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SAP

SAP AG

5/18/2013, 12:56 PM ET

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Thursday, May 16, 2:01 PM More on SAP: During a Sapphire Now talk, chairman Hasso Plattner makes clear that Hana is central to SAP's product strategy, rather than just a part of it. "It's not about Hana anymore. It's about the applications on Hana." To drive home his point, Plattner brags over 60% of Hana deployments involve non-SAP apps, and that the database is supported by software from 431 startups. The comments come shortly after SAP made good on expectations it would begin offering Hana through a managed cloud service that can be used to migrate on-premise SAP workloads. (more on Hana) Comment! [Tech]
Thursday, May 16, 1:28 PM SAP (SAP -1.3%) makes a flurry of announcements during its Sapphire Now conference. 1) H-P (HPQ) is offering new AppSystems (prepackaged hardware/software) for SAP apps running on its Hana in-memory database. H-P and SAP are also working on Project Kraken, a server able to run Hana with 3x more memory than normal. 2) Hana has been updated to better support the Hadoop big data framework and other diverse data sources, and to include geospatial data. 3) SAP is launching Fiori, a group of "simple, easy-to-use" apps handling basic SAP software functions. 4) SAP's cloud apps, including SuccessFactors and Ariba's, have been updated. Comment! [Tech]
Monday, May 13, 11:46 AM H-P (HPQ -1.2%) offered to sell its Autonomy unit to SAP at some point before last month, but the German software giant wasn't interested, co-CEO Bill McDermott tells The Times. Odds are the offer price was well below the $11.1B H-P paid in 2011 for the enterprise search/analytics software vendor, the subject of a giant write-down, shareholder lawsuits, fraud investigations, plunging license sales, massive employee turnover, and other woe. Meg Whitman was saying all the right things about supporting Autonomy last month. Update: H-P responds by stating it has "no interest in selling Autonomy," and that SAP is the one that made inquiries about software asset sales (with H-P turning them down). 1 Comment [Tech, M&A]
Thursday, May 2, 2:51 PM SAP's (SAP -0.2%) attempt to overturn a $345M patent infringement verdict awarded to private Versata Software in 2011 has been shot down by an appeals court. Versata alleges price-determination software found in SAP's core ERP software suite infringes its patents. However, the appeals court has asked the trial court to change the text of an injunction placed on SAP's pricing software, so as to allow SAP to sell new seats and maintenance services to existing users. Comment! [Tech]
Friday, April 19, 9:28 AM SAP -3% following a Q1 revenue miss highlighted by by a drop in software license growth to 5% Y/Y from Q4's 9%. Likewise, high-margin support revenue grew 8%, down from Q4's 12%. On the bright side, Hana sales (a part of license revenue) rose 3x to €86M, and cloud subscription/support sales (boosted by acquisitions) rose to €167M from a mere €35M a year ago, with backlog up to €800M. Consulting revenue -7%. Asia-Pac license/cloud subscription sales declined Y/Y, with SAP hinting China/Japan were responsible. The report follows weak software numbers from Oracle, Red Hat, and IBM. Comment! [Tech, Earnings, On the Move]
Friday, April 19, 5:54 AM SAP AG (SAP): Q1 EPS of $0.58 in-line. Revenue of $3.6B misses by $0.2B. (PR) Comment! [Earnings, Breaking News, Tech]
Friday, April 19, 12:05 AM Notable earnings before Friday’s open: BHI, COL, FHN, FNFG, GE, GPC, HON, IPG, KMB, KSU, LH, MAN, MCD, NPBC, SAP, SLB, STI, STT, TCB, TNP, UA Comment! [Earnings]
Thursday, April 18, 5:30 PM Notable earnings before Friday’s open: BHI, COL, FHN, FNFG, GE, GPC, HON, IPG, KMB, KSU, LH, MAN, MCD, NPBC, SAP, SLB, STI, STT, TCB, TNP, UA Comment! [Earnings]
Wednesday, April 17, 9:26 AM Workday (WDAY) +1.7% after Wedbush's Steve Koenig starts coverage with an Outperform and $76 PT. "WDAY is a play on the potential for cloud computing to fundamentally remake the $25B [ERP software] market, just as it has disrupted the $13B [CRM software] market," Koenig writes, while adding checks indicate strong interest in cloud ERP from "enterprises saddled with expensive on-premise systems that are costly to maintain and update." NetSuite (N) is another cloud ERP vendor; SAP has the most to lose if the market takes off on a large scale. (yesterday) Comment! [Tech, On the Move]
Friday, April 12, 4:35 PM SAP's Q1 results (due April 19) could be affected by the demand issues that have led to soft results/guidance from Oracle, Tibco, and Fortinet, argues Nomura's Rick Sherlund, who has been bullish on the business software giant for years. Sherlund forecasts Q1 Y/Y license revenue growth of 11%, slightly below a consensus of 12%, and thinks Hana license revenue (the recent subject of some controversy) will total €50M, below a possible consensus of €75M. But with Q1 only making up 14% of SAP's expected 2013 revenue, he sees full-year guidance likely staying intact. Comment! [Tech]
Monday, April 8, 7:04 PM Only 41% of SAP software implementations in 2012 relied on Oracle (ORCL) databases, estimates Gartner - it thinks the other 59% used Microsoft's (MSFT) SQL Server. Oracle's share is down from an estimated 65% 5 years earlier, as SAP stops promoting Oracle and SQL Server improves its feature set. Now, with SAP's Business Suite having added support for the company's Hana in-memory database, Nomura predicts Business Suite/Hana implementations will surge. The firm also sees SAP releasing a cloud service for running Business Suite apps on Hana. 5 Comments [Tech]
Wednesday, April 3, 5:04 PM SAP is inflating the figures it provides for its Hana in-memory database, argues Cowen's Peter Goldmacher. If SAP is taken at face value about Hana license revenue growing at ~120%/year over the last 2 years, this means all other license sales grew at just a 2% clip, "materially below category growth rates." Goldmacher's takeaway: "SAP is allocating product revenue subjectively ... resulting in an inflated HANA growth rate." SAP denies Goldmacher's assertions. In January, the company announced Hana revenue more than doubled Y/Y in Q4 to nearly €200M, and that total software revenue rose 9% to €1.94B. Comment! [Tech]
Thursday, March 21, 11:52 AM SAP's (SAP -2.1%) board recommends a regular dividend of €0.85/share ($1.10/share) for FY12. SAP paid a regular dividend of €0.75/share and a special dividend of €0.35/share for FY11. The proposal translates into a yield of 1% and a payout ratio of 36%. Shares are trading lower today in sympathy with archrival Oracle. Comment! [Tech, On the Move, Dividends]
Wednesday, March 20, 4:44 PM Some enterprise IT names slump in response to Oracle's FQ3 miss, which included a surprising 2% Y/Y drop in new software license/cloud subscription revenue, and a 23% Y/Y drop in hardware product sales. InfiniBand hardware supplier Mellanox (MLNX) is the worst-hit, -7% AH. IBM -1%. HPQ -1%. EMC -1.2%. RHT -1.9%. VMW -1%. TIBX -1.2%. TDC -1%. Archrival SAP is unchanged for now. Comment! [Tech, On the Move]
Friday, March 15, 1:53 PM Facebook (FB) workers love Mark Zuckerberg: the founder/CEO of the world's biggest social network has received a 99% approval rating from employees on Glassdoor; that's up from 2012's 85%. SAP co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann, who have been trying to remake the software giant's culture, also come in at 99%. Other tech CEOs receiving high marks include EMC's Joe Tucci (96%), Qualcomm's (QCOM) Paul Jacobs (95%), Google's (GOOG) Larry Page (95%), and Citrix's (CTXS) Mark Templeton (95%). Tim Cook (AAPL) and Jeff Bezos (AMZN) both come in at 93%. 18 Comments [Tech]
Sunday, March 10, 5:57 AM SAP (SAP) has developed a one-stop shop scouting database for the NFL that aggregates and sorts all the data which teams use to pick players. The San Francisco 49ers already deploys the software despite it still being in development. Should the product be successful in football, SAP hopes to transfer it to other sports as it looks to gain a new and potentially large revenue stream. 3 Comments [Tech, Consumer]

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