Salesforce Buys $27 Billion in Stock Before Earnings

 Market.Pulse
 
  Market.Pulse
 
Follow  Message
 
 
Market.Pulse delivers lightning‑fast insights using AI-driven sentiment scans, volume algorithms, and pattern recognition. Designed for traders who want data, speed, and an edge.
 

•  21 Aug 2026
 

$CRM Salesforce is buying $27 billion of shares in a single quarter after raising $25 billion in debt, while the stock trades around $209, down about 21% year to date. This is the largest accelerated share repurchase financed with debt. The company has a market value of about $171 billion based on roughly 819 million shares, with a yearly high of $269.11 and a June low of $146.32. The stock is up about 1.6% during the session.

In February, Salesforce announced a $50 billion repurchase program and raised its dividend by about 5.8%. In March, the company moved to raise up to $25 billion in bonds to finance the buyback. Moodys cut the rating to A2, while S&P moved its outlook to negative. The capital allocation creates a direct path to earnings per share support, but higher financing costs also weigh on cash flow growth.

First quarter revenue reached $11.13 billion, up 13% from $9.85 billion a year earlier and above expectations of $11.05 billion. Net income reached $2.11 billion, or $2.42 per share, compared with $1.54 billion and $1.59 per share a year earlier, while adjusted EPS reached $3.88 versus expectations of $3.13. At the same time, cash flow growth guidance fell to 4% to 5% from 9% to 10% because of financing expenses on the debt. The combination leaves earnings momentum intact while shifting attention toward the cost of supporting shareholder returns with leverage.

CEO Marc Benioff called the decline in the stock a major buying opportunity. Salesforce reports quarterly results next week on August 26, when the market will look for evidence that Agentforce is already moving revenue. In the first quarter, Agentforce recurring revenue reached a $1.2 billion run rate. Together with Data 360 and Informatica, which was acquired in November for $8 billion, the businesses represent about $3.4 billion, including $1.1 billion from Informatica.

More than half of new bookings for Agentforce and Data 360 came from existing customers. Salesforce forecasts fiscal year revenue of $45.9 billion to $46.2 billion, representing growth of about 11%. Informatica contributed $444 million of quarterly revenue. The positioning question is whether AI related products can generate enough incremental revenue to offset slower growth across established products and support multiple expansion.

The same pattern is appearing across neighboring software companies. Figma CEO Dylan Field voluntarily gave up equity grants worth about $46 million this month, while replacement grants were excluded from the agreement. He had been scheduled to receive about 2.4 million Class B shares on July 1, and Figma trades around $27. ServiceNow and Intuit management teams also said earlier this year that they were suspending near term stock sales.

ServiceNow trades around $129, down about 22% year to date after touching $81 in April. Second quarter subscription revenue reached $3.88 billion, up 23% in constant currency, while the renewal rate stood at 98%. CEO Bill McDermott told analysts to give the company back its market value. ServiceNow has a market value of about $134 billion, while Intuit trades around $367.

Adobe bought about $16 billion of its own shares over the past 18 months. In April, its board authorized a new program of up to $25 billion through April 2030. The stock trades around $274, down about 22% year to date and about 26% from its $370.86 high, with a market value of about $109 billion based on roughly 397 million shares. CEO Shantanu Narayen said in June that the company is directing capital toward repurchases.

Adobe bought about 8.5 million shares in the latest quarter, equal to roughly 2% of the company, against operating cash flow of $2.17 billion. Revenue over the past 12 months stands at about $25.2 billion, up roughly 11.5%. The repurchases increase the importance of per share earnings momentum as revenue growth moderates. Institutional flows are therefore being met by an aggressive reduction in available equity.

According to Benioff, concerns that the software as a service model is collapsing apply to other companies. Oracle founder Larry Ellison made a similar argument in March, saying the phenomenon applies elsewhere. Wall Street is still waiting for AI revenue to overtake slowing growth in legacy products. Salesforce renamed products under the Agentforce brand, including Sales Cloud, and reduced the level of product specific revenue disclosure.

The market sees the branding changes as an attempt to attribute existing revenue to a new brand. Infrastructure stocks including Microsoft, Palantir and Snowflake have already moved higher again in recent weeks after revenue acceleration became visible. Application software stocks, including Salesforce and Adobe, remain cheaper on valuation multiples. Salesforce trades around 15 times expected earnings, while Adobe trades around 11 to 12 times adjusted earnings, levels associated with mature software businesses and far below their growth era multiples.

Memory manufacturers are also returning capital to shareholders this week. SK Hynix approved a 40 trillion won, or roughly $29 billion, repurchase and cancellation program. In software, repurchases are coming after stock price declines, while in memory they are arriving after record profits. Both paths reduce share counts, but one is driven by lower equity prices and the other by cash generated from HBM.

The next test comes with the August 26 earnings report. Investors will focus on Agentforce growth, the number of licenses and how much of the repurchase has already flowed through to earnings per share. Until then, Salesforce is presenting a $27 billion quarterly repurchase while Adobe and Figma are moving in the same direction through capital allocation and a CEO equity grant waiver. The pattern centers on whether lower valuations, shrinking share counts and visible AI revenue can close the gap between current software multiples and underlying operating performance.

View all market intelligence