KeyBanc downgraded Salesforce to Sector Weight from Overweight on July 8, citing concerns that the company’s flagship AI product Agentforce is gaining adoption slower than expected, pressuring the CRM stock that has already declined 36% over the past six months.
Analyst Jackson Ader said Salesforce remains an incumbent platform provider, but evidence suggests sustained acceleration from Agentforce is further out than previously expected. The firm noted that customer feedback from its partner and customer events has been consistent in two key areas: customers’ data is not organized to do meaningful AI work, and Agentforce as a product is not ready.
KeyBanc’s findings undermine the company’s core growth narrative. Partners are only now beginning to convert Agentforce proof-of-concept deals into pipeline revenue, the firm said. More critically, more chief information officers in KeyBanc’s survey expect to deprioritize Salesforce within their IT budgets over the next 12 months than the other way around.
The analyst also flagged a gap between Salesforce’s public claims and financial reality. While the company continues to disclose that net-new annual contract value is growing above overall annual contract value growth, KeyBanc said it has had difficulty finding evidence of that trend in Salesforce’s financial disclosures.
Salesforce stock closed at $166.58 on July 8, trading at a P/E ratio of 19.3. The downgrade comes as the software industry faces broader skepticism about AI adoption timelines, with several analysts questioning whether enterprise customers will move quickly to deploy autonomous AI agents or take a more cautious approach given implementation complexity and data quality challenges.
Sources
- Investing.com — KeyBanc downgrade to Sector Weight, analyst Jackson Ader’s comments on customer feedback and Agentforce readiness
- Yahoo Finance — Stock price movement and analyst downgrade details
- StreetInsider — Full analyst report and quotes from KeyBanc’s Jackson Ader on Agentforce adoption and CIO survey findings
