Investment management company Vulcan Value Partners recently released its first-quarter 2025 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The first quarter experienced the return of volatility. The companies' management teams expressed a more cautious view following the recent election. Optimism has given way to uncertainty about tariffs and potential impacts on earnings, inflation, and economic growth. In the quarter, the Large Cap Composite returned -2.1% net of fees and expenses, the Small Cap Composite returned -4.5% net, the Focus Composite returned -5.8% net, the Focus Plus composite returned -6.0% and the All-Cap Composite returned -4.1% net. For more information on the fund’s best picks in 2025, please check its top five holdings.

In its first quarter 2025 investor letter, Vulcan Value Partners emphasized stocks such as Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM). Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) offers Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology that brings companies and customers together. The one-month return of Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) was -8.68%, and its shares lost 8.24% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On April 14, 2025, Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) stock closed at $254.55 per share with a market capitalization of $244.623 billion.

Vulcan Value Partners stated the following regarding Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) in its Q1 2025 investor letter:

"There were five material detractors: Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM), Amazon. com Inc., Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc., and Skyworks Solutions Inc. Salesforce is the world’s leading SaaS vendor for customer relationship management (CRM) and salesforce automation (SFA) software. Growth guidance for the upcoming year was less than anticipated, indicating monetization of Salesforce’s Agentforce will take time. However, the company has already closed thousands of Agentforce deals, it expects Agentforce’s contribution to revenue to ramp throughout the current year, and contribute more significantly the following fiscal year."

A customer service team in an office setting using the company's Customer 360 platform to communicate with customers.

Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is in 16th position on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 162 hedge fund portfolios held Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) at the end of the fourth quarter compared to 116 in the third quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is as promising as NVIDIA but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

We covered Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) in another article, where we shared the list of best tech stocks to buy for long-term investment. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q1 2025 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.