Salesforce (CRM) Stock: Business Overview, Latest Earnings, and Valuation in 2026

Salesforce’s pitch to investors has shifted noticeably in the past year: it’s no longer just a CRM subscription business, it’s trying to be the company selling AI “agents” that do sales, service, and marketing work autonomously. The latest quarter gives the clearest numbers yet on whether that pitch is translating into real revenue.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Market data below is a snapshot as of October 19, 2026, sourced from Salesforce’s own earnings release and public market data providers — prices and ratios will have moved by the time you read this. Always verify current figures and consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.

At a Glance (as of October 19, 2026)

Metric	Value
Ticker	CRM (NYSE)
Share price	~$242
Market cap	~$199.5 billion
P/E ratio (TTM / forward)	22.5 / 16.5
Dividend yield	0.73% ($1.76/share annually)
52-week range	$146.32 – $269.11
Analyst consensus	Buy (56 analysts), average price target $285.68

Short Summary

Salesforce’s core subscription business is still growing at a solid double-digit clip, and its newer AI and data products (Agentforce and Data 360) are growing far faster off a smaller base — their combined annual recurring revenue more than tripled year over year. The stock’s forward P/E of 16.5 is the cheapest of the big enterprise-software names in this series relative to its growth rate, which is part of why analysts remain broadly bullish despite the stock sitting well off its 52-week high.

What the Company Does

Salesforce sells cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) software — Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Slack — on a subscription basis to businesses of nearly every size. In the past two years it has layered on Data Cloud/Data 360 (a data platform for unifying customer data) and Agentforce (AI agents that can autonomously handle sales, service, and other workflows), and it acquired data-integration company Informatica in 2026, which now contributes directly to reported revenue.

Latest Earnings: Q2 Fiscal 2027 (Quarter Ended July 31, 2026)

Total revenue was $11.35 billion, up 11% year over year, including a $456 million contribution from the newly acquired Informatica. Subscription and support revenue was $10.82 billion, up 12% (11% in constant currency). GAAP operating margin was 20.5%; non-GAAP operating margin was 34.1%. The standout figure: combined Data 360 and Agentforce annual recurring revenue reached nearly $3.9 billion, up more than 210% year over year, with Agentforce ARR alone exceeding $1.5 billion, up more than 240%. Salesforce raised full-year FY2027 revenue guidance to $46.1–$46.4 billion, up 11–12% year over year.

Valuation Context

At 16.5 times forward earnings, Salesforce trades cheaper than Microsoft or ServiceNow despite posting faster-growing new product lines (Agentforce, Data 360) alongside its core CRM base. Its 21.99% profit margin is solid but trails Microsoft’s and Adobe’s, reflecting Salesforce’s heavier sales-and-marketing spend as a software company that sells primarily through a direct enterprise sales force.

Growth Drivers

• Agentforce and Data 360 combined ARR more than tripled year over year, showing real customer adoption rather than just a product announcement
• Core subscription and support revenue is still growing at 12%, a healthy rate for a company of Salesforce’s size
• The Informatica acquisition adds a data-integration product line and immediate revenue contribution
• Raised full-year guidance signals management confidence the growth trajectory holds through the rest of FY2027

Risks

• Agentforce and Data 360 ARR, while growing fast, are still a small fraction of Salesforce’s roughly $40+ billion annual revenue run rate — the core CRM business still needs to hold up on its own
• The stock trades roughly 10% below its 52-week high even after a strong quarter, suggesting the market hasn’t fully rewarded the AI narrative yet
• Integrating Informatica carries the usual acquisition execution risk, on top of the reported revenue contribution
• Enterprise software spending is sensitive to broader economic conditions, and Salesforce’s direct-sales model has historically shown more sensitivity to IT budget tightening than pure infrastructure plays

Bottom Line

Salesforce’s latest quarter is the clearest evidence yet that Agentforce and Data 360 are more than a slide in an investor presentation — their combined ARR tripling year over year is a real number, even if it’s still small relative to total revenue. Combined with a cheaper valuation than its large-cap enterprise-software peers, that’s the basis for the broadly bullish analyst consensus. Whether the newer products scale fast enough to matter at Salesforce’s size is the open question. This is informational, not a recommendation to buy or sell; do your own research and talk to a financial advisor before acting on it.

Sources

• Salesforce — Official Q2 FY2027 earnings press release
• StockAnalysis.com — CRM statistics
• Google Finance — CRM quote