KeyBanc Downgrades Salesforce as Agentforce Customer Feedback Weakens
Miles Bennett
KeyBanc cut Salesforce from overweight to sector weight, citing weak customer feedback on its AI agent product Agentforce; the stock is down 37% year-to-date as markets reassess its growth narrative.
What did the analyst himself say about the downgrade?
KeyBanc analyst Jackson Ader downgraded Salesforce to sector weight Wednesday evening and withdrew his prior price target.
He conceded in the note: "We are probably downgrading Salesforce at exactly the wrong time." But he countered — if the evidence keeps piling up, "what is the point of collecting it if we're not going to use it?"
This means → Ader knows the risk of turning bearish against the crowd, but the negative signal from customer checks was too strong to set aside.
What is going wrong with Agentforce?
KeyBanc's customer surveys and channel checks came back "less than ideal," and feedback on Agentforce — Salesforce's AI agent product that automates business workflows — was similarly weak.
Ader said the disclosed data shows "no sign that momentum is building," and he cut his earnings estimates accordingly.
In plain terms = Salesforce has pitched Agentforce as its next growth engine, but so far actual customer adoption has not kept pace with the story.
What do the stock and sector numbers tell us?
Salesforce is down 37% year-to-date; it fell another 3.8% in pre-market Thursday.
Over the same period, the IGV software ETF dropped roughly 13% — Salesforce's decline is nearly triple the sector's.
This reflects something beyond a broad software selloff: markets are directing company-specific doubt at whether Salesforce's growth story can deliver.
Seventy percent of analysts still say buy — how should we read that?
More than 70% of covering analysts maintain a buy rating, with an average target of $241.08 — implying roughly 45% upside from Wednesday's close of $166.58.
Yet *Barron's* pulled its buy recommendation last month, arguing the company has failed to dispel fears that its high-growth era is over.
This means → the wide gap between consensus targets and the actual stock price looks less like "cheap" and more like consensus itself eroding under the weight of reality. Real-world Agentforce adoption data will be the key variable to break the deadlock.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.