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Salesforce has been hit with a series of challenges that could push its share price down further, according to Atlantic Equities. Analyst Peter Sazel downgraded the software stock to neutral from overweight. Sazel lowered his price target by $60 to $140, which presents a 6.4% downside from Thursday’s close. “We are downgrading Salesforce to Neutral on execution concerns, the broad C-suite management exodus and a risk of slower-than-expected revenue growth,” he said in a note to clients Friday. Sazel said a lack of cost efficiency in sales and marketing could disrupt revenue growth. He said streamlining costs could be more challenging given recent high-level departures . Slack, its workplace communication platform, will not be able to meet its $4 billion 2026 fiscal year revenue guidance as Microsoft Teams and other competitors improve, he said. And he added that challenges within go-to-market strategies have also hurt Slack’s integration. Its marquis product, Salesforce, could see more cyclical growth than in the past with core sales and service cloud markets more than 50% penetrated. That means the software’s performance could be more tied to growth within clients’ headcounts than previous downturns. Sazel also took concern with an announcement from Veeva , a life sciences-focused technology company, to end its contract with Salesforce starting in 2025. Veeva is making its own cloud platform to use rather than utilize Salesforce. That means slowing revenue growth, with its current revenue performance obligation “deteriorating” from 21% to 11% over the past three quarters, the analyst noted. Sazel said investors could focus more on the GAAP valuation, which he said makes the stock look relatively expensive. The stock shed about 1% in the premarket. The Dow component lost 47.8% in 2022 as technology floundered. — CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.
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