SAP shares hit all-time high after upbeat cloud business outlook
Cloud revenue growth driven by Cloud ERP Suite sales
30% of Q3 cloud contracts included AI use scenarios, says CEO
Operating profit increase aided by cost-cutting, fewer hires
Adds share move at open, adds analyst comment in paras 1 and 10
By Hakan Ersen
FRANKFURT, Oct 22 (Reuters) -Shares in SAP SAPG.DE were up 5% at market open on Tuesday, hitting an all-time high of 221 euros ($239.21) after the German software company raised its full-year targets on astrong cloud business in the third quarter.
Cloud revenue grew 27%, adjusted for currency effects, to 4.35 billion euros ($4.71 billion) in the third quarter, boosted by a 36% rise in sales of Cloud ERP Suite resource planning software.
Artificial intelligence was a key growth driver, according to CEO Christian Klein. "Around 30% of our cloud contracts in the third quarter included AI use scenarios," he said late on Monday.
With its guidance for 2025 unchanged, Barclays analysts wrotein a note that "even the new guide looks conservative".
They added that management "encouragingly" spoke on this conservatism.
Operating profit grew by 28% to 2.24 billion euros, exceeding expectations, helped by cost-cutting and a comparatively low number of new hires, CFO Dominik Asam said.
The company expects the cost of itsrestructuring to come ataround 3 billion euros as it evaluates up to 10,000 jobs out of its 100,000 total headcountto prepare for the era of AI.
On this basis, the Walldorf-based group nudged upits full-year cloud and software revenue target to 29.5-29.8 billion euros from 29-29.5 billion euros.
It now sees 2024 operating profit at 7.8 billion euros, up from a forecast of 7.6-7.9 billion euros.
JPM analysts see SAP's performance as "a read-across to the health of Enterprise IT spending and specifically software within that," pointing to rivals OracleORCL.N, WorkdayWDAY.O and MicrosoftMSFT.O.
($1 = 0.9239 euros)
Reporting by Hakan Ersan, writing by Miranda Murray and Marleen Kaesebier; editing by Jason Neely and Louise Heavens
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