Investing.com -- Citi trimmed its price target on Salesforce to $188 from $200 in a note on Tuesday, citing field research pointing to slowing deal activity and growing competitive pressure, while maintaining its Neutral rating on the enterprise software giant ahead of first-quarter results.

The bank said checks with three Salesforce partners returned little positive sentiment, with resellers flagging "lengthening deal cycles and greater portfolio optimization at renewals," particularly in the company's Tableau and Marketing Cloud products.

Competitive pressure from peers, including HubSpot and Adobe was also cited as a rising concern.

Citi said Agentforce, Salesforce's AI platform, continues to dominate customer conversations but has yet to translate into meaningful adoption.

The bank believes the "unpredictability of cost being a main hurdle" is limiting the ability of customers to scale the product, while contract durations are also shortening amid AI-related uncertainty.

On Tableau specifically, Citi said partners increasingly view the product as vulnerable to disruption, and the bank now models a revenue decline of 2% to 5% in fiscal years 2027 and 2028, roughly 10 percentage points below its prior expectations.

Citi warned that the deterioration in Tableau and MuleSoft "may be overlooked by the Street."

For the first quarter, Citi expects Salesforce to report results broadly in line with or slightly below guidance, with organic current remaining performance obligation growth of around 9% in constant currency.

The bank does not anticipate a raise to full-year fiscal 2027 targets, and expects second-quarter guidance to show modest deceleration. The revised price target reflects an approximately 12 times enterprise value-to-free cash flow multiple on fiscal 2027 estimates.