Salesforce (CRM) Stock Near 52‑Week Low as AI Jitters Collide With Big Data Bets Ahead of Q3 Earnings

Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE: CRM) heads into a pivotal earnings week trading near its 52‑week low, even as the company doubles down on artificial intelligence, data platforms, and a fresh long‑term revenue target for 2030. Investors now face a classic tech-stock paradox: slowing headline growth and nervous sentiment on one side, and a very large, very loud AI story on the other.

Salesforce stock today: price, performance and valuation snapshot

As of the close on Friday, November 28, 2025, Salesforce stock finished at $230.54, giving the cloud software leader a market capitalization of roughly $222 billion. ^[1]

CRM is trading only a few percentage points above its 52‑week low of $221.96, set on November 21, and far below its 52‑week high of $369.00, reached in December 2024. That leaves the stock down about 31% over the past year and roughly 31% year‑to‑date, vastly underperforming major indices. ^[2]

By comparison, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is modestly positive year‑to‑date, highlighting just how sharply Salesforce has lagged broader blue‑chip peers. Over the last 52 weeks, Salesforce shares have fallen around 31%, while the Dow is up about 5% over the same period. ^[3]

On basic valuation metrics, CRM doesn’t look distressed, just de‑rated:

Trailing P/E around 33x,
PEG ratio (price/earnings-to-growth) near 2.1,
Beta about 1.2, implying slightly above‑market volatility. ^[4]

In other words, investors are no longer paying a “hyper‑growth” multiple for Salesforce, but the stock is still priced like a quality, profitable large‑cap software name. The question is whether the growth and AI story justifies even this reduced premium.

Why Salesforce stock sold off: guidance, AI fears and a fragile narrative

Salesforce has been profitable and continues to beat consensus earnings expectations, but the market has focused on two pressure points:

Slower revenue growth, and
Uncertainty around AI’s impact on the business — as a risk as much as an opportunity.

In its fiscal Q2 2026 (reported September 3), Salesforce delivered:

EPS of $2.91 vs. $2.78 expected,
Revenue of $10.24 billion vs. $10.14 billion expected,
Revenue growth of 9.8% year‑on‑year. ^[5]

Despite that solid beat, the company’s Q3 revenue guidance came in below some bullish expectations, and the market has punished Salesforce for projecting high single‑digit rather than mid‑teens growth.

A widely cited note from Citi analyst Tyler Radke underscored the bearish mood around AI. Radke argued that Salesforce’s upcoming fiscal Q3 earnings on December 3 are unlikely to dispel fears that artificial intelligence could be more disruptive than accretive to its core CRM franchise. He highlighted that:

Salesforce stock is down about 30% year‑to‑date and 5% over five years,
Growth is expected to slow from an average 17% annually to below 10% over the next few years,
AI monetization via platforms like Agentforce and Data Cloud, despite an estimated $1.2 billion in related ARR, still looks early and uneven. ^[6]

Citi cut its price target from $276 to $253 and maintained a neutral stance. ^[7]

Shortly afterward, a MarketBeat instant alert noted that Salesforce shares fell about 2.5% on November 26, trading as low as $226, after this and other price‑target cuts. The same report emphasized that while sentiment has cooled, Wall Street’s overall view remains “Moderate Buy”, with a consensus target near $322.86 — roughly 40% above recent prices. ^[8]

Several commentators have called this a “narrative issue”: fundamentals are fine, but the storyline — “Can AI help Salesforce, or will AI eat Salesforce?” — has turned negative enough to dominate price action. ^[9]

Earnings countdown: Q3 FY2026 on December 3

The next major catalyst is imminent. Salesforce will report fiscal Q3 2026 results on Wednesday, December 3, 2025, after the market close, with a conference call scheduled for 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time. ^[10]

Current analyst expectations cluster around:

Q3 EPS: about $2.85–$2.86, up from $2.41 in the prior‑year quarter,
Q3 Revenue: roughly $10.26–$10.27 billion, implying ~8.7–8.8% year‑on‑year growth. ^[11]

For fiscal 2026, the Street is looking for:

EPS around $11.3–$11.4,
Revenue near $41.2–$41.3 billion, or roughly 9% growth. ^[12]

Management has already guided Q3 EPS to $2.84–$2.86 and full‑year EPS to $11.33–$11.37, so attention on the call will fall less on the headline numbers and more on:

The trajectory of AI and Data Cloud bookings,
Any updated long‑term revenue and margin commentary,
Details on Informatica integration and its financial impact,
Signals on whether growth can sustainably return to low‑double‑digits without sacrificing profitability.

In short, this isn’t just another quarter; it is a credibility test for Salesforce’s AI‑first narrative.

AI, Agentforce and Data Cloud: Salesforce’s long‑term growth engine

Behind the stock volatility sits a company that has quietly re‑engineered itself around AI and data.

Q1 and Q2 FY2026: proof of profitability and AI traction

In fiscal Q1 2026, Salesforce reported:

Revenue of $9.83 billion, up 8% year‑on‑year,
Non‑GAAP operating margin of 32.3%,
Operating cash flow of $6.5 billion,
Raised FY 2026 revenue guidance to $41.3 billion at the high end. ^[13]

Crucially, the company disclosed that:

Data Cloud ARR exceeded $1 billion, growing over 120% year‑on‑year,
Agentforce ARR hit roughly $100 million, with more than 4,000 paying customers,
A new AI‑centric packaging and 6% price increase is designed to lift growth rates in fiscal 2026 and beyond. ^[14]

By its August Investor Day at Dreamforce, Salesforce went further, unveiling a new long‑term revenue target of $60+ billion by fiscal 2030 (excluding Informatica), implying 10%+ organic CAGR from FY26 to FY30. The company also introduced a “50 by FY30” framework, targeting the sum of subscription growth rate and non‑GAAP operating margin to reach 50 by fiscal 2030. ^[15]

Salesforce disclosed that:

Data + AI revenue reached $1.2 billion in Q2, again up ~120% year‑on‑year,
Combined agentic AI ARR (Data Cloud + Agentforce) sits around $440 million,
More than 12,000 customers are already adopting Agentforce, and management sees a path to a 3–4x ARR uplift as those customers expand AI usage across their organizations. ^[16]

Put simply, while the core CRM and sales‑cloud growth has cooled, the AI and data layer is growing fast off a smaller base.

Informatica acquisition: building a data moat for Agentforce

On November 18, 2025, Salesforce closed its approximately $8 billion acquisition of Informatica, a leader in AI‑powered cloud data management. ^[17]

Salesforce says the deal will:

Fold Informatica’s data catalog, integration, governance, privacy and MDM tools into the platform,
Strengthen Data 360 and MuleSoft integration capabilities,
Provide a richer metadata foundation for Agentforce, improving the accuracy and explainability of AI agents,
Support a unified data fabric that allows AI agents to operate “safely, responsibly and at scale” across the enterprise. ^[18]

Management now expects the transaction to be accretive to non‑GAAP operating margin and EPS within 12 months — a full year earlier than originally guided. ^[19]

The strategic bet is clear: if “you have to get your data right to get your AI right,” as CEO Marc Benioff puts it, then Salesforce wants to own more of the data plumbing that powers enterprise AI. ^[20]

What Wall Street and models are saying about CRM stock

Despite the drawdown, analysts are not abandoning Salesforce — but they are more cautious.

Street ratings: still a “Moderate Buy,” but with lowered expectations

According to MarketBeat and other aggregators:

Salesforce currently carries a “Moderate Buy” consensus rating,
Roughly 25 analysts rate CRM a Buy, 13 a Hold and 1 a Sell,
The average price target hovers around $322–$323, about 40% above recent prices near $230. ^[21]

Zacks data shows an Average Brokerage Recommendation (ABR) of about 1.6 on a 1‑to‑5 scale (1 = Strong Buy, 5 = Strong Sell), based on 50 brokerage firms, with 35 “Strong Buy” and 2 “Buy” ratings. At the same time, Zacks itself assigns Salesforce a Rank #3 (Hold) due to relatively flat earnings revisions in recent weeks, urging investors not to rely solely on the bullish ABR. ^[22]

Citi’s cut to $253, downgrades from Northland and others in prior months, and a series of trimmed targets across the Street have helped pull consensus down from far loftier levels earlier in 2025. ^[23]

Quant and valuation models: from “fully valued” to “undervalued”

Several quantitative and valuation‑driven platforms now argue the pendulum has swung too far to the bearish side:

Simply Wall St estimates a DCF fair value of about $374 per share, roughly 39% above current levels, and notes Salesforce’s P/E (~32.6x) is modestly above the broader software industry average (~29x) but below that of many direct high‑growth peers. ^[24]
A separate analysis on CoinCentral using Grok’s models tags Salesforce as “about 50% below fair value” at roughly $229 per share, with an average analyst target of $323.51 and the same 25‑Buy / 13‑Hold / 1‑Sell breakdown. ^[25]

These models lean heavily on long‑term cash‑flow assumptions and AI‑driven growth, so they are only as good as those narratives. But they do highlight that the market has already “repriced” Salesforce as a slower‑growing, but still highly profitable, AI‑enabled platform company.

Ownership, insider activity and sentiment

Institutional and insider positioning

Salesforce remains heavily institutionally owned, with more than 80% of shares held by institutions and roughly 2.5–3% by insiders, including Marc Benioff. ^[26]

Recent filings show:

Ongoing, relatively small insider sales, including Benioff’s automatic sales of 2,250 shares at about $258 and additional lots of 122 shares at $259, tied to option exercises and typical diversification, not wholesale liquidation. ^[27]
Several Form 4 filings in late November reflect RSU vesting and exercises for directors such as John Victor Roos and Oscar Munoz, indicating continued equity‑based compensation rather than large discretionary selling. ^[28]

Alternative‑data provider QuiverQuant notes that over the past six months, insider trades have skewed overwhelmingly toward sales rather than purchases, a common pattern among large‑cap tech executives but still a psychological headwind for some investors. ^[29]

Sentiment: cautious but engaged

On the sentiment side:

Social and news flow around Salesforce has surged in recent weeks, driven by AI headlines, the Informatica deal and the coming Q3 report. ^[30]
Congressional trading and large‑fund flows show no dramatic one‑sided positioning, but rather continuous rebalancing — some funds trimming exposure after the sell‑off, others adding at lower levels. ^[31]

The upshot: the market is engaged, not ignoring Salesforce. That matters going into a big catalyst — attentive investors can react quickly to any shift in narrative.

Key risks and opportunities for Salesforce stock

Competitive and execution risks

Salesforce faces intense competition across its AI and data stack:

Microsoft is embedding Copilot and data services deeply into its existing productivity and Dynamics ecosystems.
Snowflake is a pure‑play data cloud rival with strong traction among analytics‑heavy customers. ^[32]

Zacks recently highlighted that while Salesforce’s Data Cloud ARR is growing triple‑digit, overall company revenue growth has slipped into the high single digits, raising questions about whether AI can fully offset maturity in core CRM and sales products. ^[33]

The Informatica acquisition adds execution risk: integrating complex data‑governance and MDM tools into Agentforce 360 could be technically and commercially challenging, even if the long‑term logic is strong. ^[34]

Opportunity: if the AI + data story lands, the math changes

On the other hand, if Salesforce can:

Sustain 8–10%+ revenue growth,
Maintain 30%+ non‑GAAP operating margins, and
Scale Data Cloud and Agentforce such that AI‑related revenue becomes a multi‑billion‑dollar, high‑growth pillar,

then today’s valuation could prove conservative, especially given the scale and stickiness of its installed base.

Management’s $60B+ FY2030 revenue target, combined with its “50 by FY30” profitability framework, is effectively a public promise that Salesforce can be both a durable compounder and an AI platform story rather than a one‑dimensional “legacy SaaS” name. ^[35]

Whether investors believe that promise will depend heavily on the tone and details of Wednesday’s earnings call.

What investors should watch on December 3

For investors following Salesforce stock into earnings week, the most important signals are likely to be:

AI monetization details
- Concrete numbers on Agentforce and Data Cloud ARR, customer counts and expansion within existing accounts.
- Case studies or proof points that AI agents are driving measurable revenue uplift or cost savings for customers, not just pilots.
Updated guidance and long‑term framing
- Any change to FY2026 revenue or margin guidance.
- Clarification around how Informatica affects fiscal 2026 and the path toward the FY2030 $60B+ target.
Customer demand and macro commentary
- Whether enterprise buyers are delaying big deals or moving faster into AI‑centric packages.
- How Salesforce is balancing price increases with retention and expansion.

If management can convince the market that AI is a durable tailwind rather than an existential threat, the current price level near the 52‑week low could prove to be an inflection point rather than a staging area for further declines. If not, the stock may continue to trade like a “show me” story — profitable, but not fully trusted.

Bottom line

As of November 30, 2025, Salesforce stock sits at a crossroads:

The share price is depressed, down about 30% over the past year, with investors worried about slowing growth and AI disruption. ^[36]
The business, however, remains profitable, cash‑generative and increasingly oriented around fast‑growing AI and data products like Agentforce and Data Cloud, supported by the Informatica acquisition and a bold FY2030 target. ^[37]

Whether Salesforce (CRM) ultimately looks cheap or deservedly discounted will hinge on what happens next — starting with this week’s Q3 fiscal 2026 earnings report.

The AI revolution is now coming to Salesforce, says Wedbush's Dan Ives