Although license revenue is expected to be up 8% on the previous year to 621m euros ($787m), consensus analyst expectation was for 675m euros ($855m), a 17% improvement. Total revenue is likely to be up 9% to 2.2bn euros ($2.8bn), compared to an expectation of 2.29bn euros ($2.0bn).
The business applications company did not release anticipated net income figures but said pro forma income is likely to be 558m euros ($707m), which would represent a 13% improvement over the previous year.
The US was still the best-performing region, with revenue up by 16%, EMEA grew by only 3%, and within that the UK and Nordic countries failed to reach their targets. Asia Pac was flat.
CEO Henning Kagermann said there was no change in buyer’s behavior and attributed the miss to not being able to book some complex orders that have either closed or are about to close.
The company remains confident about the year and said its pipeline is healthy. It did not change its outlook for the year of license revenue growth in the region of 15% to 17%.
Plenty of vendors are warning of missed targets for the second quarter so SAP is not unusual in that sense, but over the last couple of years it has appeared to be immune to the worst of the market movements, mostly reporting steadily improving results while others have struggled.
This dip is unlikely to be anything significant but will be galling to SAP because it comes in the wake of impressive Oracle Corp results that suggest that its customers and prospects are building faith in its future plans.
