Salesforce: Why Distribution, Not Software, Is the Durable Moat

Andrew Macken of Montaka Global Investments presented his investment thesis on Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) at Wide-Moat Investing Summit 2026.

Thesis summary:

Salesforce is the world leader in cloud-based CRM software, four to five times larger than the number-two player, housing the data, metadata, and workflows of more than 150,000 corporate customers. It owns Slack and embeds agentic AI under its Agentforce brand. Andrew argues the market has misread the company amid the “SaaSpocalypse” narrative: that agentic AI lets software be copied or in-sourced cheaply, killing seat-based SaaS and handing power to foundation model companies. On that fear, CRM shares have halved.

His central claim is that Salesforce wins as a privileged distributor of third-party intelligence, not as a creator of code. Deploying agents safely inside an enterprise is harder than it looks, raising governance, security, and control questions that take years to resolve. Salesforce already holds trusted, secure distribution into those enterprises, through which agentic capabilities flow into existing workflows, now even via “headless” access from outside interfaces. Its hard-to-replicate assets are data (over 250 petabytes of proprietary customer data and metadata), distribution, and scale (over $6 billion in annual R&D).

On tokenomics, agentic use cases are hundreds of times more compute-intensive than chatbots, while supply-constrained US power prices are up more than 30% since 2020. Customers are scrutinizing token budgets and substituting frontier models with open-weight alternatives near 100x cheaper. The AI model layer is substitutable; Salesforce’s distribution, workflows, and data are not.

Field interviews point to ROIs of 5x to 20x from labor substitution, with Agentic Work Units up 111% QoQ and token consumption up more than 150% QoQ. Reported revenue growth has lagged because deployment takes time and early Agentforce discounts, including a US bank with consumption pricing waived until 2027, are only now rolling off. Andrew expects low-growth seat licenses offset by agent-consumption growth and operating leverage on the $15 billion marketing budget, lifting earnings above 20% p.a. with near-zero capital intensity.

At an EV near $160 billion, CRM recently traded at 4.5x EV to annual gross profit and about 3x EV to the gross profit of its signed $70 billion backlog, levels implying about 1% perpetual revenue growth or no going concern. Against management’s FY30 guidance of more than $63 billion in revenue and estimated EBITA above $20 billion, the shares recently traded below 8x EV/FY30 EBITA. The board authorized a $50 billion buyback this year. Andrew expects a re-rating if Salesforce proves to be a key distributor of intelligence.

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About the instructor:

Andrew Macken is the Co-Founder and CIO of Montaka Global Investments, a global equity manager based in Sydney and New York. Prior to establishing Montaka, Andrew worked as a senior member of Jim Chanos’ research team at Kynikos Associates, a global equity long/short fund based in New York. Andrew holds a Master of Business Administration (Dean’s List) from the Columbia Business School in New York. Andrew also graduated with High Distinction with a Master of Commerce; and First Class Honours with a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

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