Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE: CRM) is back in the spotlight today as its share price retreats, analysts send mixed signals on the AI story, and a new AI joint venture with Adecco grabs headlines.
Key takeaways for November 26, 2025
- Share price: Salesforce is trading around $228 today, down roughly 2.5–2.9% vs. Tuesday’s close of $234.12, extending a difficult year for the Dow component. [1]
- YTD performance: CRM is down about 30% year-to-date and roughly 31% over the last 12 months, sharply lagging the Dow’s ~+10.7% gain. [2]
- Fresh news today:
- Citi cut its price target and reiterated a cautious stance. [3]
- KeyBanc reaffirmed an Overweight rating with a $400 target. [4]
- New 13F filings show institutional investors adding to positions. [5]
- Adecco’s CEO detailed a new r.Potential joint venture with Salesforce aimed at “de‑risking” AI adoption. [6]
Salesforce stock today: price action and underperformance
By late-morning U.S. trading on Wednesday, November 26, 2025, Salesforce shares are hovering around $228 per share, down roughly 2.5–2.9% from yesterday’s close of $234.12. [7]
Key price metrics:
- Today’s intraday range: roughly $226–233, depending on the feed. [8]
- 52‑week range:$221.96 (low) to $369.00 (high) – meaning the stock still trades more than 35% below its 52‑week peak. [9]
- Market cap: around $215–223 billion, depending on which real‑time snapshot you use. [10]
Performance has been punishing:
- CRM is down roughly 30% YTD and around 31% over the last 12 months. [11]
- Over the same period, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up ~10.7% YTD and ~5.3% over 12 months, leaving Salesforce as one of the index’s major laggards. [12]
A fresh Barchart piece today highlights how CRM has traded below its 50‑day moving average since early March and slipped under its 200‑day average in November, framing the current setup as a sustained bearish trend despite ongoing AI hype. [13]
Wall Street split: Citi turns cautious while KeyBanc stays bullish
Citi: “Stuck in reverse” and price target cut
The most attention‑grabbing headline today comes from Citi. Analyst Tyler Radke:
- Maintains a Hold/Neutral rating on Salesforce.
- Cuts the price target to $253 from $276, implying only single‑digit upside from recent levels. [14]
In coverage summarized by Barron’s and TipRanks, Radke argues that:
- CRM’s share price is down about 30% year-to-date and roughly 5% over five years, badly trailing the S&P 500 by more than 90 percentage points over that stretch. [15]
- Growth is slowing to sub‑10% annually, versus an average nearer 17% in prior years. [16]
- AI is still a double‑edged sword: Salesforce is investing heavily in Data Cloud and Agentforce, but investors worry AI agents could disrupt core CRM workflows or pressure pricing.
Citi’s forecast for the upcoming quarter calls for EPS around $2.85, effectively in line with the Street consensus near $2.86, suggesting little scope for an earnings‑driven rerating in the very near term. [17]
KeyBanc: Overweight with a $400 target
On the other side of the ledger, KeyBanc this morning reiterated its Overweight rating on Salesforce and kept a $400 price target, implying very substantial upside from ~$228. [18]
While the full research note is behind a paywall, the summary indicates KeyBanc:
- Remains constructive on Salesforce’s AI strategy and long‑term cash flow.
- Sees the current slump as valuation compression rather than a broken business model.
This follows other recent bullish commentary, including Mizuho, which has argued that 2026 could be a much better year for CRM, pointing to potential organic re‑acceleration and attractive free‑cash‑flow multiples. [19]
Zacks: Brokers still broadly positive, but use caution
A new Zacks piece syndicated via Finviz under the headline “Brokers Suggest Investing in Salesforce.com (CRM): Read This Before Placing a Bet” revisits the stock’s Average Brokerage Recommendation (ABR).
Key points from Zacks’ broader research:
- CRM’s ABR has been firmly in “Buy” territory (roughly 1.5–1.8 on a 1–5 scale, where 1 is Strong Buy).
- However, Zacks stresses that ABR alone is not a reliable timing signal; investors should look at earnings revisions, valuation and price momentum as well.
Overlay that with newer commentary from Seeking Alpha, where at least one high‑profile analyst has CRM rated Hold due to “unresolved AI threats to its core CRM business” and muted stock performance, and the picture is clear: the Street is still mostly bullish, but conviction is softening. [20]
Big money moves: institutional investors add to Salesforce
Despite the weak chart, institutional investors are still buying the dip, according to fresh 13F-based articles released today:
- Northwest & Ethical Investments L.P. increased its CRM stake by 31.3% in Q2, adding nearly 17,930 shares to reach 75,147 shares, valued around $20.5 million at the time of filing. [21]
- XTX Topco Ltd boosted its position by 36.7%, ending Q2 with 13,032 shares worth roughly $3.6 million. [22]
Both reports note that around 80% of Salesforce’s shares are held by institutions and hedge funds, underscoring the company’s status as a mega‑cap institutional favorite despite recent price pain. [23]
At the same time, insider data in the MarketBeat earnings preview show:
- Executives and directors sold about 56,000 shares over the last quarter, a small fraction of total insider holdings but another data point that short‑term sentiment internally is not aggressively bullish either. [24]
New AI workforce joint venture: Adecco and Salesforce launch r.Potential
Outside of the stock market, one of the most notable corporate headlines today is about Salesforce’s role in a new AI workforce platform:
- Adecco’s CEO Denis Machuel told Reuters that the group’s joint venture with Salesforce, called r.Potential, aims to reduce the risk of an “AI bubble” by pushing companies toward practical, ROI‑driven use cases rather than hype. [25]
- The platform has already been discussed with around 300 large clients, and is designed to help organizations blend AI agents and human workers in core business processes, using Salesforce technology under the hood. [26]
For Salesforce investors, this matters because:
- r.Potential is expected to leverage Salesforce’s core platform and Agentforce, the company’s “digital labor” framework for AI agents. [27]
- It’s a concrete example of how Agentforce can be productized outside pure CRM workflows, in workforce planning, upskilling and hybrid human/agent staffing.
- It reinforces Salesforce’s pitch that its AI narrative is not just about chatbots, but about end‑to‑end agentic workflows tied into real business outcomes.
Adecco’s shares actually fell on the announcement as investors worried about automation and margin pressure, but for Salesforce, the JV is a credibility boost: a large global recruiter is betting that Salesforce’s AI stack will be central to the future of work. [28]
Recent AI product moves: Informatica acquisition and Agentforce observability
Today’s news sits on top of a busy November for Salesforce’s AI platform.
Informatica: $8 billion bet on “clean data” for Agentforce
On November 18, Salesforce completed its ~$8 billion acquisition of Informatica, a leader in cloud data management. [29]
With the deal closed:
- Informatica’s data catalog, integration, governance and master‑data tools will be embedded into Salesforce’s platform. [30]
- The goal is a unified data foundation for Agentforce, ensuring AI agents operate on trusted, high‑quality data – a key defense against “hallucinations” and compliance issues. [31]
This acquisition follows Salesforce’s earlier disclosure that Data Cloud & AI annual recurring revenue reached $1.2 billion in Q2 FY26, up 120% year-over-year, showing that AI‑adjacent products are finally becoming a meaningful revenue stream. [32]
Agentforce observability: making AI agents less of a “black box”
Around November 20, Salesforce also launched deep observability tools inside Agentforce Studio, including Agent Analytics, Agent Optimization and Agent Health Monitoring, giving customers better visibility into how AI agents behave and make decisions. [33]
These tools:
- Track agent performance, reasoning paths, errors and learning over time. [34]
- Help enterprises debug and optimize complex agentic workflows in production.
- Are being rolled out globally, with EMEA and APAC go‑lives highlighted last week. [35]
For investors, the message is that Salesforce is building the full AI stack: data (Informatica + Data Cloud), agents (Agentforce 360) and now tooling (observability + governance). The open question, highlighted by Citi today, is whether this stack can re‑accelerate revenue growth enough to justify a premium multiple. [36]
Earnings countdown: Q3 FY26 on December 3
The next big catalyst for CRM is earnings:
- Salesforce is scheduled to report Q3 FY26 results after the close on Wednesday, December 3, 2025. [37]
- Consensus expectations center around:
- Revenue: about $10.27 billion.
- EPS: roughly $2.85, in line with the company’s own guidance of $2.84–2.86. [38]
- Salesforce has guided full‑year FY26 EPS to $11.33–11.37 and revenue to roughly $41.1–41.3 billion, up high‑single digits year-on-year. [39]
In the previous quarter (Q2 FY26), Salesforce:
- Delivered EPS of $2.91 vs. $2.78 expected, with revenue of $10.24 billion (up 9.8% year‑on‑year). [40]
- Reported that Data Cloud and AI ARR hit $1.2 billion, up 120% y/y. [41]
- Still saw its stock sell off on the back of cautious guidance and investor anxiety that AI tools might cannibalize or commoditize core CRM contracts. [42]
Earnings day will be crucial for three reasons:
- AI monetization proof: Investors will want concrete numbers on Data Cloud, Agentforce and Informatica cross‑sell.
- Growth trajectory: Whether revenue can re‑accelerate above the high‑single‑digit band Citi is worried about. [43]
- Margin and cash flow: With a trailing P/E in the low‑to‑mid 30s and a forward P/E around 19, bulls need to see that Salesforce can sustain high margins and strong free cash flow. [44]
Valuation, technicals and what to watch next
From a valuation standpoint:
- Trailing P/E: ~33–34x earnings. [45]
- Forward P/E: just under 19x, as the market already prices in decent earnings growth. [46]
- Price-to-sales: around 5.5–5.7x, not cheap but well below prior AI‑fueled peaks. [47]
On the technical side, watchers are focused on:
- The 52‑week low near $222 as an important support level. [48]
- The 50‑day and 200‑day moving averages, currently around $244 and $255, which the stock has traded below for weeks, signalling persistent downtrend pressure. [49]
For the medium term, three big storylines will likely drive CRM’s direction:
- Can AI actually re‑accelerate growth?
- Salesforce has set a long‑term revenue target of $60 billion by FY30, implying about 10% organic CAGR from FY26 to FY30. [50]
- Delivering on that will require sustained demand for Data Cloud, Agentforce and the Informatica‑powered data platform.
- Will the market believe the AI moat?
- How long does underperformance last?
Bottom line
On November 26, 2025, Salesforce stock sits at the intersection of:
- Weak recent returns and bearish technicals,
- Heavy institutional ownership and a still‑bullish analyst consensus, and
- A high‑stakes AI reinvention built around Agentforce, Data Cloud and the Informatica data platform.
Whether today’s downtick near $228 proves to be another step in a downtrend or a late‑stage shakeout before earnings will depend on what Salesforce delivers on December 3 – and whether it can finally convince investors that its AI strategy is a durable growth engine, not just a buzzword.
References
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