Prediction: Salesforce Stock Will Reclaim $250 by 2028. Here's the Math.

Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) has spent the past two years getting repriced from software darling to something the market treats like a value stock. The damage comes to almost 40%: shares sit near $171 as of this writing, versus a 52-week high of $274.

The software giant now fetches about 12 times the midpoint of management's earnings guidance for this fiscal year.

My prediction is that the stock reclaims $250 by the end of 2028. That's not a bet on artificial intelligence (AI) hype returning. It's arithmetic built on growth the company is already delivering, plus a valuation that merely has to become somewhat less pessimistic.

Let's walk through it.

Image source: Getty Images.

The earnings side of the equation

The foundation is management's own outlook. For fiscal 2027 (the year ending Jan. 31, 2027), Salesforce guided for revenue of $45.9 billion to $46.2 billion, up 11% year over year, and non-GAAP (adjusted) earnings per share of $14.06 to $14.12.

The most recent results support that trajectory. In the first quarter of fiscal 2027 (the period ended April 30, 2026), revenue rose 13% year over year to $11.1 billion, helped by the company's acquisition of Informatica. Adjusted earnings per share jumped 50% to $3.88, and fiscal first-quarter free cash flow rose 4% year over year to $6.6 billion. Current remaining performance obligations, a window into contracted future revenue, climbed 14% year over year to $33.6 billion.

The fast-growing part of the story is AI. Salesforce said its Agentforce and Data 360 products reached nearly $3.4 billion in annual recurring revenue in the first quarter, up more than 200% year over year.

Of course, that's still a small piece of a $46 billion revenue base. But it's the piece growing fastest, and it undercuts the idea that AI is only a threat to this business.

Then there's the share count. Salesforce entered into a $25 billion accelerated share repurchase program this year, with the initial delivery retiring about 11% of shares outstanding. All told, the company returned $27.5 billion to shareholders in the fiscal first quarter, including dividends. Fewer shares means each remaining share captures more of the company's earnings, a tailwind that makes per-share growth easier to sustain.

Put it together, and the earnings math looks manageable. The math starts from the $14.09 midpoint of this fiscal year's guidance and assumes just 10% annualized growth over the following two years -- less than the 11% revenue growth the company is guiding for now, and modest for a business shrinking its share count this aggressively. That produces about $17 in earnings per share in fiscal 2029, the fiscal year that covers most of calendar 2028.

The valuation is the swing factor

Now the second variable. At today's multiple of about 12 times forward earnings, $17 of earnings power implies a stock price near $204 by late 2028. That's a fine return from $171, but it isn't $250.

Reaching $250 requires the multiple to recover to about 15. That is not a heroic assumption. Before the 2026 software sell-off, Salesforce traded at a forward multiple about twice today's. A move from 12 times to 15 times earnings doesn't require investors to fall back in love with software. It only requires them to stop treating Salesforce like a value stock in permanent decline -- while it grows revenue at a double-digit rate.

So the math is simply $17 in earnings per share times a multiple of 15, which lands near $255. From $171, that works out to a mid- to high-teens annualized return over roughly two and a half years.

What could break the prediction? Two things, mainly. If revenue growth decays below the high single digits, the earnings side falls short. And if AI agents actually start displacing enterprise software subscriptions, the multiple could stay stuck at 12 -- or sink lower. Investors should take both risks seriously, and the next year of Agentforce's ramp will say a lot about each.

But notice what the prediction doesn't need. It doesn't need a new bull market in software, an acceleration in growth, or multiple expansion back to old highs. It needs a company already guiding for 11% growth to keep executing, and a market willing to pay an average multiple for it.

I think that's a favorable setup.

Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Salesforce. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.