SAP finished the year on solid ground. On Thursday, the software giant reported that its fourth-quarter sales hit 9.7 billion euros, matching what experts predicted. Even with the global economy cooling off, big businesses are still spending heavily on SAP’s cloud services and software.
The company has spent a lot of time and money lately carrying out a plan to reorganize its business and move its older customers over to modern cloud systems. This effort is paying off with major wins from huge names like Rolls-Royce and Lockheed Martin.
Cloud sales were the real highlight of the report. In the final three months of the year, that side of the business brought in 5.6 billion euros. Looking at the full year, cloud revenue jumped a massive 26%. CEO Christian Klein pointed to artificial intelligence as a major engine for this growth. He noted that two-thirds of the cloud orders the company signed during the fourth quarter included SAP’s new AI tools. Because business is going so well, SAP is planning to reward its shareholders. The company announced a massive new plan to buy back 10 billion euros of its own stock over the next two years.
Looking ahead to 2026, the company doesn’t see things slowing down much. SAP expects its cloud revenue to grow by another 23% to 25%. It also predicts that its total profit will climb as much as 18% as more companies ditch their old databases for cloud-based setups. While the company admits the growth in its “backlog”—the list of orders it still needs to fill—might slow down slightly next year, it believes total sales will pick up speed through 2027. Overall, SAP is proving that even in a shaky economy, the rush toward AI and the cloud is keeping the software industry healthy and profitable.
