Salesforce stock storms 9% higher to new all-time high above $368

• Salesforce stock gained some 9% on Wednesday following Q3 earnings late Tuesday.
• Salesforce missed adjusted EPS consensus by about 2%.
• Q4 adjusted EPS guidance arrived between $2.57 and $2.62, well above the Q3 result.
• CRM stock moved lower midway through Wednesday's session as the market took profits off the table.

Salesforce (CRM) stock is the big winner on Wednesday. Despite missing on the bottom line consensus for third-quarter earnings, Salesforce’s new AI agent has excited the market about future growth.

CRM stock exploded 9% higher, hitting a new intraday and all-time high of $368.70. This led the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) to gain 0.5%, returning to resistance near 45,000.

Salesforce stock news

Salesforce missed the adjusted earnings per share (EPS) consensus by $0.04 when it posted earnings of $2.41 late Wednesday for the third quarter. This is about a 2% miss. Revenue of $9.44 billion rose 8% YoY and beat the Wall Street consensus by $90 million.

Operating cash flow of $1.98 billion and free cash flow of $1.78 billion surged 29% and 30% YoY, respectively.

The customer management software provider also initiated fourth-quarter adjusted EPS guidance of between $2.57 and $2.62 on projected revenue of between $9.9 billion and $10.1 billion.

But Agentforce stole the show. The artificial intelligence (AI) product allows companies to build their own AI customer service agents, billed as a means of reducing overall employee headcount and producing cost savings.

CEO Marc Benioff said Agentforce had already signed some 200 corporations as customers in just a week at the end of Q3, however, he made it clear that this figure was just a drop in the bucket. Benioff expects future quarters to see corporate customer gains number in the thousands.

“Companies like FedEx (FDX), Adecco, Accenture (ACN), ACE Hardware, IBM (IBM), RBC Wealth Management and many more are now building their digital labor forces on the Salesforce platform with Agentforce," Benioff said during the earnings call.

Needham raised its price target from $345 to $375, and Wedbush Securities raised its CRM price target from $375 to $425.

Salesforce stock chart

CRM stock is now slightly overbought on the Relative Strength Index (RSI) based on the session's rally, but that doesn't mean the rally is necessarily over. However, plenty of traders appear to be taking profits as the stock has descended below $360 after reaching the all-time high at $368.70.

From a purely technical view, the new all-time high is diverging from the RSI peaks, which are trending lower. This sometimes precedes a reversal, in this case a bearish one.

Short-term support comes at the November 19 pullback near $316, and the 50-day Simple Moving Average (SMA), which is now near $305, serves as medium-term support.

CRM daily stock chart