There can be no doubt that artificial intelligence (AI) tools are on the rise. While many are left trying to figure out just what kind of fallout we can expect from AI, some analysts are looking for it to benefit some stocks in particular. For instance, Salesforce (NYSE:CRM), a provider of cloud-based enterprise software for customer relationship management, surged over 3% in Monday afternoon’s trading after we discovered that analysts were looking for AI tools to boost Salesforce’s bottom line.
The word came from notorious CNBC analyst Jim Cramer, an analyst so broadly known that he, for a while, had an exchange-traded fund (ETF) dedicated to doing the opposite of whatever he suggested. Cramer looks for Salesforce to gain ground from AI tools, as it’s a big user of such tools. The firm will make clear just how much AI has impacted its bottom line after its conference call on Wednesday. In fact, Salesforce has been putting its customer data to work with generative AI to analyze it and even predict future behavior.
Concerns Remain
Meanwhile, not everyone is quite so optimistic. Reports note that Salesforce’s own insiders have been frantically selling stock, offloading about $238 million worth of shares. As a result, the current insider confidence level is Very Negative. Worse, there are significant vulnerabilities in Salesforce products, note reports from CSO Online, stemming from the use of “insecure Apex code” in several deployments. Given that Salesforce focuses on gathering and using information, that makes any breach that much more potentially disastrous.
Is Salesforce a Buy, Hold, or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on CRM stock based on 27 Buys, 10 Holds, and one Sell assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After an 85.09% rally in its share price over the past year, the average CRM price target of $296.68 per share implies 2.12% downside risk.
