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Opinions Sarat Sethi, Managing Partner, Douglas C. Lane & Assoc.
SalesForce.com Inc.CRMBUYNov 17, 2025
Stock price when the opinion was issued
As of Aug 28, 2026. Market Open.
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Premium contentThe massive jump in valuation was driven by a quarter that CEO Marc Benioff himself described as one of the best in the company's history. Total revenue reached $11.35 billion (up 11% year-over-year), beating estimates thanks to an increase in long-term contracts. Salesforce reported massive net income, fueled by a $2.6 billion strategic paper gain from its early investment in the AI startup Anthropic. Social media mentions are up 656% in the past 24h.
Trading at 12x current annualized earnings, and earnings are growing at better than 10%. Worry, of course, is the SaaSpocalypse. There's no way you can replace all the built-in software; but agentic agents can be incorporated. Revenue model needs to move from "seats" to a more agentic/outcomes-driven model. Yield is 1.11%.
(Analysts’ price target is $248.16)
John ZechnerMonitoring closely, given debate around AI and software. Beat on earnings this week, but guidance was a bit weaker than expected. If it falls below $160, she'd consider rotating out. Being patient, as upside potential is ~40%.
Brianne GardnerHe doesn't hate the stock here, and he owns some software stocks, but they all live under the cloud that AI will threaten their business. When they report today, if they can assure the market in their guidance that their customers are using their AI products, then this is the answer to putting a floor to these software-apocalypse news. If they don't, there will be new lows.
Still owns, but watching closely as the competitive landscape continues to evolve. Next leg of growth tied to AI, and that's where the debate is. AI is lowering barriers to entry, so market's reassessing its moat. Execution will be critical.
Strong support from a technical level. If it drops further, she'll sell and take the loss. Right now it's wait-and-see.
Brianne GardnerIt will take time to play out, longer than the market expects. But these software companies are operating very strongly. Enterprise software is more customized than mass-market software which meet specific needs. He prefers the former for their more durable moats. CRM's PE is very low, around 11x, and the company is doing lots of good things. Remember that LLMs (AI) are very expensive to create and run, and these companies need to partner with large companies. It could wind up that AI companies partner with software companies. He doesn't know how it well pay out, but possibly the large software companies could win.
Today they reported a robust top and bottom line beat, but their full-year forecast was a little light, so shares fell after hours. They will buy back $50 billion shares, or a quarter of their share count. Fears of the AI apocalypse are overblown, fears of wiping out the entire white-collar class are wrong. CRM is too entrenched to go under. Trades at only 15x PE.
(Note the short timeframe.) Still likes, and wants to give it time. Software space finally getting back to attractive valuations. AI disruption fears are a bit overstated; weakness is sentiment, not fundamental. This company is embedding AI into its platform. Still seeing strong demand for its tools.
Lots of FCF last quarter. She sees over 70% upside from here.
Brianne Gardner
The software stock margins have really compressed. Last month, CRM talked about 10% growth over 3-5 years. It's a high cash-flow machine. When growth returns to double digits the stock will re-rate and multiples expand.