4. Salesforce.com, Inc. (NYSE: CRM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 97
Salesforce.com, Inc. (NYSE: CRM) is a California-based software company that provides customer relationship management services and other enterprise solutions on market automation, data analytics, and application development. Last year, the company bought Slack Technologies, another software firm focused on communications, in a deal worth $28 billion. The company’s Einstein Cloud technology empowers its CRM cloud to help its clients make better decisions.
The company has a market cap of more than $206 billion and posted more than $21 billion in revenue in January 2021. Earlier this week, Bank of America named the company among its top picks among software stocks for the first half of 2021. The bank maintained a Buy rating on the stocks and set the price target at $275, identifying the company as having a long runway for revenue growth and leading the market with digital transformation. Salesforce is placed fourth on our list of top 10 best artificial intelligence stocks for 2021.
As of the end of the fourth quarter, there were 97 hedge funds in Insider Monkey’s database that held stakes in Salesforce.com Inc., compared to 106 funds in the third quarter. Fisher Asset Management, with 12.5 million shares of CRM, is the biggest stakeholder in the company. Our calculations show that, CRM ranks 24th in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds: 2020 Q4 Rankings.
Vulcan Value Partners, in their Q4 2020 investor letter, mentioned Salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE: CRM). Here is what Vulcan Value Partners has to say about salesforce.com, inc. in their Q4 2020 investor letter:
“We purchased Salesforce.com Inc. during the quarter. Salesforce is the dominant provider of customer relationship management (CRM) software and technology. Over the years, Salesforce has expanded its services to capture the entire lifecycle of a customer, including the ability to integrate third-party applications. Salesforce has high retention rates, pricing power, a large and growing addressable market, strong free cash flow, and a competitive moat. Salesforce is spending aggressively to capture a larger share of its rapidly growing total addressable market. As a result, we believe that Salesforce’s value should compound through continued investment in top line growth and margin expansion over time. The recent effects of COVID-19 have only improved its prospects and future returns. We purchased Salesforce.com just before the announcement of the Slack acquisition. The market reacted negatively to the acquisition, and its stock price fell, making Salesforce.com a material detractor to the portfolio during the quarter. We feel good about the acquisition of Slack as it allows for a more comprehensive CRM offering which will increase the company’s competitive moat.”
