Institutional ticker directory tracking stock mentions, long/short ideas, and high-conviction pitches extracted from quarterly hedge fund letters.
| Ticker | Company | Sector | Industry | Pitches | Stance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fund / Manager | Thesis Excerpt | Stance | Period / Date | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Nightview Capital Arne Alsin | “Salesforce is our clearest expression of the system-of-record thesis. It holds the customer relationships of a large slice of the corporate world. That data is the fuel for every AI sales and service agent a company might want to deploy, and the natural place to deploy them is inside the platform that already holds the data. When the software selloff was at its most indiscriminate, we added to our position. We were, in effect, buying the fear.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Aug 21, 2026 | View Pitch |
Harry Qelm Baabsman Harry Qelm Baabsman | “The company pioneered cloud-based CRM systems (Customer relationship management). Its bright leadership by Marc Benioff and famous corporate culture enabled it to cultivate a team of talented professionals who develop several important platforms that help businesses globally to work with clients, make analytics and decisions, and develop new connections. That is a big company with sales of over $40 billion; Salesforce's business is growing at a double-digit pace, which has shown a few features of maturing, slowing its fast-growth phase, but with rapidly improving profitability (operating margin jumped from 2% to 20+% in just four years) and a healthy balance sheet. Our average purchase price is $169 between 2023 and 2026. Everybody seems to like CRM's visionary role and wide range of integrated and interlinked solutions. The company's stocks deserve a hefty 6% to 8.5% portion of the investment portfolio and a prolonged holding period, over 7 years or more. In 2026 market decided to distrust SaaS-companies to handle LLMs-challenge. However, CRM kept posting 8-10% growth rate, paid dividends, we remain patient.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Aug 18, 2026 | View Pitch |
SGA - U.S. Large Cap Growth Tucker Brown | “Salesforce was a detractor from performance during the quarter as investor sentiment remained cautious following another quarter that merely met its guidance targets. Current remaining performance obligations (cRPO) growth were in line at roughly 9% rather than the historical pattern of beating by about a point, and the forward quarter guide was modest. Management acknowledged continued weakness in Marketing, Commerce, and Tableau (roughly 20% of revenue), partially offset by strength in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Slack, and Data Cloud (roughly 75% to 80% of revenue), with Sales and Service Cloud each posting seat growth in the quarter. Additionally, Agentforce annualized recurring revenue reached $1.2 billion, growing 205%. Management reiterated full-year guidance and a second-half reacceleration based on bookings strength and lower attrition, alongside a long-term double-digit organic growth target through CY29 with about 100 basis points of annual margin expansion. Despite concerns around AI-driven competition, we believe Salesforce's integration into customer business processes, large installed base, and wide product set position it well to compete effectively in the Agentic AI era, supporting low-teens earnings growth over the next three years. We maintained a below-average weight position.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Jul 30, 2026 | View Pitch |
SGA - Global Growth Hrishikesh Gupta | “Salesforce was a detractor from performance during the quarter as investor sentiment remained cautious following another quarter that merely met its guidance targets. Current remaining performance obligations (cRPO) growth were in line at roughly 9% rather than the historical pattern of beating by about a point, and the forward quarter guide was modest. Management acknowledged continued weakness in Marketing, Commerce, and Tableau (roughly 20% of revenue), partially offset by strength in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Slack, and Data Cloud (roughly 75% to 80% of revenue), with Sales and Service Cloud each posting seat growth in the quarter. Additionally, Agentforce annualized recurring revenue reached $1.2 billion, growing 205%. Management reiterated full-year guidance and a second-half reacceleration based on bookings strength and lower attrition, alongside a long-term double-digit organic growth target through CY29 with about 100 basis points of annual margin expansion. Despite concerns around AI-driven competition, we believe Salesforce's integration into customer business processes, large installed base, and wide product set position it well to compete effectively in the Agentic AI era, supporting low-teens earnings growth over the next three years.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Jul 30, 2026 | View Pitch |
Harris Associates Concentrated Strategy Tony Coniaris | “Salesforce was a detractor during the quarter. Shares of the U.S.-headquartered software company declined due to market concerns about how AI will affect the software industry. We believe the market is painting the software industry with too broad of a brush, and believe Salesforce is well-positioned to help its customers deploy and achieve the benefits of AI. We are also encouraged that revenue continues to grow and margins continue to expand, despite the narrative that the industry is being disrupted. Salesforce is in the process of repurchasing $25 billion of its shares, which we view as a great use of capital at today's prices.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Jul 28, 2026 | View Pitch |
Montaka Global Investments Andrew Macken | “Since the start of the recent SaaS selloff – which we explored in detail in Montaka's recent whitepaper – Salesforce's share price has halved. The market is now pricing in something like obsolescence for the world's dominant customer relationship management (CRM) platform. This, in our view, represents a significant investment opportunity. The market's concern is two-fold. First, that AI makes software trivially cheap and easy to build – rendering vendors like Salesforce redundant. Second, that agents don't need software interfaces at all – they can interact directly with data and systems, making seat-based licences obsolete. Both arguments make the same mistake: they treat Salesforce as just a SaaS vendor – when in reality, the business' competitive advantages have very little to do with its code. Salesforce is the trusted layer through which AI can be deployed safely and usefully into the world's enterprises. The company itself has guided growth of 10% per annum until at least FY30. Yet the current valuation effectively prices in revenue growth of roughly 1% per annum into perpetuity. If we look at the enterprise-value-to-gross-profit valuation metric, the stock trades at about 4.5 times. When Cisco bottomed after the dot-com crash, having fallen more than 90%, it troughed at 5 times gross profit. Salesforce begins below that level. Perhaps the starkest metric: Gross profit of Salesforce's already-signed backlog is north of $US50 billion; its enterprise value is $160 billion. That implies a multiple of just three times – and that excludes the rapidly growing agentic consumption layer entirely. The company already has more than 150,000 business customers worldwide – a distribution pipeline through which agentic capability, delivered via Agentforce, Salesforce's agentic AI product suite, can be infused directly into existing workflows safely. More recently, Salesforce has enabled 'headless' access: allowing its customers to combine models with their existing assets (tools, data, etc.) through third-party interfaces such as Microsoft Teams, Zendesk or Claude. Salesforce's Agentic Work Units – discrete tasks completed by agents – have gone parabolic, rising from 14 million in Q1 FY25 to roughly 1,600 million in Q1 FY27, with token consumption growing more than 150% quarter-on-quarter. One multi-billion-dollar food distributor that typically spent $5 million a year with Salesforce has added $2 million in agent spend. It estimates that spend unlocked $15–25 million in productivity, an implied ROI of near 10x.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Jul 17, 2026 | View Pitch |
“As a sector, enterprise software stocks peaked at the end of 2024, had a terrible 2025 and an even worse start to 2026. We have tried to manage through this environment by consolidating around what we” | BULL | Q1 2026 May 5, 2026 | View Pitch | |
Penn Davis McFarland Jeff Helfrich | “Salesforce, Inc. is a leading customer relationship management (CRM) software company that helps businesses keep track of every interaction they have with their customers, from initial sales to ongoin” | BULL | Q1 2026 Apr 7, 2026 | View Pitch |
Antipodes Global Value Fund Portfolio Manager | “Salesforce could be one of the largest gainers of incremental AI spend outside of the hyperscalers thanks to its AI agents, Agentforce, which are interacting directly with customers to resolve service tasks previously executed by humans, such as processing refunds and updating sales records. The company is priced at a historical low valuation of 19x forward earnings, with earnings growing 15–20% per annum. We view this as an attractive entry point given the combination of accelerating AI monetization and valuation support. BSD Analysis: Salesforce's moat is CRM entrenchment across sales, service, and marketing workflows. Switching costs are real, but not absolute—execution matters. Growth now depends more on upsell and pricing discipline than logo wins. AI adds narrative tailwinds, but monetization must be proven. Margin expansion has come from cost control, not acceleration. Competition is credible, especially at the edges. The bull case is durable enterprise spend recovery with steady cross-sell. The bear case is slower growth exposing valuation fragility. Salesforce compounds if restraint sticks.” | BULL | Q4 2025 Dec 31, 2025 | View Pitch |
Antipodes Global Fund Antipodes Partners Limited | “Salesforce could be one of the largest gainers of incremental AI spend outside of the hyperscalers thanks to its AI agents, Agentforce, which are interacting directly with customers to resolve service tasks previously executed by humans (e.g. processing refunds/exchanges, updating sales record for future marketing efforts). The company is priced at a historical low valuation of 19x forward earnings, with earnings growing 15-20% p.a. BSD Analysis: Salesforce is positioned for a high-margin 2026, with management setting quarterly earnings guidance near $3.03 per share as the "Agentforce" AI platform begins to scale. The company has successfully pivoted its focus from aggressive acquisitions toward internal margin expansion and shareholder returns through its consistent dividend and buyback programs. For the current fiscal year, research analysts forecast total earnings per share to reach approximately $7.46, supported by the deep integration of generative AI across its Sales and Service Clouds. While overall SaaS market growth has matured, Salesforce's ability to upsell its massive enterprise install base on automated "AI Agents" provides a resilient new revenue lever. Management's disciplined cost-cutting measures have been well-received by institutional investors, leading to a more stable valuation multiple. As companies move beyond AI experimentation into deployment, Salesforce's role as the system of record for customer data remains a significant competitive moat.” | BULL | Q4 2025 Dec 31, 2025 | View Pitch |
L1 Capital International Fund David Steinthal | “During the December 2025 quarter, we initiated a position in Salesforce. Salesforce is the global leader in customer relationship management software and over the past 25 years has built a highly profitable, high-quality business exemplifying the barriers to competition just outlined. However, a combination of AI-related concerns and natural growth moderation as the business has scaled saw Salesforce's share price fall more than 35% from its late-2024 peak, leaving it trading at levels last seen five years ago. We expect Salesforce to deliver high single digit revenue growth over the medium term, and earnings per share growth in the teens. We invested at the lower end of our assessed fair value range and view Salesforce as offering an attractive risk-adjusted return opportunity and would look to further increase the position on additional share price weakness. BSD Analysis: Salesforce has pulled off a rare pivot from growth maximalism to disciplined cash generation without killing the franchise. Margin expansion proved the skeptics wrong and reset how the market values the business. Its AI roadmap builds naturally on deeply embedded customer data, giving Salesforce an advantage pure-play AI vendors lack. Churn remains low because ripping out Salesforce is operationally painful. Investors now debate upside rather than survival, which is a meaningful shift. The company is behaving like a mature software platform with optional growth levers. Salesforce is finally acting its size — and benefiting from it.” | BULL | Q4 2025 Dec 31, 2025 | View Pitch |
Columbia Global Technology Growth Fund Columbia Management Investment Advisers, LLC | “Shares of cloud and CRM leader Salesforce lagged during the quarter, as the market reacted tepidly to forward-looking guidance that was viewed as conservative, especially compared to heightened expectations for generative AI adoption. The company did launch its full-stack AI system Agentforce, with strong demand across industries, as well as a specialized AI platform for health care and pharma built on top of Agentforce. BSD Analysis: Salesforce is finally behaving like a disciplined, shareholder-focused company — and the financials show it. Cost cuts, slower hiring, and margin expansion turned CRM into a cash machine. The Data Cloud + Einstein AI combo is management's most credible product vision in years, giving customers real reasons to upgrade and expand. Enterprise software budgets may be uneven, but Salesforce's platform lock-in remains brutal. This is a company shifting from “growth at any cost” to “profitability at full scale” — the best kind of pivot.” | BULL | Q3 2025 Sep 30, 2025 | View Pitch |
First Eagle Global Fund First Eagle Investment Management, LLC | “Shares of enterprise software developer Salesforce traded down after the company provided lower-than-expected forward sales guidance during its most recent earnings release. This prompted concerns about the company's transformation from a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business to an AI-powered enterprise business (its Agentforce platform) and an overall slowdown in revenue growth. We believe that Salesforce is well positioned to grow and scale Agentforce over time, and we continue to like its operational strength, market dominance and focus on balancing growth with improving profitability. BSD Analysis: Near-term growth deceleration masks improving margin structure and robust FCF conversion. As Agentforce adoption ramps and Data Cloud cross-sell deepens, net revenue retention should stabilize. With net cash, buybacks, and ~25% operating margin ambition, CRM's multiple can hold as growth re-accelerates.” | BULL | Q3 2025 Sep 30, 2025 | View Pitch |
Harris Associates Concentrated Strategy Tony Coniaris | “Salesforce was a detractor during the quarter. The U.S.-headquartered customer relationship management company's stock price declined despite reporting earnings that we viewed as solid. Data Cloud and Agentforce performed well, in our view, and management continued to repurchase shares. In our view, there is room for continued growth as the company leverages its unique position to help businesses deploy AI and continues to restructure its sales organization. BSD Analysis: Harris remains constructive on Salesforce's AI-driven growth story. Despite valuation compression to ~24x forward earnings, recurring revenues, AI automation, and strong buybacks underpin earnings durability. cloud, SaaS, AI, CRM, recurring revenue, buybacks, margin expansion” | BULL | Q3 2025 Sep 30, 2025 | View Pitch |
Harry Qelm Baabsman Harry Qelm Baabsman | “These positions pulled the portfolio back in the half-year: a) Salesforce (CRM) that fell by -18% from its Dec31 peak of $334, and due to the third heaviest weight in the portfolio it carved out so much out of overall result; b) Fluence Energy (FLNC) a backed by Siemens and AES battery company fell -61%, despite its modest 2.8%-weight it dragged us down mighty; c) Puma SE (PUM_GR) lost -48%, very suddenly for us the business stopped performing as good as before. BSD Analysis: Salesforce is the undisputed titan of the CRM market, aggressively pivoting to become the dominant Enterprise AI Platform, correcting a historically undervalued stock. The core thesis is the successful monetization of AI Cloud, which allows clients to embed secure, generative AI into every customer and sales workflow using their proprietary data. This strategy leverages Salesforce's unassailable moat—holding the world's most critical customer data—to drive massive ARPU expansion across its entire installed base. The stock is now priced attractively after years of market cynicism regarding its M&A strategy; however, management has successfully executed a $20 billion share repurchase program and shifted focus to operational efficiency. This disciplined execution, combined with strong free cash flow generation and the AI Cloud monetization, positions the stock for a significant re-rating as its high-margin revenue accelerates.” | BULL | Q2 2025 Jul 4, 2025 | View Pitch |
Ithaka US Growth Strategy Scott O'Gorman, Andy Colyer, Daniel White | “Salesforce is the largest pure-play cloud software company, holding a leading market share in customer relationship management applications and a top-five market share position in the company's other clouds (Marketing, Service, Platform, Analytics, Integration, and Commerce). The company's software subscription term-license model differs from the traditional perpetual-license software model in two respects: (1) the software is hosted on centralized servers and delivered over the internet, as opposed to traditional enterprise software that is loaded directly onto customers' hard drives or servers; and (2) the revenue model is subscription-based, typically charging monthly fees per user as opposed to charging one-time licensing fees. Salesforce's stock underperformed in the quarter as slightly weak forward guidance had investors questioning the company's ability to monetize AI at scale, particularly as Agentforce's revenue contribution was projected to remain modest in fiscal 2026. BSD Analysis: Salesforce still owns the CRM mindshare in large enterprises, but the story has shifted from hyper-growth to efficient growth and margin expansion. The company has cleaned up some of its M&A sprawl and focused more on integration across Sales, Service, Marketing, and Data Cloud. Its AI pitch—Einstein and assistants embedded across the suite—leans on the massive volume of customer data already flowing through its systems. Activist pressure forced more discipline on costs, and investors are now seeing the benefits in operating margins. Competition is real at the edges, but Salesforce's ecosystem, partner network, and customer lock-in are still formidable. The stock is no longer a “grow at any price” name, but it's evolving into a solid, cash-generative software incumbent. You own it for durable enterprise relevance, not for a return to 30%+ top-line growth.” | BULL | Q2 2025 Jun 30, 2025 | View Pitch |
Oakmark Fund William C. Nygren, Michael A. Nicolas, Robert F. Bierig | “Salesforce is a leading technology company that offers a collection of software products aimed at providing businesses with a full front office productivity suite. We believe Salesforce is a wonderful business going through a transformation into a profitable, shareholder-focused enterprise. Since management announced their renewed focus on operating discipline a couple years ago, Salesforce's margins have increased substantially. In our view, there is further room to improve as the company leverages its unique position to help businesses deploy AI and continues to restructure its sales organization. Since exiting our position in Salesforce in December, the stock price has declined by over 30% despite continuing to report fundamental results that are in line with our expectations. We were pleased to buy the stock, but we first established our position using a put writing strategy to lower our entry price. We believed the puts were overvalued as they implied that Salesforce was among the most volatile large companies, which was completely at odds with our assessment of its business value. BSD Analysis: Salesforce has completed one of the most dramatic margin transformations in enterprise software, proving the model can be both high-growth and high-cash-flow. AI integration across the full product suite gives Salesforce new pricing and upsell levers. Churn remains extraordinarily low because the platform is fully embedded in business workflows. Activist pressure forced management to respect profitability, and shareholders are finally seeing the payoff. The stock still trades below where a best-in-class SaaS operator should. Salesforce at scale is a cash machine with optionality. This is enterprise software royalty with real operating discipline now.” | BULL | Q2 2025 Jun 30, 2025 | View Pitch |
“Salesforce's beginnings were as a daring upstart that turned the model of how software was delivered and consumed on its head. We believe the next technological pivot is now on Salesforce's doorstep: agentic AI. The concept of agentic AI refers to autonomous agents that can make decisions and act independently to achieve specific goals. Agentforce is Salesforce's agentic AI tool, allowing Salesforce customers to automate certain sales and service tasks. We believe Salesforce is well-positioned to capitalise on this technological shift for two key reasons: it has the data and it has a distribution advantage via the app layer. Data is the lifeblood of AI tools and Salesforce serves as the system of record for its users. By controlling the app layer with 150,000 customers, Salesforce is positioned to be the AI orchestration layer. Data Cloud and AI annual recurring revenue were over $1 billion, increasing by more than 120% year-over-year, with Agentforce reaching $100 million of ARR shortly after general availability. The stock trades on just 17x free cash flow, which we believe could positively re-rate if Salesforce proves itself as a genuine AI contender. BSD Analysis: Salesforce remains the system of record for customer relationships at large enterprises, but the story has shifted from hyper-growth to execution and profitability. The company's sprawling product suite gives it enormous cross-sell potential, though integration discipline now matters more than adding new clouds. Cost controls and a sharper focus on margins have materially improved free cash flow, changing investor perception from growth-at-any-cost to capital-efficient software incumbent. AI is the next battleground, and Salesforce's advantage lies in embedding automation directly into existing customer data and workflows rather than forcing greenfield adoption. Competition is real, especially at the edges, but ripping out Salesforce is operationally painful for large organizations. The balance sheet and cash generation give management flexibility to return capital while still investing in product. Salesforce may never regain its early growth rates, but it has evolved into a durable enterprise software compounder with real earnings power.” | BULL | Q2 2025 Jun 30, 2025 | View Pitch | |
Mar Vista's U.S. Quality Portfolio Manager | “Salesforce is poised to leverage its vast repository of customer data through generative AI solutions like AgentForce. Despite recent macro concerns, customer adoption of its automated support tools indicates a clear path toward low double-digit intrinsic value expansion.” | BULL | Q1 2025 Mar 31, 2025 | View Pitch |
Mar Vista Global Equity Fund Silas Myers and Brian Massey | “Salesforce delivered strong Q3 results with returning double-digit growth across its core Sales and Service Clouds. The launch of Agentforce offers promising future generative AI monetization, providing solid long-term upside.” | BULL | Q4 2024 Dec 31, 2024 | View Pitch |
Vulcan Value Partners Focus Plus Vulcan Value Partners LLC | “Salesforce demonstrated improving enterprise demand, expanding operating margins, and increased guidance across revenue and cash flow. High switching costs and ongoing AI innovations reinforce its core market leadership.” | BULL | Q4 2023 Dec 31, 2023 | View Pitch |
Vulcan Value Partners - Small Cap C.T. Fitzpatrick | “Salesforce continues to cement its enterprise enterprise software dominance through high retention, rising margins, and cash flow expansion. Guidance increases reflect an improving demand backdrop and effective AI monetization across its customer relationship suite. High switching costs ensure long-term value compounding.” | BULL | Q4 2023 Dec 31, 2023 | View Pitch |
Vulcan Value Partners - All Cap C.T. Fitzpatrick | “Salesforce raised fiscal year guidance for revenue, free cash flow growth, and operating margins amid improving demand conditions. The platform benefits from high recurring revenues, high retention, and significant scalability. Integration of artificial intelligence into its broad software ecosystem continues to strengthen customer retention.” | BULL | Q4 2023 Dec 31, 2023 | View Pitch |
Vulcan Value Partners - Focus Vulcan Value Partners, LLC | “Salesforce upgraded its full-year guidance across revenue, free cash flow, and operating margins amid an improving demand environment. The business features high customer switching costs, scalable software economics, and continuous AI innovation. Vulcan values Salesforce as a highly entrenched sector leader with expanding profitability.” | BULL | Q4 2023 Dec 31, 2023 | View Pitch |
Each excerpt above is the manager's commentary on this ticker specifically. The full letter has the rest of their portfolio thinking, risk discussion, and broader institutional context.
