salesforce s strong earnings were impressive as it works toward improving profitability in the midst of ongoing activist pressure at the firm according to wall street analysts the cloud stock surged 15 in premarket trading thursday after salesforce beat profit and sales expectations  the company also issued a better forecast than wall street was expecting the results help salesforce ceo marc benioff fend off pressure from activist investors such as third point and elliott management that have leaned on the firm morgan stanleys keith weiss maintained an overweight rating and raised his price target slightly to 240 from 236 saying the firm is significantly turning the dials on the core activist initiatives as it improves profitability the new price target suggests shares can jump 43 from wednesdays closing price of 16735 with q4 fundamentals well exceeding consensus and a fy24 guide targeting growth 10  op margins 27 well ahead investor expectations salesforces pursuit of profitable growth gains significant momentum weiss wrote in a note crm 1d mountain salesforce shares 1day bank of americas brad sills was particularly bullish on salesforce reiterating a buy rating on the stock and calling it both a top pick and emerging quality garp stock garp is short for growth at a reasonable price a strategy that bridges attributes from value and growth investing his 235 price objective raised from 200 means shares can surge 40 from wednesdays close while the mulesoft acceleration is impressive we are also encouraged by the core sales and service cloud growth holding in the mid teens level on a cc basis suggesting continued strength and pull through from more strategic industry cloud and cdp deals sills wrote jpmorgans mark murphy also reiterated an overweight rating on the stock and raised his price target to 230 from 200 implying about 37 upside while murphy said the outperformance in the quarter had more to do with early renewals than new customer adds to the platform he said he found the focus on profitability is encouraging as we have outlined numerous times we continue to see the valuation framework for salesforce shifting to fcfshare and view managements focus toward a much more aggressive profitability glidepath over the longterm highly favorably murphy said to clients thursday meanwhile citis tyler radke called the results impressive especially against recent negative headlines swirling salesforce nevertheless he maintained a neutral rating on the stock with a 182 price target implying just 8 upside while nearly all reported and guided metric were well above our more bearish estimates we also think it likely cleared some of the most bullish expectations heading into the print radke wrote wednesday we expect stock to trade up significantly as growth seems to be holding up much better while operating margins are inflecting driving improved shareholder value on the other hand alliancebernsteins mark moerdler had an underperform rating on salesforce and a 145 price target representing 13 downside for the stock he said the cloud firm has a difficult transition ahead of it as it transitions to a margin story from a growth story this is a very difficult transition and is already having an impact on their employee which will likely translate into additional impacts on the business given the mix of growth and margins the stock is overpriced especially when considering the risks of further deceleration vs the rewards of peer level margins which will take years moerdler wrote on average analysts have a buy rating on the stock according to consensus estimates from refinitiv —cnbcs michael bloom contributed to this report