SAP Profits From HANA Appliance, Cloud, And Plain Old Software

January 21, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

If Oracle thought it had killed archrival SAP, it looks like the German application software giant was only sleeping.

In the December quarter, SAP booked €1.94 billion in software license fees, up 9 percent, and within this segment, the company’s cloud software business, driven by acquisitions and organic growth, was up a stunning 2,000 per cent to €126 million. Software and related services revenues accounted for €4.23 billion, up 14 percent year-on-year. Total sales came to €5.02 billion, up 12 percent. Operating profits fell by 5 percent to €1.59 billion.

On a full-year basis, SAP’s revenues came in at €16.22 billion, up 14 percent, but operating profits fell 17 percent to €4.06 billion. Within its segments, software license revenues, including cloudy software sales, were €4.66 billion, up 13 percent, and within this, those cloud software sales rose 1,400 percent to €270 million. Total software revenues, including service and support for the software, came to €13.16 billion, up 16 percent, and the remaining dough was for professional and other consulting services that SAP provides.

These are all preliminary results, subject to change. Revenues beat SAP’s guidance to Wall Street, and sales of the HANA in-memory appliance came in at €390 million, exceeding the company’s expectations. Annual cloud-based software revenues are now at an €850 million run rate, and mobile software (which came to SAP from its Sybase acquisition) are hitting the sticks at €222 million. This was also, incidentally, the first time that SAP broke €5 billion in a quarter.