01:28 PM EDT, 05/29/2025 (MT Newswires) -- Salesforce ( CRM ) could face risks from its planned acquisition of cloud data management firm Informatica ( INFA ) , while it navigates a potentially more competitive landscape in the long term, RBC Capital Markets said Thursday.

Earlier in the week, the customer relationship management platform agreed to buy Informatica ( INFA ) in a deal worth about $8 billion. The deal would give rise to "the most complete, agent-ready data platform" in the industry, Salesforce ( CRM ) Chief Executive Marc Benioff said at the time.

"While we understand wanting to control the full stack at the data layer, we don't know that it was mission-critical to own Informatica ( INFA ) outright, especially with Informatica ( INFA ) having integrations with Salesforce ( CRM )," RBC analyst Rishi Jaluria said in a Thursday note to clients. "Given many of Salesforce's ( CRM ) prior acquisitions have not been integrated, we believe this creates deal risk, not to mention the risk that Informatica ( INFA ) becomes a distraction from Salesforce's ( CRM ) core business."

The brokerage downgraded its rating on the Salesforce ( CRM ) stock to sector perform from outperform and slashed its price target to $275 from $420. The shares were down 6.2% in Thursday afternoon trade. The stock has lost nearly 23% in value so far this year.

RBC said that Informatica ( INFA ) has faced "major execution challenges" previously and that there are concerns that Salesforce ( CRM ) may have reverted to its strategy of acquisitions as compared with "innovating organically." The Informatica ( INFA ) deal is expected to close early in Salesforce's ( CRM ) fiscal 2027.

While Salesforce ( CRM ) is unlikely to face strong competition in the near term, particularly in the enterprise, it could face "long-term risk of disruption or disintermediation from AI-natives," Jaluria wrote. If Agentforce doesn't work as marketed, there are concerns that net new AI dollars in CRM could go to others instead of Salesforce ( CRM ). HubSpot ( HUBS ) might be able to compete more effectively with Salesforce ( CRM ) over the next few years as it's more innovative, according to the note.

"While Informatica ( INFA ) and data cloud aren't technically competition, buying Informatica ( INFA ) may indicate that data cloud hasn't been able to accomplish what Salesforce ( CRM ) set out to do," RBC said. Agentforce is Salesforce's ( CRM ) artificial intelligence-powered agent platform designed to automate tasks, while data cloud is a hyperscale data engine built directly inside Salesforce ( CRM ).

Late Wednesday, Salesforce ( CRM ) posted fiscal first-quarter results that exceeded Wall Street's estimates as the company benefitted from AI momentum.

"While we like the margin expansion story at Salesforce ( CRM ) and the valuation is undemanding, deal risk with Informatica ( INFA ) has tipped the scales for us, and we now recommend waiting on the sidelines until either we see more positive data points for Agentforce or if the Informatica ( INFA ) deal goes better than expected," Jaluria said Thursday.

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