Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) has had a rough 2025, but the last few days have looked very different from most of the year.
As of the latest close on Friday, December 5, 2025, Salesforce stock finished around $260.57, up about 5% on the day and roughly 13% over the past week, according to Stock Analysis and QuiverQuant data. [1]
Despite that short‑term rally, CRM remains one of the worst performers in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 2025, with year‑to‑date losses somewhere between the low‑20% and nearly 30% depending on the data provider and measurement date. [2]
The turning point: record Q3 FY26 results, an AI story that’s finally showing up in the numbers, and a fresh round of bullish (but not uncritical) Wall Street forecasts.
This article walks through the latest news, forecasts and analyses as of December 7, 2025, and what they imply for CRM stock.
1. CRM Stock Today: From “Dog of the Dow” to Short-Term Winner
Barchart recently labeled Salesforce “one of the dogs of the Dow” – the second‑worst performer in the index this year – citing concerns about slowing revenue growth and skepticism over the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) offerings. [3]
Yet in the days surrounding its Q3 FY26 earnings:
- CRM rallied about 13% on the week, according to QuiverQuant. [4]
- The stock closed near $260–261 on December 5, up more than $13 on the day. [5]
- Investopedia notes that even after this bounce, Salesforce shares are still down nearly 30% for 2025, reflecting the depth of this year’s drawdown. [6]
Technically, some commentary still characterizes CRM as lagging its software peers and trading below longer‑term moving averages, even after an earnings‑driven pop. [7]
So the setup going into 2026 is odd but interesting: fundamentals are improving, AI metrics look stronger, but the stock’s long‑term chart still screams “underperformer.”
2. Q3 FY26: Record Results and Raised Guidance
The tone of the narrative changed on December 3, 2025, when Salesforce reported record Q3 FY26 results and raised its outlook. [8]
From Salesforce’s own earnings release and follow‑up analysis:
- Revenue:
- Profitability and cash flow:
- Guidance and pipeline:
Salesforce also completed its Informatica acquisition, which is expected to enhance its data integration and governance capabilities and modestly boost revenue growth and margins. [17]
Taken together, the quarter reinforced a theme that’s been building for a couple of years:
Salesforce is now a profitability story, not just a growth story.
3. Agentforce, Data 360 and the AI Question: Momentum vs. Skepticism
AI is the center of Salesforce’s narrative, and Q3 finally delivered numbers big enough for Wall Street to chew on.
What Salesforce is saying
From Salesforce’s Q3 FY26 release and ecosystem coverage:
- Agentforce + Data 360 ARR (annual recurring revenue) is now nearly $1.4 billion, up 114% year over year. [18]
- Agentforce ARR alone surpassed $500 million in Q3, rising 330% year over year. [19]
- Salesforce has closed more than 18,500 Agentforce deals, including over 9,500 paid deals, up 50% quarter‑over‑quarter. [20]
- The platform has processed 3.2 trillion tokens via its LLM gateway, while Data 360 ingested 32 trillion records in Q3, up 119% year over year. [21]
CEO Marc Benioff describes Agentforce and Data 360 as “momentum drivers,” and management reiterated a path toward $60+ billion in organic revenue and a “50 rule” growth‑plus‑margin framework by FY2030. [22]
Salesforce‑focused outlet Salesforce Ben called this “the quarter of Agentforce,” arguing that adoption is finally inflecting after a slow start, with growth in paid deals and consumption‑based usage pointing toward potential “snowball” effects. [23]
What skeptics see
At the same time, a parallel set of analyses keeps the AI story grounded:
- WebProNews notes that Agentforce is generating over $500 million in annualized revenue and helped lift earnings and guidance – but characterizes the impact so far as “incremental” rather than revolutionary, with some internal challenges around accuracy, integration and rollout speed. [24]
- A deep dive from Oliv.ai, which reviewed more than 500 Salesforce Einstein implementations, highlights high costs (true TCO estimates up to $792/user/month), complex deployments and a 67% adoption‑challenge rate, suggesting that legacy Einstein‑era architecture still limits value realization for many enterprise customers. [25]
- 24/7 Wall St points out that Agentforce adoption lagged earlier in 2025 and contributed to initially soft guidance, even while acknowledging that AI is central to Salesforce’s long‑term growth narrative. [26]
So the AI scorecard is mixed:
- Hard data: exploding AI‑related ARR, millions of tokens processed, and major data ingestion figures. [27]
- Soft reality: real adoption friction, implementation complexity, cost sensitivity and ongoing concerns around reliability and “hallucinations” in enterprise use cases. [28]
From the market’s point of view, Q3 didn’t “solve” the AI debate, but it proved that AI can now move Salesforce’s numbers in a visible way, which goes a long way toward justifying the company’s multi‑year AI investment spree.
4. What Wall Street Thinks About CRM Stock Now
Despite the brutal 2025 share‑price performance, analyst sentiment on CRM remains broadly positive.
Consensus ratings and average price targets
Across several major aggregators:
- MarketBeat
- Consensus rating: “Moderate Buy” based on 42 analysts.
- Breakdown: 29 Buy, 12 Hold, 1 Sell.
- Average 12‑month price target: $326.54, implying about 25% upside from a reference price near $260.78. [29]
- StockAnalysis
- Consensus rating from 35 analysts: “Buy.”
- Average price target: $324.57, about 24.6% above the recent ~$260 share price. [30]
- GuruFocus analyst compilation
- 48‑analyst average target: $325.20, with a high estimate of $442 and a low of $221.
- That average implied ~36% upside versus the price at the time of that analysis (~$238.72). [31]
- QuiverQuant
- In the last six months, 29 analysts have issued price targets, with a median target of $315 and an overwhelmingly bullish rating skew (13 Buy to 1 Sell among recent ratings). [32]
Recent rating moves
Recent notes highlight how the Street is updating models post‑earnings rather than abandoning the story:
- Citizens lowered its price target from $430 to $405 while maintaining a “Market Outperform” rating. [33]
- Oppenheimer trimmed its target from $315 to $300 but kept an “Outperform” rating. [34]
- Other firms like Truist, BMO, Macquarie and Northland have nudged targets but generally reaffirmed Buy or Outperform stances, with targets ranging roughly from the mid‑$200s to near $380. [35]
Investopedia reports that 14 of 18 analysts in one surveyed group rate the stock a Buy, with an average target around $330, and notes that Morgan Stanley has a Street‑high $405 target, arguing that investors are still underestimating Salesforce’s AI potential. [36]
The bottom line from Wall Street:
The earnings and AI momentum have reinforced the bullish long‑term case, but not enough to erase concerns about growth deceleration, execution risk and valuation.
5. Institutional Buying, Dividends and Ownership Structure
While retail sentiment has whipsawed with the share price, institutions continue to accumulate CRM.
Two December 7 MarketBeat filings highlight fresh institutional buying:
- Cerity Partners LLC increased its stake by 7.3% in Q2, adding 44,736 shares to reach 654,015 shares worth about $178 million, or roughly 0.07% of the company. [37]
- Dnca Finance raised its position by 64.5%, to 34,700 shares valued near $9.46 million. [38]
MarketBeat notes that around 80% of Salesforce’s shares are held by institutional investors and hedge funds, underscoring the stock’s status as a large‑cap institutional favorite. [39]
On the capital‑return side:
- Salesforce returned $4.2 billion to shareholders in Q3 alone, including $3.8 billion in buybacks and about $395 million in dividends. [40]
- The company is now paying a quarterly dividend of $0.416 per share (about $1.66 annualized, a yield around 0.6% at current prices). [41]
Those buybacks and the new dividend matter for valuation: they support EPS growth and shareholder yield even if top‑line growth stays in the high single digits to low double digits.
6. Long-Term CRM Stock Forecasts to 2030
Most Wall Street models stop at 12 months, but some independent research shops have gone further.
A detailed December 2025 piece from 24/7 Wall St projects the following path for Salesforce: [42]
- End of 2025 target:$302 (about 32% upside from their reference price).
- 2026–2030 projected stock prices: climbing gradually to $493.80 by FY2030, implying more than 100% upside from late‑2025 levels.
- Their normalized EPS curve rises from $10.06 in 2025 to $16.46 in 2030, driven by continued SaaS dominance, AI‑related R&D and international expansion.
They explicitly frame these as scenario‑based forecasts, not certainties, and flag important headwinds:
- Intensifying competition from Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, HubSpot and others.
- Activist pressure to keep acquisitions in check.
- Earlier‑than‑hoped weakness in 2025 guidance tied to slow Agentforce adoption. [43]
In other words, the long‑term models look bright if Salesforce can:
- Keep expanding margins,
- Turn AI into a durable, high‑margin revenue stream, and
- Avoid getting out‑innovated in enterprise AI and CRM.
Those are big “ifs,” and none of these forecasts should be mistaken for guarantees.
7. Key Risks: Why CRM Is Still Controversial
The recent rally and earnings beat didn’t erase the core debates around CRM stock. Major risks highlighted across recent analyses include:
- Valuation risk
- MarketBeat pegs Salesforce’s P/E in the mid‑30s, with a PEG ratio around 2.0, which is not cheap for a company growing revenue under 10–11% annually. [44]
- If AI revenue fails to ramp as hoped, the multiple could compress further.
- AI execution and ROI
- While ARR numbers look strong, a number of investigative pieces emphasize integration headaches, hidden costs and mixed ROI for customers, particularly around older Einstein components. [45]
- Enterprise AI is moving from “wow demo” to “prove it in production,” and missteps here could hurt both growth and reputation.
- Competitive intensity
- 24/7 Wall St and others spotlight a crowded field: Microsoft Dynamics 365, ServiceNow, Oracle, SAP, HubSpot, and specialized AI‑native revenue platforms. [46]
- Many rivals position themselves as lighter, cheaper or more AI‑native, especially in revenue intelligence and GTM tooling.
- Macro and IT‑spend sensitivity
- Salesforce’s customers are global enterprises. A slowdown in IT budgets, or a shift in AI spending priorities, could pressure new bookings even if AI remains a strategic priority.
- Leadership and transition risk
- 24/7 Wall St notes the earlier CFO transition from Amy Weaver to Robin Washington as a non‑trivial factor to watch, given Weaver’s strong reputation with investors. [47]
- “AI bubble” worries
- Salesforce Ben explicitly points to ongoing warnings of a potential AI bubble and notes that Agentforce’s early adoption curve was slower than investor hype would suggest. [48]
All of this explains why CRM can rally double digits on good news and still trade well below prior highs: the market is trying to price in both the upside of AI and the possibility that much of that upside arrives slower, messier, or smaller than bulls expect.
8. Takeaway: How the Story Looks on December 7, 2025
Bringing it together:
- Short term:
- Medium term (12–18 months):
- Most analysts rate CRM a Buy or Moderate Buy, with average price targets clustered in the low‑to‑mid $320s, implying mid‑20% upside from recent prices. [51]
- Long term (through 2030):
- Independent forecasts imagine a scenario where Salesforce nearly doubles again by decade’s end, assuming AI, data, and international expansion play out well and margins stay high. [52]
- But the same research also underlines heavy competition, possible AI over‑promising, and the risk that Agentforce adoption never quite matches the marketing.
Nothing here guarantees that CRM will complete a glorious comeback, and nothing eliminates the possibility of more volatility or further downside. This article is informational, not investment advice. Anyone considering Salesforce stock should weigh:
- Their own time horizon,
- Comfort with AI‑execution risk,
- Views on enterprise software spending, and
- The reality that even excellent businesses can be mediocre investments if bought at the wrong price.
Right now, as of December 7, 2025, Salesforce sits in an unusual spot:
a high‑quality, newly dividend‑paying software giant with real AI momentum… that the market still treats like a slightly suspicious comeback story.
References
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