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Salesforce (CRM) stock has lagged solidly behind the Tech sector over the past five years. Wall Street is worried about CRM’s slowing growth and the possible negative impact artificial intelligence could have on the entire cloud software industry.
The business software powerhouse is fighting back by investing heavily in AI efforts (Agentforce), boosting profitability, and paying dividends. Salesforce’s earnings outlook has held up over the last year, and its valuation has improved significantly.
Investors might want to buy Salesforce stock down 20% from its highs heading into its Q1 fiscal 2026 earnings release on Wednesday, May 28.
The Bull Case for Salesforce Stock
Salesforce is a pioneer across business software, customer relationship management, and software-as-a-service.
CRM’s growing portfolio supports sales, marketing, commerce, customer and client engagement, analytics, app development, and beyond. Companies big and small rely heavily on Salesforce’s offerings that quickly become embedded into their businesses and are critical to day-to-day operations and beyond.
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The business software power grew its revenue by an average of roughly 29% for 10 years between 2012 and 2022. Salesforce prolonged its impressive YoY growth through some major acquisitions. But its days of 25% to 30% YoY growth are over—its sales climbed 9% last year (fiscal 2025) and 11% in FY24.
Salesforce’s transformation into a more mature growth technology company like Microsoft (MSFT) and others forced it to focus on the bottom line. It has trimmed costs through job cuts and other efficiency efforts to boost its earnings over the long haul.
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Salesforce is returning value to shareholders via buybacks. Plus, CRM showcased its transition into a new era by declaring its first-ever dividend in 2024, joining the likes of Meta and Alphabet.
CRM’s Artificial Intelligence Push and Growth Outlook
On the AI front, Salesforce launched its Agentforce AI tool in October 2024. Salesforce’s new AI-powered platform allows customers to use existing software tools to easily program “agents” for automating tasks like customer service, marketing campaigns, and customer/business procurement and development.
Salesforce said last quarter that it landed 5,000 Agentforce deals since October, including more than 3,000 paid agreements.
CRM boasted that its Data Cloud & AI annual recurring revenue climbed 120% YoY last year (FY25). Digging deeper, Salesforce said “nearly half of the Fortune 100 are both AI & Data Cloud customers,” and all of its “top 10 wins in Q4 included Data and AI.”