Stock price when the opinion was issued
CRM is like Uber in the $60s. Their last earnings were great. The CEO will focus on free cash flow and margins and growth. The market is completely missing this, expecting some sort of AI to take over what CRM is doing. Absurd. CRM is already using AI. Is unloved, caught in the hedgefund shorts. This can easily rally 20% after earnings.
The collection of data is becoming more important especially for corporations. It does well in software that collects consumer info and consolidates it, and is a global leader in this field. It is becoming an operating system for the modern enterprise and is delivering recurring revenue from AI and the data cloud. Trades at a good valuation of 22 times earnings and has expanding margins. She sees 40% upside and gives it an 8 out of 10 fundamentally.
(Analysts’ price target is $346.43)Software as a service has done poorly this in this name and others, over fears that AI will take it over. He's been adding shares, though. Is well-positioned over many apps, the mid-20s valuation is reasonable and there are many institutional owners. In AI, we're moving out of building data centres and moving more to the software stage.
Revenue growth is expected to be about 9% annually till FY2027 and EPS is expected to expand 22% for FY2025, 10% for FY 2026, and 14% for FY 2027. We think CRM is a strong name, but growth has slowed down as capital spending on external SaaS solutions has tightened up. The company should benefit as AI is adopted, but it appears that many large companies are shifting spending to developing in-house AI solutions. As rates come down and companies ideally have more to spend on SaaS solutions, CRM could see growth improve. We generally view CRM positively and think it's valuation at 25x forward earnings is fair, although there are higher growth opportunities at similar multiples. We would be fine switching from CRM into another mega-cap tech name.
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