Bridgewater Just Sold Salesforce. Here Is Why That May Be Exactly the Wrong Move for Patient Investors

Bridgewater Associates walking away from Salesforce (NYSE:CRM | CRM Price Prediction) is exactly the kind of institutional exit that often coincides with entry points for long-duration holders evaluating durable compounders, and CRM offers characteristics long-term holders look for, with a recurring revenue base, expanding free cash flow, and a disciplined capital return program that together function as a quiet workhorse for patient capital.

Pillar One: Durability

Subscription and support revenue accounts for roughly 95% of total revenue, and current remaining performance obligations sit at $33.6B, up 14% year over year, with total RPO above $72B. That is billed and unbilled work already on the books. Gross margin runs at 77.68% and operating margin at 21.47%. The company closed FY26 with revenue of $41.525B, up 9.58% year over year, and guided FY27 revenue to $45.9B-$46.2B, with a FY30 target raised to $63B. Agentforce ARR reached $1.2B, up 205%, and nearly 90% of Forbes Top 50 AI companies run on Salesforce. The moat is structural.

Pillar Two: Income and Compounding

The board raised the quarterly dividend to $0.44, a 5.8% year-over-year increase, declared February 25, 2026. Free cash flow reached $14.402B in FY26, up 15.83%, and Q1 FY27 alone produced $6.556B in free cash flow on just $145M of capex. Management authorized a $50B share repurchase program and completed a $25B accelerated repurchase that delivered 103M shares upfront, shrinking the diluted share count from 970M to 871M year over year. Total capital returned in Q1 FY27 hit $27.5B. With the share base contracting and the dividend climbing off a 1.03% starting yield, the per-share economics compound quietly across a 10-year or 20-year hold.

Pillar Three: Cycle Survival

Enterprise CRM spend has proven sticky through every downturn because ripping out Salesforce means tearing out the operating system of a company’s sales, service, and marketing functions. Net debt/EBITDA sits at 0.78 and ROIC at 7.89%, leaving room to absorb the Informatica financing without straining capital returns. Q1 FY27 delivered EPS of $3.88 versus a $3.13 estimate, the fifth consecutive EPS beat. CEO Marc Benioff called it “an outstanding quarter for Salesforce, record revenue, record deals, and cash flow.”

The Underperformance Scenario

The stock has given back 27.74% over the past year and 28.57% year to date. In a sharp risk-off cycle or a compression of enterprise IT budgets, growth could slow temporarily, and integration risk from the Informatica acquisition is real. A temporary growth deceleration in subscription software does little to the compounding engine. The $72B-plus RPO backlog reflects multi-year contracts already signed, and 77.68% gross margins give management enormous flexibility to defend earnings through any cycle. Wall Street’s 41 Buy, 10 Hold, and 2 Sell ratings point to a consensus target of $254.99, but the long-duration case rests on the recurring revenue, the cash machine, and the shrinking share count.

For investors building a long-duration thesis, the case rests on recurring revenue, free cash flow, and a shrinking share count.