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Macquarie Analyst Confident in Salesforce’s AI Push, Keeps Neutral Stock Rating

Salesforce

Business Honor
21 March, 2025

Macquarie sees potential in Salesforce’s AI, but market adoption may take two years

An analyst at the firm stated that Salesforce, Inc. (CRM) is "putting real wood behind its AI arrow" after Macquarie's client call with the company's management. Nevertheless, the management is taking care to carefully evolve the business, according to the research team headed by analyst Steve Koenig. Salesforce's agentic AI platform, Agentforce, is used to create and implement self-governing AI agents.

However, Koenig stated that it will likely take two years for the mass market to adopt agentic AI because of issues with data preparedness, customer trust, and value-price alignment. The expert said that with the large-language model (LLM) inference cost declining by about 90%, it may be difficult to implement the pricing model smoothly.

It remains on the sidelines for the time being, Macquarie said. According to the firm, a famous fiscal year revenue outperformance in 2026 is necessary for the stock to outperform. It added that this will require a recovery of successive subscriber revenue increases following a three-year drop.

The firm projects a 15% possible upside with a $320 price objective and a "Neutral" rating for Macquarie shares. Salesforce's fourth quarter results, released in late February, showed revenue growth that was roughly in line with expectations and better-than-expected earnings.

Retail attitude about Salesforce stock remained "neutral" (49/100) on Stocktwits, with a message volume that was "extremely low." Concerns about the company's cash flow and CEO Marc Benioff's lofty claims were voiced by a negative observer. According to a different user, the stock must close the gap to $256. Salesforce's shares closed Thursday's trading session at $279.03, down 0.13%, about in line with the performance of the overall market. With a 52-week range of $212 to $369, the stock has lost more than 16% of its value so far this year.