Salesforce (CRM) After Hours on December 9, 2025: AI Momentum, Analyst Moves and What to Watch Before the December 10 Open

Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE: CRM) ended Tuesday, December 9, 2025, quietly but firmly in the green, as investors continued to digest a big AI-fueled earnings beat and a fresh wave of Wall Street research. With U.S. markets set to reopen on Wednesday, December 10, traders and longer-term investors alike are asking the same question: what does all of this mean for Salesforce stock before the bell?

Below is a detailed, Google‑News‑ready rundown of how CRM traded after the bell, the key news and forecasts published on December 9, and the main things to watch before the market opens on December 10.

1. Salesforce stock after the bell on December 9, 2025

Closing price and after‑hours action

• Regular session: Salesforce closed on Tuesday at $261.02, up 0.57% on the day. The stock traded in a relatively tight intraday range between about $259 and $262.25, with volume a little over 7.2 million shares. ^[1]
• After hours: In extended trading, CRM slipped only slightly, changing hands around $260.8–$261, leaving most of the day’s gain intact according to after‑hours quotes on MarketScreener. ^[2]

The move keeps Salesforce in the middle of a short but powerful rebound:

• Over the last week, CRM has climbed from the mid‑$230s to the low‑$260s, a gain of roughly 10–12% since just before its fiscal Q3 FY26 earnings report. ^[3]
• Even after this rebound, multiple outlets note that the stock remains around 20–30% lower for 2025 versus where it started the year, lagging the broader tech and AI trade. ^[4]

Trend and technical context

Recent data from MarketBeat and StockAnalysis show that at Tuesday’s close: ^[5]

• CRM is trading above both its 50‑day and 200‑day moving averages (around $243.55 and $252.27, respectively).
• The stock sits well above its 52‑week low near $222, but still far below its 52‑week high around $367.
• At roughly $261 per share, Salesforce carries:
  • A trailing P/E in the mid‑30s (about 34–35x),
  • A PEG ratio near 2.0, and
  • A beta of about 1.25, meaning it tends to move more than the broader market.

From a pure price‑action standpoint, the market is treating Salesforce as a rebound story: no longer in free‑fall, but not yet fully forgiven for its rough 2025.

2. The earnings engine behind the move: Q3 FY26 results and AI momentum

The current setup in CRM stock is still anchored in the fiscal Q3 2026 results (quarter ended October 31, 2025), reported on December 3.

Headline numbers

Across Salesforce’s own release, Reuters and multiple analyst summaries, the story is consistent: ^[6]

• Revenue: ≈ $10.26–$10.3 billion, up about 9% year‑over‑year, essentially in line with estimates.
• Subscription & support revenue: ≈ $9.7 billion, up 10%.
• Adjusted EPS:$3.25, smashing the $2.86 consensus.
• Revenue vs. expectations: A tiny miss—revenue was just a hair below the $10.27 billion LSEG consensus, which most commentators view as “statistical noise” rather than a real shortfall. ^[7]
• Remaining performance obligation (RPO):
  • Current RPO (cRPO): ≈ $29.4 billion, up 11%.
  • Total RPO: ≈ $59.5 billion, up 12%, signaling a very large backlog of contracted future revenue. ^[8]
• Margins and cash flow:
  • GAAP operating margin around 21%.
  • Non‑GAAP operating margin ≈ 35–36%.
  • Operating cash flow: ≈ $2.3 billion, up 17%.
  • Free cash flow: ≈ $2.2 billion, up 22%. ^[9]

In plain language: Salesforce isn’t a hyper‑growth story anymore, but it is a high‑margin, high‑cash‑flow software platform growing high single‑digit to low double‑digit each year, and that’s what the market is now recalibrating around.

Raised guidance

On top of the beat, Salesforce raised its full‑year outlook for FY26: ^[10]

• FY26 revenue: now guided to about $41.45–$41.55 billion (≈ 9–10% growth).
• Full‑year adjusted EPS:$11.75–$11.77, up from a prior range of $11.33–$11.37.
• Non‑GAAP operating margin: targeted around 34.1%.
• Q4 FY26 guidance: revenue of $11.13–$11.23 billion and EPS of $3.02–$3.04, with cRPO growth ~15%.

These numbers underpin much of the optimism you see in Wall Street notes published over the last week.

The AI and Agentforce story

Every major analysis on December 9 comes back to the same theme: Salesforce’s AI pivot, specifically Agentforce and Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud), is the centerpiece of the bull case. ^[11]

Key AI metrics highlighted in recent coverage:

• Agentforce + Data 360 ARR is now nearly $1.4 billion, up about 114% year‑over‑year.
• Agentforce ARR alone has surpassed $500 million, growing more than 3x from a year ago. ^[12]
• Salesforce has closed over 18,500 Agentforce deals, with more than 9,500 paid customers, and paid deals growing about 50% quarter‑over‑quarter. ^[13]
• Agentforce has processed over 3.2 trillion tokens through Salesforce’s LLM gateway, while Data 360 ingested 32 trillion records in Q3, including massive growth in “zero‑copy” and unstructured data. ^[14]

Specialist site SalesforceBen described Q3 as the moment Salesforce “avoided the danger zone” by delivering “explosive” Agentforce momentum, noting that Wall Street had been laser‑focused on AI adoption metrics, not just headline revenue. ^[15]

This is the fundamental backdrop against which all of Tuesday’s new headlines should be read.

3. What was new on December 9, 2025?

3.1 Morgan Stanley trims its target but stays firmly bullish

The highest‑profile fresh research on December 9 came from Morgan Stanley.

• The bank lowered its Salesforce price target from $405 to $398 but maintained an “Overweight” rating, implying roughly 50+% upside from the current share price. ^[16]
• MarketBeat’s summary notes that this trim reflects fine‑tuning rather than a thesis change: Salesforce is still seen as a core AI and software compounder, with the stock trading near $260 and a market cap around $243 billion. ^[17]

Morgan Stanley’s updated view sits within a broader, still‑constructive analyst backdrop:

• Consensus rating: “Moderate Buy” based on ~42 Wall Street analysts, with 28 Buys, 13 Holds and 1 Sell. ^[18]
• Average 12‑month price target: about $326–$327, implying ≈24–25% upside from around $261. ^[19]
• Target range is wide, from roughly $221 on the low end to $405–$430 on the high end, reflecting real disagreement on how much of the AI opportunity is already priced in. ^[20]

3.2 TD Cowen: Agentforce momentum supports a Buy at $305

A widely‑shared InsiderMonkey piece on Tuesday highlighted TD Cowen’s stance: ^[21]

• TD Cowen reiterated a Buy rating and a $305 price target (from December 4), explicitly citing Agentforce momentum as a key driver.
• The firm notes:
  • Q3 revenue was in line with expectations,
  • cRPO growth beat forecasts, and
  • Q4 organic revenue and cRPO guidance match market expectations, suggesting no major slowdown.
• Crucially, TD Cowen is “particularly optimistic” about:
  • Bookings strength and pipeline, and
  • Accelerating adoption and credit utilization in Agentforce, supported by strong AI ARR growth and rising net new deals.

Taken together, Morgan Stanley and TD Cowen’s notes keep the AI‑driven acceleration narrative very much alive, even as some price targets are nudged lower.

3.3 Mixed signals from other analysts

Additional December research, rounded up by GuruFocus and MarketBeat, paints a more nuanced picture: ^[22]

• Citigroup (Dec 8): Neutral, target nudged from $253 to $257, slightly below the current share price.
• DA Davidson (Dec 5): Neutral, target raised from $225 to $235.
• Needham (Dec 4): Buy, $400 target.
• Citizens, Baird, HSBC, RBC and others have generally either:
  • Lowered targets modestly while keeping Buy / Outperform ratings, or
  • Clustered around “market perform” / “sector perform” with targets near the current price.

Zacks‑linked research, echoed by Nasdaq, notes that Salesforce’s revenue is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of about 8.6% from fiscal 2025–2028, with generative AI expansion a key driver—but it also stresses stiff competition, FX headwinds and cautious IT spending as ongoing pressures. ^[23]

On balance, Wall Street still leans bullish, but December 9 headlines underline that this is no longer a universally loved, “set‑and‑forget” AI stock.

3.4 Insider and political trading: Boozman, Morfit and Harris

MarketBeat also published a piece on December 9 detailing recent insider and political trades in Salesforce: ^[24]

• Sen. John Boozman (R‑Arkansas) disclosed the sale of a small Salesforce position (between $1,001 and $15,000) on November 13, reported on December 8.
• On the corporate side:
  • Co‑founder Parker Harris recently sold about 134,662 shares at an average price near $234.70, worth roughly $31.6 million, significantly trimming his position.
  • Activist‑aligned director G. Mason Morfit bought 96,000 shares around $260.58, a $25 million purchase that increased his holdings by about 3.3%.

Analysts generally view Harris’s sale as typical executive diversification, while Morfit’s large buy is seen as a vote of confidence that Salesforce remains undervalued around current levels.

3.5 Product and ecosystem news: Anthropic’s Claude Code comes to Slack

Late Tuesday, Salesforce published an official note—via MarketScreener and PublicNow—highlighting Anthropic’s new “Claude Code” integration for Slack, which Salesforce owns. ^[25]

Key points:

• Developers can now invoke Claude Code directly inside Slack, pulling context from bug reports, feature requests and engineering discussions straight into coding sessions.
• Slack is positioning itself as an “agentic work OS”, where human users and AI agents work side‑by‑side in shared channels.
• Salesforce says companies can deploy Agentforce agents inside Slack, and internally it expects Agentforce in Slack to be on track to save 500,000 hours per year at Salesforce itself.

While this doesn’t move the stock in a single evening, it strengthens the narrative that Salesforce’s AI strategy is deeply embedded into its collaboration layer, not just its CRM screens.

4. How the market is valuing Salesforce after Tuesday’s close

4.1 Valuation snapshot

Putting together data from MarketBeat, StockAnalysis, Eulerpool and GuruFocus, Salesforce’s valuation as of December 9 looks roughly like this: ^[26]

• Price: ≈ $261
• Market cap: ≈ $243–248 billion
• Trailing P/E: mid‑30s (≈ 34–35x)
• Price/sales: ≈ 6.5–7x
• PEG ratio: around 2.0
• Dividend yield: about 0.6–0.7%, based on a $0.416 quarterly dividend (≈ $1.66 annualized).
• GF Value (GuruFocus): ≈ $290.21, versus the current price of $261.02—implying the stock is “modestly undervalued” with a Price‑to‑GF‑Value of 0.90. ^[27]

From a pure numbers standpoint, Salesforce is trading like a profitable, wide‑moat software franchise with above‑market growth, but not at “hype‑cycle” AI multiples.

4.2 Dividend and capital returns

Salesforce has also leaned harder into shareholder returns:

• The company recently declared a quarterly dividend of $0.416 per share, payable January 8, 2026, with an ex‑dividend date of December 18, 2025. ^[28]
• Q3 results showed Salesforce returning around $4.2 billion to shareholders, including $3.8 billion in buybacks and roughly $395 million in dividends. ^[29]

For investors eyeing the December 18 ex‑div date, this is a concrete timeline to keep on the calendar as we head into the final weeks of the year.

5. Bull vs. bear: what December 9 research is really saying

5.1 The bull case going into the December 10 open

Across TD Cowen, Morgan Stanley, Investopedia and several independent analysts, the bullish arguments crystallizing on December 9 include: ^[30]

1. AI is finally moving the needle.
   Agentforce and Data 360 ARR has crossed $1.4 billion, growing triple digits year‑over‑year, with Agentforce itself above $500 million and accelerating. That suggests AI is no longer just a slide in the earnings deck, but a material revenue stream.
2. Margins and cash flow are robust.
   A mid‑30s non‑GAAP operating margin and double‑digit free‑cash‑flow growth put Salesforce squarely in the camp of profitable compounders, not speculative AI bets.
3. Guidance is moving up, not down.
   Raising FY26 revenue and EPS guidance while maintaining strong cRPO growth reinforces the narrative of a healthy pipeline and expanding backlog.
4. Valuation isn’t extreme for the profile.
   With the stock down sharply for 2025 but fundamentals trending higher, several frameworks—from consensus price targets around $325–$327 to GuruFocus’ GF Value of ~$290—argue that CRM is modestly undervalued relative to expected growth.
5. Big money is still interested.
   Insider and institutional moves—especially G. Mason Morfit’s $25 million share purchase—signal that sophisticated investors still see upside from current levels, even after the post‑earnings bounce.
6. Street positioning remains constructive.
   With a consensus “Moderate Buy” rating and the majority of analysts still in the Buy camp, Wall Street as a whole is not throwing in the towel on the Salesforce AI story.

5.2 The bear (or at least skeptical) case

At the same time, several December 9 pieces—and many published in the days before—highlight legitimate concerns: ^[31]

1. Growth is good, not spectacular.
   With revenue growing around 8–10% annually, Salesforce is no longer the 20%+ grower it once was. Some strategists argue that a mid‑30s P/E is rich for that pace of growth, especially in a world where investors can buy faster‑growing AI names.
2. Competition in AI is fierce.
   Recent commentary—such as Barron’s coverage of a KeyBanc CIO survey—suggests Microsoft may be capturing a larger share of near‑term AI software budgets, with Salesforce still fighting to prove Agentforce is indispensable. (The exact numbers differ by survey, but the broad takeaway is that Salesforce isn’t the default AI vendor in many budgets.)
3. Bookings and backlog are under a microscope.
   A Yahoo/InsiderMonkey write‑up titled “Salesforce (CRM) Bookings Improve, But Analysts Want More” captures the sentiment: Q3 was good, but investors want repeated proof that bookings growth can re‑accelerate and stay there. ^[32]
4. Adobe, ServiceNow and others are credible alternatives.
   Trefis, in a December 8 note comparing Salesforce vs. Adobe, argued that Adobe’s growth and margin profile currently look better, and that ADBE might offer the superior risk‑reward despite Salesforce’s recent rally. ^[33]
5. Macro and rate risk still matter.
   As Yahoo Finance and others have stressed, markets remain highly sensitive to the December 10 Federal Reserve policy update and the trajectory of rate cuts for 2026. High‑multiple software names like CRM could move sharply on any surprise in Fed messaging. ^[34]
6. AI hype vs. reality.
   Some Seeking Alpha contributors have framed Salesforce as a “buy the dip” AI play precisely because many investors are still skeptical about the durability of its AI moat. That skepticism itself is a risk: if AI adoption slows or customers prove unwilling to pay for premium AI features at scale, growth targets could prove optimistic. ^[35]

Heading into the December 10 session, CRM is a classic battleground stock: bulls point to AI metrics, guidance and valuation; bears focus on competition, slowing growth and macro sensitivity.

6. What to watch before the U.S. market opens on December 10, 2025

If you’re monitoring Salesforce when pre‑market trading gets going on Wednesday, here’s a practical checklist.

6.1 Price levels and pre‑market tone

1. Watch whether CRM holds the $260 area.
   • Tuesday’s close at $261.02 places the stock slightly above the psychologically important $260 line and above its 50‑ and 200‑day moving averages. ^[36]
   • A firm pre‑market tone above $260 would reinforce the idea of a stable post‑earnings base; a sharp move back toward the mid‑$250s would signal that traders are still inclined to sell strength.
2. Check volume vs. normal.
   Pre‑market volumes are usually thin, but unusually heavy activity in CRM relative to the broader software group could indicate that large investors are reacting to Tuesday’s research and news.

6.2 Macro and sector catalysts

1. Federal Reserve policy update (December 10).
   Markets remain “laser‑focused” on the Fed’s upcoming communication, with strong conviction that rate cuts are coming in 2026. Any hint that the Fed may stay tighter for longer could pressure high‑multiple software names, including Salesforce. ^[37]
2. Oracle and Adobe earnings as AI bellwethers.
   • Oracle (ORCL) is set to report after the close on December 10, and analysts expect strong cloud and AI commentary. ^[38]
   • Adobe (ADBE) reports its own numbers shortly after, and Trefis notes that both ADBE and CRM have just posted big gains on AI narratives. ^[39]
     How those stocks trade into and out of earnings could set the tone for enterprise AI software valuations, including Salesforce.
3. Broader index futures and bond yields.
   Check S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures and the U.S. 10‑year yield before the open. Recent sessions have shown that modest moves in yields can translate into outsized swings in software, as investors rebalance between growth and value. ^[40]

6.3 Company‑specific storylines

1. Follow‑up analyst commentary.
   • Look for post‑Morgan Stanley and TD Cowen reactions, especially from firms that have been on the sidelines (Hold/Neutral).
   • Any fresh downgrades or target cuts clustered near the open could weigh on the stock; conversely, new “AI‑positive” notes could reinforce the rebound.
2. Additional AI and ecosystem headlines.
   • The Anthropic Claude Code for Slack announcement shows Salesforce is deepening its AI ecosystem, not just its internal products. ^[41]
   • Watch for any overnight commentary from AI vendors (OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, etc.) that references Slack, Agentforce or Salesforce integrations—these can subtly shift sentiment around Salesforce’s AI positioning.
3. Dividend and capital‑return chatter.
   With the December 18 ex‑div date coming up and Salesforce returning billions via buybacks, some investors may increasingly frame CRM as a profitable AI‑enabled platform with a modest but growing shareholder‑return profile, not just a growth stock. ^[42]

7. Final thoughts: how Salesforce looks heading into the next session

As of after‑hours on December 9, 2025, the picture for Salesforce (CRM) looks like this:

• The business is solid and increasingly profitable, with AI products finally contributing meaningful ARR and helping drive raised guidance. ^[43]
• Wall Street is still broadly bullish, but the tone has shifted from “slam‑dunk AI play” to “show‑me story with upside” as firms fine‑tune targets and weigh Salesforce against peers like Adobe and Microsoft. ^[44]
• The stock has bounced hard from recent lows but remains well below its 52‑week high and well off where it started 2025, leaving room for both further recovery and renewed disappointment, depending on how AI adoption, bookings and macro conditions evolve. ^[45]

For traders heading into the December 10 open, the key is likely to be short‑term positioning around the $260 level and any fresh macro or AI headlines. For longer‑term investors, the focus remains on whether Salesforce can convert its Agentforce and Data 360 momentum into sustained, double‑digit growth without letting competition or valuation get the upper hand.

References

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