Wells Fargo analyst Philip Winslow raised his price target for Salesforce to $215 from $185, while keeping an Overweight rating on the shares. The analyst anticipates continued healthy growth in software spending in 2020 and expects software stocks as a whole to relatively outperform the market. Furthermore, Winslow believes the next decade will bring "massive advances" toward a more fully connected and immersive world - one in which artificial intelligence and machine learning, natural language processing, augmented reality, 5G, edge/fog, and the Internet of Things mature and become both commonplace and transformative. He expects software to be a key enabler of this increasingly connected decade.

Morgan Stanley notes that Salesforce (CRM) management has advised investors that strategic M&A would be coming back into the company's toolkit at some point and recent press speculation about the company being in advanced talks to buy Informatica (INFA) suggests the company "may be ready to break the ice." While any significant M&A brings execution risks and "increased angst from investors still harboring memories of prior expensive deals," the analyst says a rumored transaction with Informatica, if it were to be confirmed and the deal were to be struck around a $12B enterprise value, looks to meet Salesforce's "criteria for responsible M&A." The firm, which sees potential for a complementary expansion that further buttresses the capabilities of Mulesoft and Data Cloud, has an Overweight rating and $350 price target on Salesforce shares.