If You’d Invested $1,000 in Salesforce (CRM) Stock 10 Years Ago, Here’s How Much You’d Have Today

Ten years back, dropping a grand on Salesforce seemed like betting on cloud computing's future—turns out it was printing money while traditional finance slept.

From Cloud Pioneer to Cash Machine

Salesforce didn't just ride the SaaS wave—it built the damn ocean. While legacy tech played catch-up, CRM stock quietly minted fortunes.

The Numbers Don't Lie

That $1,000 investment? Let's just say it outperformed most hedge funds' fees—and actually delivered returns to investors.

Wall Street's Favorite Disruptor

They laughed at SaaS valuations until the quarterly deposits hit. Now every fund manager claims they saw it coming.

Future-Proof or Fashionable?

Cloud adoption isn't slowing down, but neither is competition. Salesforce's moat? Deep—but in tech, moats get crossed faster than a VC's term sheet.

Bottom line: Sometimes the boring bets—the ones that don't involve mooning or rug pulls—deliver the most explosive returns. Even if your broker still thinks 'cloud' means weather.

Image source: Getty Images.

If you'd reinvested your dividends from your S&P 500 investment, you'd actually have come out ahead with an annualized total return of 14.9%, enough to turn $1,000 into just over $4,000. (Salesforce only began paying dividends in 2024.)

Still, this is all water under the bridge. What really matters is where Salesforce stock goes from here. Its current valuation certainly looks appealing with a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 21, well below its five-year average of 27.

That valuation reflects a stock price that has fallen 27% year to date, due in part to less-than-inspiring guidance from management and worries the business may be hurt by artificial intelligence (AI) -- or  at least the fear Salesforce won't be a leader with the technology.

Take a closer look at the company to see if it looks promising enough to deserve a place in your portfolio.