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Salesforce its stock price has slumped down as growth begins to stabilise. Should it return to its former spree of acquisitions to turn the tide?
Tipping a deal
Tipping a deal is a series where the author recommends a M&A deal on a company that he engages with in life. This is the first article of such a series.
With Q2 2026 earnings reports coming up, observing the decline in CRM’s stock price has not satisfied my short-term mentality, as an investor in Salesforce (CRM: NYSE) since May 2025. This comes as the market tends to treat Salesforce as a mature company, instead of a growth one as seen by several analysts lowering their price targets for CRM.
It is reported that the days of double-digit growth have passed and that capital appreciation will underperform the required rate of return by shareholders. This can be seen by CRM’s stock not growing compared to a year ago and being down 23% YTD. Some financials discussed below:
1. No significant changes over the last quarter (dropdown menu)
In its Q1 2026 earnings reports, it provided little growth on the bottom line with 1,541 for 2025 proceeded by 1,533 for 2024 in millions. However, net profit margin fell by 1% for 2025 due to losses on strategic investments.
2. Mixed growth statistics (dropdown menu)
Overall revenue grew 9% while only the [platform and other] & [integration & analytics] had double-digit growth. On top of that, double-digit growth in the Asian market has fell from 21% to 11% over the past two years. However, Data Cloud has recorded a growth of 120% Y/Y and is improving coherence between the various offerings by Salesforce for the clientele.
an Acquisition
While Salesforce recently (27th of May 2025) acquired Informatica in an $8 billion deal financed by both cash and debt, inorganic growth might be necessary to complement the single-digit growth that would hamper the company in the future. Its decision to acquire Informatica – which has no proven profitability – will limit the company’s purchasing power for a future M&A venture, despite the $26 billion of current asstes in the latest balance sheet (as of 30th of April 2025).
Salesforce’s current competition is presented by SAP, Microsoft & Oracle who compete over their market share in traditional CRM systems (SAP | Microsoft); enterprise software and data analytics (Slack, Tableau | Microsoft) & data management ( Data Cloud, Agentforce| Oracle).
An acquisition of Informatica has been justified by further ensuring reliability of CRM’s Agentforce, but also implies an attempt to further compete with Oracle in the field of data management as Salesforce’s Data Cloud has grown 120% year-on-year (Y/Y).
CRMs Data Cloud is heavily tied to and integrated with its other products providing synergy for Salesforce’s existing client base but little to outsiders. Therefore it would be advantageous to increase its product lineup for three reasons:
- Launching inorganic growth to overcome the decreasing organic growth in established product segments
- Expanding potential clients if Data Cloud would be compatible with the acquired product
- Differentiation from Informatica
The requirements set for the following product therefore equal:
- The product must be a heavy-data B2B SaaS, which requires datamanagement.
- The product should generate at least $1 billion in revenue to increase likelihood of increasing revenue for Salesforce’s Data Cloud.
- The product its revenue should have grown at least 10% annually for the past three years, leaving further room for organic growth.
Two prospective companies stand out: Alteryx & Monday.com
Alteryx
Alteryx is a data management tool which simplifies data cleaning (transformation), integration and analytics through workflows. It recorded a revenue of $970 million for the year of 2023, before it was acquired by Clearlake Capital & Insight Venture Partners. Assuming that Alteryx maintained the 13% annual growth it showed the previous two years, it would have surpassed the $1 billion revenue mark.
Its client base is diverse and is present across many sectors and sizes, indicating that Alteryx has no certain niche that Salesforce could pivot towards.
Regardless, it is responsible for the management of data; data cleansing; data pipelines; visualisations and analytics, mostly powered by AI. It covers the whole process, from data to insights and decision making unlike its competitors.
However, its analytics would clash with Salesforce’s Tableau while its other functionality can be replaced by Data Cloud, which offers better integration with Salesforce’s other native tools.
It is worth mentioning that it is no-to-low-code, simplifying work and decreasing the need for expansive technical know-how. However, it would still require a technical person to carry out the duties involving Alteryx.
No financial information is publicly available for the calendar year of 2024 and 2025 quarters. Alteryx has disputable differentiation when compared to Informatica and has a non-concentrated client base, missing two requirements.
Monday.com
Monday.com is an environment for project management, collaboration and further technical support such as automation and integration of services across different platforms.
It has 250,000 global customers of which ca. 60,000 are subscriptions with at least 10 users. These customers typically range from small businesses to medium-to-large enterprises, which would complement Salesforce’s existing diverse client base.
Monday.com reported a $1.1 billion revenue (ending June 30th, 2025) supplemented by $40 million net profit, with the first full calendar year in which Monday.com was profitable being 2024 since it went public in 2021.
Automations within Monday.com would require the storage of large datasets when they’d iterate many times. Such would need data management that can be supplied with Salesforce’s Data Cloud. As mentioned earlier, it opens up Salesforce’s product lineup to the mid-market and small business segments, further increasing and diversifying revenue while improving brand image in those segments.
It would also allow Salesforce to enter a new market of automation & integration platforms, despite Monday.com’s purpose not fitting with the purpose of n8n, make.com & zapier. The multipurpose use of Monday.com as a project management tool but also as an automation tool would allow clients to get in touch with such low-code automation tools that Salesforce’s developer teams could expand. Salesforce would be competing with the higher-end competitors (n8n, make.com, zapier etc.) in the future, while providing further playground to its own AI agent under Agentforce.
Additionally, uniting various tools within one native environment that has easy integrations with other services would further create a further incentive to take one subscription from Salesforce, imitating Microsoft’s business model as an all-round business environment.
Monday.com satisfies all three product-related requirements (data-heavy SaaS, $1B ARR, 10% growth for 3 years) and satisfies the macro-requirements by bringing in a new client base, differentiating from Informatica and allowing new clients to reach traditional Salesforce products.
Prospective Acquisitions
Alteryx was acquired in a deal worth $4.4 billion, in which the two Private Equity firms paid a 59% premium as announced in December 2023. The PE firms have outlined a strategic path for Alteryx, instead of short-term shareholder value creation.
The 59% premium implies that the firms have a dedicated plan and concluded Alteryx to contain extraordinary potential, to justify such a premium. This would mean that a $5 billion bid would 99% rejected. It is also known that Private Equity firms would like to double their investment, meaning that a deal would be worth a $9 to $10 billion investment.
On the other hand…
Monday.com has reportedly only been profitable for 1.5 years since it went public, but has maintained negative operating incomes in each year since. It has managed to add 150 to 200 million in revenue each year, which was picked up by investors as its share price soared from $114/share in January 2023 to $310 in June 2025. However, it fell to $170 (before growing to $188 as of today) due to lower guidance, implying slower growth than expected. As a result, its market cap has been reduced from $16 billion to $10 billion within months providing a rare but costly opportunity. This would generally put a price tag ranging from $12 to $15 billion on the acquisition.
Analysts and banks have re-iterated their buy-rating for the stock and are bullish on the underlying numbers, going further than the next quarter.
Assuming the following:
- Free cash flow of $322 million
- WACC of 8%
- a 10-year term
- 15% FCF growth under Salesforce ownership over a 10 year-term
- 3.3% perpetuity growth (average US growth rate 1930-2024)
with the use of a terminal value the Discounted Cashflow model values Monday.com at $36 billion, with the first 10 years accounting for just $4.6 billion. This would mean that Salesforce would pay a 117% premium for its returns over the first 10 years.
The acquisition of Informatica in a deal worth $8 billion has come with a $6 billion credit agreement to finance it which it has not utilised yet, while maintaining $26 billion in current assets as of 30/4/2025 and owing $6 billion in payables. This means that Salesforce has access to $12 billion in cash (or equivalents within a year) that could be supplemented with $12.6 in another year and thus ca. $4 billion within 4 months.
Conclusion
Therefore, it is recommended that Salesforce does not launch a bid on Alteryx unless enquiries provide information that could provide new insights. On the other hand, Monday.com allows Salesforce and its products to enter a new market (automation); access to new business size segments and boast the adoption of Data Cloud and thus promote the acquisition of Informatica, reviving double-digit growth.
Monday has better financials – revenue, net profit – than Slack & Tableau had when they were acquired while Monday could be acquired for at most at a similar price as Tableau – $15 billion vs $15.7 billion (Tableau) vs $27.7 billion (Slack).
The combination of a strong product lineup and taking a rare financial opportunity that may not arise, could drive Salesforce back to double-digit growth and the rise of its share price.
Therefore, the final recommendation is the acquisition of Monday.com by Salesforce.
*credits to: Medullaoblongata Projekt / Wikimedia Commons
FEEDBACK! (dropdown menu)
Feedback based on the article or series is(/are) very much appreciated by the author. This can be commented or sent to s.ewaz-corporate@acquireandmerge-journal.nl. Questions related to assumptions, sources or ideas may also be forwarded to that mailadress.
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