What's Going On With Salesforce (CRM) Stock?
Salesforce Inc (NYSE:CRM) shares are trading lower by 2.1% to $250.69 during Wednesday’s session. The company and Workday Inc (NASDAQ:WDAY) earlier announced a partnership to develop an AI employee service agent that will automate tasks, provide personalized support and generate data-driven insights to enhance productivity and efficiency.
Despite this news, Salesforce stock is falling amid the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NASDAQ:SPY) and Invesco QQQ Trust, Series 1 (NASDAQ:QQQ) experiencing their worst weekly performance in three months due to a broad-based selloff in chipmakers. A general market downturn often affects stocks across various sectors, including tech companies like Salesforce.
Additionally, rising unemployment claims and stagnant retail sales data are contributing to a mixed economic outlook. Although these factors may prompt hopes for Federal Reserve rate cuts, they also indicate potential economic slowdown, which can affect business investments and spending on enterprise software solutions like those provided by Salesforce.
Key Insights For Investors On Workday Partnership
The new AI agent will combine Salesforce’s Agentforce Platform and Einstein AI with Workday’s platform and AI, leveraging data from both companies to communicate with employees naturally and assist with tasks like onboarding and career development.
The collaboration will integrate Salesforce CRM data with Workday’s financial and HR data, creating a unified data foundation. This integration will also extend to Slack, enhancing user interaction with Workday records through conversational interfaces. The AI agent will handle straightforward requests and escalate complex issues to human agents with full context, promoting seamless human-AI collaboration.
Key benefits include improved employee support through natural language conversations, efficient self-service HR, personalized learning paths, and streamlined workflows. For employers, the integration offers enhanced workforce planning, continuous financial planning, and intelligent sales enablement.
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Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff emphasized the potential to augment employee capabilities and deliver exceptional customer experiences through this partnership, while Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach highlighted the transformative potential of integrated AI-powered employee experiences. The strategic partnership aims to set new standards for employee engagement and business performance by combining the strengths of both companies’ platforms.
Is CRM A Good Stock To Buy?
An investor can make a few decisions when deciding whether a stock is a good buy. In addition to valuation metrics and price action which you can find on Benzinga's quote pages – like Salesforce‘s page for example – there are factors like whether or not a company pays a dividend or buys a large portion of its stock each quarter.
These are known as capital allocation programs. Salesforce does pay a dividend, which yields 0.6% per year as of the closing price on Jul. 24, 2024. Feel free to search Benzinga's dividend calendar for the next company that is due to pay a dividend and determine what kind of yield you can earn for holding a share of the company.
For example, if you're looking to earn an annualized return of 13.51%, you'll need to buy a share of ARMOUR Residential REIT by the Aug. 14, 2024. Once done, you can expect to receive a nominal payout of $0.24 on Aug. 29, 2024.
Buyback programs are obviously different and highly variable. A company can approve a buyback program and purchase shares as it sees fit over the course of time in which the buyback was authorized. Looking through the latest news on Salesforce will often yield whether or not the company has approved a buyback program recently. Buyback programs usually serve as a support for share prices, serving as a backstop for demand.
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