Earnings Preview: Can Salesforce regain its growth momentum this year?

Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE: CRM) has constantly innovated its products and services after successfully adopting the SaaS business model years ago. The company’s growth has slowed in recent quarters, and its AI-assisted Agentforce system remains in the early stages of adoption. The customer relationship management platform is all set to report its first-quarter 2026 results next week.

Analysts’ consensus earnings estimate for Q1 is $2.55 per share, excluding special items, compared to $2.44 per share in the year-ago quarter. It is estimated that revenues increased 6.7% annually to $9.75 billion in the April quarter. In the fourth quarter of 2025, earnings topped expectations while revenues almost matched estimates. The company will publish the Q1 report on Wednesday, May 28, at 4:00 pm ET.

The Stock

Salesforce’s stock has lost about 22% since peaking in December last year. After trending downward since the beginning of the year, the shares rebounded a month ago and have pared some losses in recent weeks. The recovery is expected to continue as the company looks well-positioned to tap into new opportunities in customer relationship management. Investors may want to keep the stock on their watchlists through the earnings and beyond.

Salesforce’s CEO Marc Russell Benioff said in the Q4 earnings call, “We expect to deliver fiscal year ’26 subscription and support revenue of 9% year over year in constant currency. We remain deeply, deeply committed to profitable growth and expect a fiscal year ’26 non-GAAP operating margin of 34%. We’re going to deliver another 100 basis points of expansion, following two years where we expanded more than 1,000 basis points. The pace of change; the focus on productivity, profitability; the speed of innovation, the trinity of apps, data, and agents, it’s all coming together.”

Strong Q4

In the fourth quarter, the company generated $10.0 billion in revenues, vs. $9.29 billion in the corresponding quarter of fiscal 2024. The top-line growth translated into a 21% year-over-year increase in adjusted earnings to $2.78 per share in the January quarter. On an unadjusted basis, the company reported a profit of $1.71 billion or $1.75 per share for Q4, up 18% year-over-year.

Agentforce, an AI teammate developed by Salesforce, enables the creation and deployment of autonomous AI agents for various business functions. There has been a steady uptick in Agentforce deals since its launch, and the company is quite bullish on the platform’s prospects.

The average price of Salesforce’s stock for the past 12 months is $285.92. On Thursday, the shares opened at $282.28 and traded slightly higher in the early hours.