Salesforce falls after D.A. Davidson downgrades to 'underperform'

Shares of enterprise cloud firm Salesforce CRM.N down 1.5% at $243.63 premarket

D.A. Davidson & Co downgrades stock rating to "underperform" from "neutral" and cuts PT to $200 from $250, representing ~19% downside to stock's last close

Brokerage says CRM is neglecting its core business in an effort to pursue a premature AI opportunity

CRM's focus on Agentforce, its autonomous AI application, does make strategic sense based on the transformative potential of AI on the future of application software - brokerage

But betting the whole company on this effort may be at the expense of the other 98% of the company's business - brokerage

"We heard from Agentforce customers that they love the early implementations of Agentforce, but also heard that there are significant obstacles to deploying them" - brokerage

42 of 54 brokerages rate the stock "buy" or higher, 10 "hold" and 2 "sell" or lower; their median PT is $380 - data compiled by LSEG

Up to last close, CRM stock down ~26% this year