesforce’s favourable analyst backdrop:
- MarketBeat data show 27 Buy ratings, 12 Holds and 1 Sell, for an overall “Moderate Buy” rating and an average price target around $323 per share. [29]
- GuruFocus compiles 48 analyst targets with an average of about $325, a high near $442 and a low around $221. From today’s price near $239, that implies roughly 36% upside at the average target. [30]
- Another dataset from Fintel/Nasdaq points to an average 12‑month target of about $336, or roughly 44% above a recent close near $233. [31]
- StockAnalysis notes that 32–33 covering analysts rate CRM a “Buy”, with an average target just over $323, implying about 35% potential upside. [32]
The common thread: targets are drifting slightly lower at the margin, but the Street still largely believes the stock can re‑rate higher if Salesforce sustains high‑single to low‑double‑digit growth and keeps non‑GAAP margins in the mid‑30s while AI ramps.
Salesforce Stock Forecast: What Consensus Expects for Growth
Beyond price targets, analyst models suggest that Salesforce is entering a phase of steady, AI‑assisted growth rather than the hypergrowth of its earlier cloud era. According to compiled Wall Street forecasts: [33]
- Revenue this fiscal year (FY26) is expected to land around $41.6–$41.7 billion, near the top of Salesforce’s own guidance range, representing roughly 10% growth from FY25.
- Next year’s revenue (FY27) is projected around $45.4 billion, implying about 9% growth.
- EPS this year is forecast to surge to roughly $11.5, up about 80% from the prior year, reflecting a full year of higher margins and lower restructuring costs.
- EPS next year is expected to climb toward $12.8–$12.9, around 12% growth.
These estimates translate to a forward P/E multiple around the low‑20s based on today’s share price — not cheap in absolute terms, but broadly in line with other large, profitable cloud platforms that can pair high‑single‑digit to low‑double‑digit growth with robust cash generation. [34]
Strategic Context: Agentforce 360 and the “Agentic Enterprise”
This quarter’s results also need to be seen in light of Salesforce’s product roadmap over the last year:
- At Dreamforce 2025, Salesforce formally launched Agentforce 360, a platform for building and orchestrating AI agents across sales, service, marketing, commerce, field service, IT and industry clouds. [35]
- The Winter ’25 release deepened the integration between Agentforce 360, Data 360 and Slack, reinforcing a vision where humans, data and AI agents collaborate inside channels and business workflows. [36]
- Salesforce also articulated a broader “Trusted AI” narrative, emphasizing governance, data privacy, and secure connectivity via partnerships and tools like MuleSoft, clean rooms and semantic data layers — all intended to make enterprises comfortable deploying agents at scale. [37]
The Q3 FY26 numbers suggest those launches are beginning to show up in hard metrics: fast‑growing AI ARR, a rising share of large deals tied to Agentforce/Data 360, and intensifying consumption of data and AI tokens across the platform. [38]
Risks and What Investors Will Watch Next
Even with the post‑earnings bounce and upbeat AI story, Salesforce’s stock is not without risks:
- AI bubble and competitive pressure
Commentators and some analysts continue to warn about a potential AI investment bubble and the risk that AI agents could become commoditized or displaced by competing platforms. Salesforce is betting heavily that its integrated data + CRM + AI stack will differentiate it from hyperscalers and smaller specialists. [39] - Execution risk in scaling Agentforce
Q3 shows impressive Agentforce growth, but maintaining triple‑digit ARR growth while also absorbing acquisitions (like Informatica) and rolling out new features across many clouds will test Salesforce’s ability to execute and support customers. [40] - Macro and IT spending cycles
As a large‑cap enterprise software vendor, Salesforce remains exposed to macro slowdowns and elongated deal cycles, especially for big multi‑cloud and AI‑heavy contracts, even if AI interest is currently a tailwind. [41] - Valuation sensitivity
With a forward P/E in the low‑20s and consensus still baking in around 9–10% annual revenue growth, any misstep on AI monetization, cRPO growth, or margin discipline could trigger outsized share price reactions — as seen earlier this year when CRM sold off nearly 30% despite being solidly profitable. [42]
Over the coming quarters, market participants are likely to focus on a few key datapoints:
- cRPO growth and renewal/expansion activity, as a proxy for the health of the future pipeline.
- Agentforce and Data 360 ARR growth, including the mix of new vs. expansion deals.
- Cash‑flow trends and whether Salesforce continues to return significant capital via buybacks and dividends.
- FY27 guidance, which several analysts (including Wolfe Research) view as the next major catalyst for re‑rating the stock. [43]
Bottom Line
As of December 4, 2025, Salesforce’s latest quarter gives investors what they’ve been asking for all year:
- Clear evidence that AI products are ramping, not just being demoed.
- A raised outlook for revenue and earnings, not a reset.
- Strong margins and cash flow, even as the company invests in AI and data infrastructure.
At the same time, the stock still trades well below its 52‑week high and remains under pressure from a difficult 2025 for high‑multiple software names. With consensus price targets clustered around the low‑to‑mid‑$320s and several high‑profile analysts still calling for materially higher prices, Wall Street largely views CRM as a high‑quality, AI‑levered cloud name with room to recover — provided Salesforce can keep proving that Agentforce and Data 360 are durable, scalable growth engines. [44]
Note: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell any security, or a substitute for independent financial research.
References
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