Analyst revamps Salesforce stock price target after annual conference

In 1966 Johnny Rivers had one amongst the largest hits of his career.

The song became "Secret Agent Man," the theme for the British TV show "Secret Man," and Rivers hit a decidedly Cold War note when he sang about "giving you a big number and putting off your name."

Well, the Berlin Wall can have come down and Nehru jackets can have gone out of style, alternatively the Secret Agent theme song became brought back into service at Dreamforce, Salesforce's (CRM) annual get-together in San Francisco.

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The producer of purchaser-relations-management software for enterprise reworked the Sixties era tune to tout its Agentforce AI platform.

"For the last, specifically 10 years, we now have been talking about the emergence of AI and the way AI has been a critical element of our future," Chairman and Chief Executive Marc Benioff said the total way through his keynote address. "We would want to be the first to welcome you into the long-term. We would want to future-proof you, now now not only for your careers, but your companies too."

Agentforce, Benioff said, "should be the largest breakthrough that we now have ever had in technology and, I suspect, that's the largest breakthrough that I've seen in a long-term in artificial intelligence."

Salesforce, which Benioff co-founded in 1999, said Agentforce enables companies to scale their workforces on demand with about a clicks.

Salesforce announces Nvidia collaboration

The platform’s AI agents can analyze data, make decisions, and take action on tasks like answering customer service inquiries, qualifying sales leads, and optimizing marketing campaigns.

At some point of his address, Benioff, who paused to renowned CNBC's Jim Cramer and exchange high fives, described how Salesforce customers, comparable to entertainment giant Disney (DIS) , luxury retail brand Saks Fifth Avenue and academic publisher John Wiley & Sons (WLY) , will have the option work more efficiently with Agentforce.

Salesforce made various announcements on Sept. 17, including a strategic collaboration with AI-chip heavyweight Nvidia (NVDA) "to develop improved AI capabilities for the enterprise with independent agent and interactive avatar experiences."

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The companies said they would work together to deliver optimized predictive and generative AI workflows by connecting Nvidia's AI platform, which incorporates accelerated computing and AI software, with the Salesforce platform and Agentforce.

“The total way through the long-term, every company, every job could be enhanced by a gigantic choice of AI agents, assistants to have the choice to radically change how we work,”  Nvidia Founder and CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement.

“Nvidia and Salesforce are bringing together our technologies to accelerate the event of AI agents for companies to supercharge their productivity," he added.

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Shares of Salesforce, a Dow component since 2020, are down four.1% year-to-date, while the stock is up 17.6% from a year ago. The corporate, which is scheduled to report quarterly ends up in November, beat Wall Street's 2d-quarter ends up in August.

Several investment firms issued research notes about Salesforce on Sept. 19, per TheFly.

Truist raised its price target to $315 from $300, while asserting a buy rating on the corporate's shares.

Loop Capital stays neutral on Salesforce

The investment firm's analyst said its initial thoughts are on key topics discussed by management at Dreamforce, including Agentforce, Data Cloud, the strategic partnership with Nvidia, and the recently announced acquisition of information protection group Own Co.

While the firm has now now not changed estimates, Truist said that it became "incrementally confident" that compounding profits and free cash flows at Salesforce would continue.

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The corporate's "highly developed" capital allocation and deployment strategy also supports its increased opportunity for improved growth in subscription revenue, the firm added.

Loop Capital affirmed its hold rating and $270 price target on Salesforce after attending Dreamforce.

The corporate is clearly banking on its newly introduced Agentforce to be the center piece of its product-driven growth strategy, the firm said. Salesforce's "impressive marketing machine" became in full force at the event, touting now now not only the ability of Agentforce but additionally the ease of deploying AI agents on the platform, the firm said.

But it, Loop Capital said that it is still neutral on the stock pending more concrete signs of accelerating business trends driven by the corporate's generative-AI products.

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Barclays analyst Raimo Lenschow said Dreamforce and the analyst event were catalysts for the Salesforce investment case.

The corporate's artificial intelligence platform story clearly "is coming together from a product perspective and, it seems to create healthy customer interest," the analyst said.

Post Dreamforce, Lenschow said, the "emerging AI agent story" for Salesforce may in all probability change into a new catalyst for the shares. He maintained an overweight rating on the shares with a $305 price target.

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