Here’s Why Salesforce (CRM) Outperformed in Q1

The Ithaka Group, an investment advisory firm, released “Ithaka US Growth Strategy” first-quarter investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. In the quarter, the strategy returned 21.8% gross and 21.7% net compared to 14.4% for the Russell 1000 Growth Index. The outperformance of the fund was due to stock selection, with a very slight benefit from sector allocation. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2023.

Ithaka US Growth Strategy highlighted stocks like Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) in the first quarter 2023 investor letter. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) designs and develops cloud-based software for customer relationship management. On June 22, 2023, Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) stock closed at $213.29 per share. One-month return of Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) was -1.00%, and its shares gained 14.72% of their value over the last 52 weeks. Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) has a market capitalization of $207.744 billion.

Ithaka US Growth Strategy made the following comment about Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) in its first quarter 2023 investor letter:

“Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is the largest pure-play cloud software company, holding a leading market share in customer relationship management applications and a top-five market share position in the company’s other clouds (Marketing, Service, Platform, Analytics, Integration, and Commerce). The company’s software subscription term-license model differs from the traditional perpetual-license software model in two respects: (1) the software is hosted on centralized servers and delivered over the internet, as opposed to traditional enterprise software that is loaded directly onto customers’ hard drives or servers; and (2) the revenue model is subscription-based, typically charging monthly fees per user as opposed to charging one-time licensing fees. The stock’s strong relative performance followed a strong F4Q23 earnings release that easily beat Street expectations on the top- and bottom-lines. In addition to the beat, management announced a number of initiatives that activist investors have been clamoring for, specifically a halt to large M&A transactions and a focus on operating profitability.”

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Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is in 11th position on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 136 hedge fund portfolios held Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) at the end of first quarter 2023 which was 117 in the previous quarter.

We discussed Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) in another article and shared the list of best big-name stocks to buy. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q1 2023 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.