Cantor Analyst Claims Salesforce Stock (NYSE:CRM) is Undervalued at Historic Low Multiple
Analyst Rating and Price Target: Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Matthew VanVliet maintains a Buy rating on Salesforce (CRM) with a price target of $325, citing strong long-term growth prospects and undervaluation of the stock.
Revenue Growth and Market Concerns: VanVliet highlights Salesforce's deep integration in enterprise operations as a driver for steady revenue growth, while addressing market fears about AI disruption as a potential opportunity for investors.
Acquisition Strategy: Salesforce's growth strategy focuses on acquisitions to enhance its platform capabilities, with recent purchases aimed at building an advanced AI stack to support autonomous AI agents.
Wall Street Consensus: The stock has a Moderate Buy consensus rating, with 30 Buys, nine Holds, and one Sell, indicating a potential upside of 34.63% based on the average price target of $328.14.
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- Poor User Experience: According to the Qualtrics 2026 Customer Experience Trends Report, nearly one in five consumers reported no benefits from using AI for customer service, a failure rate almost four times higher than general AI use, indicating significant barriers in AI's application in customer service.
- Corporate Motivation Issues: Ben Wiener from Cognizant highlights that AI does not change corporate incentives but amplifies existing cost-cutting strategies, resulting in a customer service experience that fails to improve and often frustrates customers.
- Limitations of Automation: Research shows many conversations with AI still escalate to human agents, and when AI cannot resolve issues or clearly explain decisions, customers often perceive it as an additional barrier rather than a solution.
- Market Outlook: Zendesk CEO Tom Eggemeier predicts that within three years, 50% of digital customer service interactions will be handled by AI, rising to 80% within five years, indicating ongoing investment and application of AI in customer service by businesses.
- AI Paradox Unveiled: Jackson's analysis of 716 SaaS earnings calls over two decades reveals that companies in the top quintile of AI language density underperformed the bottom quintile by 5.4 percentage points over the following 90 days, indicating an overreaction to AI hype in the market.
- Shifting Market Sentiment: He argues that many SaaS firms are overvalued due to growth narratives driven by AI, facing risks of slowing organic growth, rising customer acquisition costs, and deteriorating pricing power, particularly as enterprise spending tightens.
- Short Position Strategy: Jackson has established short positions in Salesforce, Asana, DocuSign, and Atlassian, all of which are trading at multi-year lows, with Asana hitting an all-time low, reflecting a pessimistic outlook on their future performance.
- Comparative Industry Analysis: While companies like CrowdStrike and Zscaler benefit from AI advancements, Jackson believes the market is punishing all related firms too harshly, leading to misjudgments in investment choices among investors.
- ServiceNow's Strategic Response: Despite a 35% stock drop in 2026, ServiceNow has enhanced its platform's competitiveness by launching an autonomous workforce product that utilizes AI to handle over 90% of employee IT requests, thereby maintaining its market position in the AI era.
- Sustained Revenue Growth: ServiceNow reported a 21% year-over-year growth in Q4 2025, with sales reaching $3.6 billion, and expects a 22% increase in subscription sales in Q1 2026, demonstrating strong business resilience.
- Salesforce's AI Integration: Salesforce achieved record revenue of $11.2 billion in Q4 fiscal 2026, with Agentforce's annual recurring revenue soaring 169% year-over-year to $800 million, indicating high customer adoption of its AI solutions.
- Attractive Investment Timing: With both companies' stock prices nearing 52-week lows, the current drop in their price-to-earnings ratios presents an appealing investment opportunity in ServiceNow and Salesforce, especially given their ongoing healthy business performance.
- Market Reaction: In 2026, Wall Street's fears that AI could render some software companies obsolete led to a significant sell-off in software stocks, with ServiceNow and Salesforce experiencing declines of 35% and 32% respectively, reflecting a pessimistic outlook on their future prospects.
- AI Integration: Despite the threats, ServiceNow has enhanced its market competitiveness by launching an autonomous workforce product that utilizes data and knowledge from its platform, enabling AI agents to handle over 90% of employee IT requests, thus improving efficiency.
- Financial Performance: ServiceNow reported a 21% year-over-year growth in Q4 2025, with sales reaching $3.6 billion, including $3.5 billion in subscriptions, indicating stable recurring revenue, and it expects Q1 2026 subscription sales to rise by 22% to around $3.7 billion.
- Salesforce Growth: Salesforce achieved record revenue of $11.2 billion in Q4 fiscal 2026, with Agentforce's annual recurring revenue increasing by 169% year-over-year to $800 million, demonstrating growing customer adoption of its AI solutions, while also raising its dividend by 6% to $0.44 per share in February, enhancing its investment appeal.
- Stock Plunge: Microsoft experienced a 23% drop in stock price during Q1, marking its worst quarterly performance since the 2008 financial crisis, significantly outpacing the Nasdaq's 7% decline, indicating investor concerns over its AI growth prospects that could impact future financing capabilities.
- AI Assistant Challenges: Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant has seen low user adoption, with only 3% of commercial Office customers holding licenses, forcing the company to allocate Azure cloud resources for improvements to maintain market share amid fierce competition.
- Executive Shake-up: Microsoft reassigned Copilot development head Mustafa Suleyman and appointed former Snap executive Jacob Andreou to lead the Copilot experience for consumers and commercial clients, raising market concerns about the company's strategic direction and potentially affecting team morale.
- Cloud Business Growth: Despite challenges, Microsoft's Azure cloud service achieved a 39% revenue growth in the December quarter, with commercial remaining performance obligations exceeding $625 billion, reflecting strong demand in the cloud infrastructure market that may support the company's future.
- Disappointing Quarterly Performance: Microsoft experienced a staggering 23% drop in stock value during Q1 2023, marking its steepest decline since the 2008 financial crisis, reflecting investor concerns over its AI prospects and resulting in significant market capitalization loss.
- Concerns Over AI ROI: While Microsoft remains a leader in cloud computing and productivity software, its AI assistant Copilot has only achieved a 3% adoption rate among commercial Office customers, failing to meet market expectations and potentially hindering future revenue growth.
- Executive Shake-Up Impact: The recent reassignment of Copilot development head Mustafa Suleyman raises concerns about leadership effectiveness, especially as the new team faces intense competition from rivals like Google and OpenAI, which could affect the company's strategic direction.
- Strong Cloud Business Growth: Despite challenges, Microsoft's Azure cloud service reported a 39% revenue increase in the December quarter, with commercial remaining performance obligations exceeding $625 billion, indicating strong potential and demand in the AI sector.











