CRM Stock Earnings Preview: Can Salesforce Maintain Its Growth Momentum?

Salesforce [CRM], a leading customer relationship management software provider, will report its Q2 2026 results on September 3.

The company’s share price has declined by 23.11% year-to-date, as of August 29, due to lower-than-expected demand for its enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) agent tools.

Investor focus will be on the adoption of Salesforce’s flagship AI product, Agentforce, which the company shipped in late 2024.

Agentforce can autonomously interact with customers, build AI agents for sales, service and marketing, and integrate seamlessly with Salesforce platforms Tableau and Slack.

What to Expect from CRM’s Q2 Report

42 Wall Street analysts covering CRM stock expect the company to report Q2 revenue in the range of $10.08bn and $10.17bn.

That’s an 8.7% increase from a year ago, based on average estimates, and a 2.5–3.5% increase sequentially.

EPS also grew, with Wall Street expecting it to be in the range of $2.76–2.82, compared to the $2.56 reported a year ago.

Earlier in May, Salesforce raised its fiscal 2026 revenue guidance, citing the weakening US dollar as a “currency tailwind for the business”.

In the full year ended January 2025, the company earned about 33% of its revenue from markets in Europe and Asia-Pacific.

Salesforce, however, maintained its fiscal 2026 GAAP operating margin guidance of 21.6% and non-GAAP operating margin guidance of 34%.

Investors can expect Salesforce to distribute a dividend for the reporting quarter. The past two quarters saw CRM shareholders receive $0.42 per share — a dividend yield of 0.63%.

Enterprise AI Adoption Faces Hurdles

Salesforce has produced mixed results over the last three quarters.

On December 4, CRM stock surged more than 11% to an all-time high of $369 after topping Q3 2025 sales estimates. 

Investors chose to ignore the company’s failure to beat earnings estimates and instead cheered the upbeat forecast for its newly launched AI products.

The following quarter saw Salesforce report lower-than-expected quarterly revenue, which caused the CRM share price to tumble over 4% on February 27.

Management commentary disclosing that the company’s flagship AI product Agentforce will only provide a “modest contribution” to revenue in fiscal 2026 damped investor appetite. 

CFO Amy Weaver added that the adoption cycle of Agentforce was “still early” and that the product was expected to make a “more meaningful contribution” in fiscal 2027.

Salesforce’s Q1 2026 earnings, covering the quarter ended April 30, did little to ease investor concerns over the company’s slowing growth trajectory.

Despite beating both quarterly total revenue and earnings estimates, CRM stock fell 3.3% on May 29 as investors remained laser-focused on the growth story of Salesforce’s enterprise AI solutions.

CEO Marc Benioff said in the earnings call that while Agentforce has 4,000 paid users and boasts an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $100m in just two quarters since launch, the accelerated pace of enterprise adoption that the market anticipated would “take some time”.

Benioff explained that, unlike consumer AI solutions such as ChatGPT, which had over 700 million weekly users and five million paying business users in August, enterprise AI faces “constraint” in the form of “highly controlled, highly governed and highly secured” corporate databases.

He added that Informatica [INFA] — a data management company acquired by Salesforce in May in a deal worth $8bn — will play a key role in making enterprises AI-ready. 

“Our customers … all want to have this great success, but it takes some time for them to start to build their data sets. And that is why the Informatica acquisition is so important, because they all need to not only translate their data to build their master data management. They need to harmonize their data,” said Benioff.

What to Look Forward to in Q2

Adoption of Agentforce, growth of the Life Sciences division and international expansion are among key developments that investors will keep a keen eye on in the upcoming earnings report and call.

In Q1, Salesforce reported that Agentforce handled over 750,000 requests and had an ARR of $100m. Q2 has already seen the likes of Pacers Sports & Entertainment, broadcasting group Nexstar Media [NXST] and employment website Indeed, owned by Recruit Holdings [RCRRF], join Singapore Airlines [SINGF] to deploy Agentforce to their operations.

Management also announced that Salesforce is actively pursuing revenue growth, having prioritized margin, cash flow and “innovation transformation” over the last two years.

The company has identified the pharmaceutical industry as its strategic focus in recent quarters. 

In Q2, the company announced that Tokyo-headquartered drugmaker Takeda [TAK] will use Salesforce’s Agentforce and Data Cloud solutions to deploy AI agents.

“We’re going to invest at scale into the markets that are growing very dramatically. And we know where they are … whether it’s by geography or whether it’s by market segment,” said CEO Benioff.

Benioff spotlighted Japan and Latin America as regional markets that have seen growth since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Comparing Key Financial Metrics: CRM vs SAP vs ORCL

Oracle [ORCL] is a diversified enterprise software and hardware solutions provider that earned around three-fourths of its revenue from its cloud services and license support business in 2025.

SAP [SAP] is a dual-listed software company that specializes in enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, procurement, travel and expense management, and related business process solutions.

Source: Yahoo Finance

Conclusion

Agentforce saw strong early demand, but with AI hype driving CRM stock to record highs in 2024, only exceptional growth will satisfy investors. Salesforce’s Q2 earnings on September 3 will show if adoption is accelerating.