SAP SE: Strong Double-Digit Growth in EPS and Cash Flow

WALLDORF, Germany, Oct. 25, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --

• Current Cloud Backlog of €6.6 Billion, Up 16% At Constant Currencies
• IFRS Cloud Gross Margin Up 1.8pp; Non-IFRS Cloud Gross Margin Up 0.7pp At Constant Currencies
• IFRS Operating Margin Down 2.2pp; Non-IFRS Operating Margin Up 1.3pp At Constant Currencies On Strong Prior Year Comparison
• IFRS EPS Up 26%; Non-IFRS EPS Up 31%
• Operating Cash Flow Up 54%, Free Cash Flow Up 79% Year-To-Date
• Updates 2020 Outlook and Mid-Term Ambition
• Targeting Significant Expansion of Cloud Revenue to More than €22 Billion, Share of More Predictable Revenue of Approximately 85%, Non-IFRS Cloud Gross Margin of Approximately 80% by 2025
• Targeting Double-Digit Non-IFRS Operating Profit Growth from 2023 to 2025

The share of more predictable revenue reached 74% in the third quarter of 2020 (+5 percentage points)

"COVID-19 has created an inflection point for our customers. The move to the cloud combined with a true business transformation has become a must for enterprises, to gain resiliency and position them to emerge stronger out of the crisis. Together with our customers and partners we will co-innovate and reinvent how businesses run in a digital world. SAP will accelerate growth in the cloud to more than €22 billion in 2025 and expand the share of more predictable revenue to approximately 85%."
Christian Klein, CEO

"In Q3 we continued to improve our operating margin against a strong prior year comparison amidst a challenging environment. Earnings per share and cash flow grew even more rapidly. This allows us to raise our 2020 free cash flow outlook even beyond the target communicated last November. Our expedited move to the cloud will en-sure we continue our path as a cloud growth company while we remain focused on cost efficiency. These actions and our resilient business model position us well to meet our new ambition targets as uncertainty recedes."
Luka Mucic, CFO

SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced its financial results for the third quarter and the first nine months ended September 30, 2020.

Business Update Third Quarter 2020

SAP again demonstrated its resilience in the third quarter with stable total revenue and an improvement in operating profit and margins (non-IFRS at constant currencies). In the COVID-19 crisis customers realize the strong need to transform and automate operations and adapt to new business models. SAP's expertise in running the world's most mission critical business processes combined with innovative solutions like commerce, supply chain and Qualtrics are extremely relevant for customers to increase their resiliency. Nevertheless, SAP's customers, particularly those in hard hit industries, continue to be impacted by the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns have been re-introduced in some regions, recovery is uneven and companies are facing more business uncertainty. Consequently, there is greater scrutiny of larger projects. Transactional revenue continues to be impacted, especially in SAP Concur where business travel-related revenues have yet to see a meaningful recovery.

SAP continues to serve its customers effectively with an embedded virtual sales and remote implementation strategy. In the first nine months of 2020, approximately 28,000 customers went live with SAP solutions. To protect profitability, the company retains a disciplined approach to hiring and discretionary spend while capturing natural savings e.g. from lower travel, facility-related costs and virtual events.

Since the COVID-19 crisis began, SAP has also been providing solutions to address many of the issues faced by its customers and the broader community. In the third quarter SAP continued to work with Deutsche Telekom to further develop the Corona Warn App. The application has been downloaded over 20 million times and over 18,000 positive test results have been shared, helping to interrupt the transmission chain. Further, the app now supports the European gateway service, enabling exchange of data between the apps from Germany, Italy and Ireland, while still maintaining the highest data protection standards. Other countries are planned to follow.

SAP Accelerates Transition to Cloud, Driving Customers' Business Transformation

The COVID-19 crisis is an accelerator for transformation. Customers are looking to move to the cloud at an accelerated speed for greater resiliency and agility. SAP is responding to these market demands by providing the technology and expertise to help its customers migrate their existing IT environments to the cloud and truly transform their businesses end-to-end on top of SAP's Business Technology Platform (BTP). SAP's platform will be the foundation for all SAP applications, integration, customer and partner ecosystem extensions, as well as new innovations such as Industry Cloud and Business Network.

The combination of state-of-the-art technology and deep, global business expertise across 25 industries puts SAP in a unique position to reinvent how businesses run their most mission-critical processes in the cloud as they enter the digital age to ultimately become Intelligent Enterprises.

In addition, SAP plans to accelerate the modernization of its cloud delivery, arriving at a harmonized delivery infrastructure earlier than planned. As a result, SAP will significantly increase the efficiency and resiliency of its cloud delivery operations.

Further, SAP will increase R&D investments to accelerate its customers' transformation in the cloud and to establish a leading position in new categories like Industry Cloud.

The impact of these new strategy initiatives, together with macroeconomic factors, are reflected in the Company's updated Mid-Term Ambition.

Financial Performance Third Quarter 2020¹

In the third quarter, current cloud backlog was up 10% year over year to €6.60 billion (up 16% at constant currencies) amid continued COVID-19 effects on SAP's cloud business. Cloud revenue grew 11% year over year to €1.98 billion (IFRS), up 10% to €1.98 billion (non-IFRS) and up 14% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Continued lower transactional revenues, particularly in Concur, negatively impacted cloud growth by 6 percentage points. Cloud revenue from SAP's SaaS/PaaS offerings, that do not belong to Intelligent Spend, and its IaaS offering grew by 26% and 24% (non-IFRS at constant currencies), respectively. Software licenses revenue was down 23% year over year to €0.71 billion (IFRS and non-IFRS) and down 19% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Cloud and software revenue was down 2% year over year to €5.54 billion (IFRS and non-IFRS) and up 2% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Total revenue was down 4% year over year to €6.54 billion (IFRS and non-IFRS) and flat (non-IFRS at constant currencies).

The share of more predictable revenue grew strongly by approximately 5 percentage points year over year to approximately 74% in the third quarter.

In the third quarter, IFRS operating profit and operating margin decreased primarily due to higher share-based compensation expenses compared to the prior year period. Operating profit decreased by 12% year over year to €1.47 billion (IFRS) and was down 1% to €2.07 billion (non-IFRS) and up 4% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Operating margin decreased by 2.2 percentage points year over year to 22.5% (IFRS) and increased 1.0 percentage points year over year to 31.7% (non-IFRS) and increased 1.3 percentage points to 31.9% (non-IFRS at constant currencies) on a strong prior year comparison.

EPS was up 26% year over year to €1.32 (IFRS) and up 31% year over year to €1.70 (non-IFRS) reflecting a strong contribution from Sapphire Ventures.

Operating cash flow for the first nine months was €5.09 billion, up 54% year-over-year. Operating cash flow benefited from lower restructuring related payments and lower income tax payments. Free cash flow for the first nine months was €4.17 billion, up 79% year over year. Free cash flow additionally benefited from lower capital expenditure compared to the previous year. At the end of the third quarter, net debt was -€6.89 billion.

¹ Q3 2020 results were also impacted by other effects. For details, please refer to the disclosures on page 33 of this document.

Segment Performance Third Quarter 2020

SAP's four reportable segments "Applications, Technology & Support", "Concur", "Qualtrics" and "Services" showed the following performance: 

Applications, Technology & Support (AT&S)

In the third quarter, segment revenue in AT&S was down 2% to €5.17 billion year over year (up 2% at constant currencies). Solutions which contributed to this growth are listed below.

SAP S/4HANA

SAP S/4HANA is an intelligent, integrated ERP system that runs on SAP's real time in-memory platform, SAP HANA. It addresses industry-specific requirements with proven best practices for 25 verticals and enables new business models as marketplaces evolve. It revolutionizes business processes with intelligent automation, supported by artificial intelligence and robotic process automation. It helps users make better decisions faster with embedded analytics, a conversational interface, and digital assistants. SAP is expanding the options for on-premise customers to take their mission critical processes to the cloud at their preferred pace.

SAP was recently named as a Leader in Forrester Wave for Manufacturing ERP.

Over 500 SAP S/4HANA customers were added in the quarter, taking total adoption to more than 15,100 customers, up 20% year over year, of which more than 8,100 are live. In the third quarter, more than 45% of the additional SAP S/4HANA customers were net new.

In the third quarter, world class organizations such as Lenovo, Æon, Shanghai Land (Group) Co, and Naturgy chose SAP S/4HANA. Toyota Peru went live on SAP S/4HANA. A fast-growing number of companies of all sizes such as Rabobank, Iugu and Basic-Fit chose SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Sharks Sports & Entertainment, and Korea Gas Corporation are now live on SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Schwarz Produktion, the manufacturing organization within Schwarz Group (Lidl, Kaufland), has chosen SAP Digital Supply Chain solutions. As one of many on a journey to the industry cloud, Schwarz Produktion is aiming for highly automated and continuous processes.

Human Experience Management (HXM)

The SAP SuccessFactors Human Experience Management (HXM) Suite provides solutions for core HR and payroll, talent management, employee experience management and people analytics. Built as a highly scalable platform it meets complex cross border requirements, delivering tax regulation and HR policy updates in 99 specific countries, 42 languages and payroll in 46 countries. 

HXM is designed around what employees need, how they work, and what motivates them. It empowers employees and enables HR leaders to accelerate business growth. 

SAP SuccessFactors HXM solutions leverage Qualtrics solutions allowing customers to capture insights from employees and link them with operational data to see what is happening, understand why and take action. More than 775 customers have selected these solutions. Rappi, Kmart Australia, Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta, Bahrain Airport Services, and Garney Holding Company were some of many competitive wins. 

SAP Customer Experience

SAP Customer Experience (CX) combines leading solutions for commerce, service, marketing, sales, and customer data, enabling companies to manage and deliver personalized customer experiences across touchpoints and channels based on a complete view of the customer. As part of the Intelligent Enterprise, SAP CX suite integrates with SAP S/4HANA from demand signals to fulfillment in one end-to-end process. 

SAP CX solutions also use the benefits of Qualtrics Customer Experience Management to understand the wants and needs of customers. This enables organizations to combine customer feedback and operational data to listen, understand and take action in the moment to improve the customer experience. 

In the third quarter, SAP's e-commerce solution showed a strong performance, more than doubling new cloud order in-take year over year.

Swisscom AG, Barilla, Renault Brazil, Saudi Ports Authority, and Jiangsu Xingda Steel Tyre Cord Co are some examples of companies who chose SAP Customer Experience solutions, with Konica Minolta Business Solutions and Energizer Brands going live.

SAP Business Technology Platform

SAP Business Technology Platform helps customers to turn their data into business value. It encompasses database and data management, analytics, application development and integration, and intelligent technologies. The SAP Business Technology Platform represents a combination of SAP's leading technologies such as SAP HANA, SAP Cloud Platform, SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation to build, integrate and extend applications. It supports cloud, on-premise and hybrid customer landscapes. Additionally, the SAP Business Technology Platform offers seamless interoperability with hyperscalers' technologies to deliver a high level of scalability and flexibility.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Alpina Productos Alimenticios S.A, Uniper, and the City of Munich selected SAP Business Technology Platform and SAP Analytics Cloud solution in the third quarter.

SAP was recently named as a leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for both Multiexperience Development Platforms and Enterprise Integration Platform-as-a-Service.

Ariba & Fieldglass

SAP Ariba provides collaborative commerce capabilities from sourcing and orders through invoice and payment along with expertise to help customers optimize their spend. It drives simple, intelligent exchanges between millions of buyers and suppliers across both direct and indirect expense categories. The SAP Ariba platform is embedding Qualtrics to enhance experience and to create a continuous feedback loop for buyers and suppliers on the network.

SAP Ariba and SAP Fieldglass, together with Concur, represent SAP's intelligent spend platform, the largest commerce platform in the world with over $4.1 trillion in global commerce annually transacted in more than 180 countries. 

Petrobras, Siemens Gamesa, Britvic Soft Drinks Ltd, VELUX Group, and Rumo Logistica chose SAP Ariba solutions in the third quarter.

SAP Fieldglass is the leader in external workforce management and services procurement. It helps organizations find, engage, and manage all types of flexible resources including contingent workers, consultants and freelancers. SAP Fieldglass added more than 975,000 new external workers during the third quarter. Algar Telecom chose SAP Fieldglass solutions in the third quarter.

Concur

In the third quarter, Concur segment revenue was down 14% to €357 million year over year (down 10% at constant currencies) due to lower pay-as-you-go transactional revenue as a result of significantly reduced business travel related to the COVID-19 crisis.

Concur provides integrated travel, expense, and invoice management solutions that simplify and automate these everyday processes. The SAP Concur mobile app guides employees through every trip, charges are effortlessly populated into expense reports, and invoice approvals are automated. By integrating near real-time data and using AI to audit 100% of transactions, the SAP Concur spend management solution provides better visibility to help efficiently control employee-driven spend.

Uber Technologies, Bridgestone, Sysmex Europe and Keio University were among the organizations who chose SAP Concur solutions in the third quarter.

Qualtrics

In the third quarter, Qualtrics segment revenue was up 22% to €169 million year over year (up 28% at constant currencies).

With Qualtrics, SAP combines market leadership in Experience Management (XM) with end-to-end operational power in 25 industries to help organizations manage and improve the four core experiences of business: customer, employee, product, and brand. 

The Qualtrics XM Platform™ is trusted by over 12,000 customers to listen, understand, and take action on experience data (X-data™) by combining X-data with the operational data (O-data™) systems of the enterprise.

In the third quarter, Transamerica Life Insurance Company, Standard Chartered Bank, Lululemon Athletica, Yamaha Motor Corporation, Telefónica Mexico and many others selected Qualtrics to move beyond systems of record to new systems of action and achieve breakthrough results.

Services

In the third quarter, Services segment revenue was down 16% to €753 million year over year (down 13% at constant currencies). While the vast majority of consulting projects continue to be efficiently delivered remotely and SAP's premium services remain in high demand, in particular SAP's training business was also impacted due to delays in re-opening of global training centers.

SAP deploys a global team of service professionals with in-depth expertise in SAP solutions and innovation to help companies create valuable outcomes and experience to succeed in becoming Intelligent Enterprises.

The Services organization improves time to value for our customers' digital transformation through:

• Outcome-focused services and proactive support offerings designed to guide customers transformation from end to end
• Intelligent tools that automate delivery and support
• Embedded services with prepackaged reference solutions based on leading industry practices and processes
• Value-added partnerships with leading system integrators that facilitate success in any environment

Segment Results at a Glance

Segment Performance Third Quarter 2020

Regional Revenue Performance

SAP had a resilient performance in the EMEA region with cloud and software revenue increasing 2% (IFRS) and 3% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Cloud revenue increased 22% (IFRS) and 24% (non-IFRS at constant currencies) with Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland being highlights. Russia, Spain and Switzerland had strong quarters in software licenses revenue.

The Company had a solid performance in the Americas region. Cloud and software revenue decreased 5% (IFRS) and was flat (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Cloud revenue increased 4% (IFRS) and 9% (non-IFRS at constant currencies) with Brazil, Canada and Mexico being highlights. In addition, Canada had a solid quarter, while Brazil and Mexico had strong quarters in software licenses revenue.

In the APJ region, SAP had a solid performance. Cloud and software revenue was down 1% (IFRS) and up 4% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Cloud revenue increased 14% (IFRS) and 19% (non-IFRS at constant currencies) with Japan, Singapore and South Korea being highlights. Japan had a solid quarter, while Australia and India had strong quarters in software licenses revenue.

Financial Results at a Glance

Third Quarter 2020

Nine months ended September 2020

Updated Business Outlook 2020

SAP's previous full year 2020 outlook issued on April 8th, 2020 reflected its best estimates concerning the timing and pace of recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. This outlook assumed economies would reopen and population lockdowns would ease, leading to a gradually improving demand environment in the third and fourth quarters.

While SAP continues to see robust interest in its solutions to drive digital transformation as customers look to emerge from the crisis with more resilience and agility, lockdowns have been recently re-introduced in some regions and demand recovery has been more muted than expected. Further and for the same reasons, SAP no longer anticipates a meaningful recovery in SAP Concur business travel-related revenues for the remainder of the year 2020.

SAP is therefore updating its full year 2020 outlook and now expects:

• €8.0 – 8.2 billion non-IFRS cloud revenue at constant currencies (previously €8.3 – 8.7 billion)
• €23.1 – 23.6 billion non-IFRS cloud and software revenue at constant currencies (previously €23.4 – 24.0 billion)
• €27.2 – 27.8 billion non-IFRS total revenue at constant currencies (previously €27.8 – 28.5 billion)
• €8.1 – 8.5 billion non-IFRS operating profit at constant currencies (previously €8.1 – 8.7 billion)

SAP continues to expect its share of more predictable revenue to be approximately 72%.

The Company has raised its cash flow expectations for 2020 on the back of a strong year-to-date cash flow performance and now expects an operating cash flow of approximately €6.0 billion (previously above €5.0 billion) and a free cash flow above €4.5 billion (previously approximately €4.0 billion).

While SAP's full year 2020 business outlook is at constant currencies, actual currency reported figures are expected to be impacted by currency exchange rate fluctuations as the Company progresses through the year. See the table below for the Q4 and FY 2020 expected currency impacts.

In addition to the financial goals, SAP also focuses on three non-financial targets for 2020: customer loyalty, employee engagement, and carbon emissions. As a result of the COVID-19 crisis, SAP has experienced a significant decrease in its carbon emissions due to a reduction in CO₂-intensive business activities. As a consequence, SAP now targets carbon emissions of 150 kt (previously 238 kt). The 2020 targets for customer loyalty and employee engagement remain unchanged.

Updated Mid-Term Ambition

SAP's previous mid-term ambition was issued on April 24^th, 2019, before the COVID-19 crisis. The company is now updating its mid-term ambition to reflect the following factors:

• The most recent currency exchange rates (October 2020) which translates to a negative 3 to 4 percent effect on revenue and operating profit since April 2019.
• The COVID-19 pandemic which is expected to impact the demand environment, particularly in hard hit industries, through at least the first half of 2021 pushing out the achievement of key metrics such as non-IFRS cloud revenue, total revenue, and operating profit, by 1 to 2 years.
• The acceleration of customers' move to the cloud and subsequent business transformations which drive the new ambition's cloud revenue target of more than €22 billion by 2025. SAP expects this to negatively impact the 2023 operating margin by approximately 4 to 5 percentage points relative to the previous mid-term ambition.
• The accelerated harmonization of SAP cloud delivery which is expected to require an incremental investment in 2021 and 2022 and to drive the non-IFRS cloud gross margin to approximately 80% by 2025.

As a consequence of SAP's accelerated cloud transition, the Company expects software licenses revenue to continue to trend lower from 2020 levels.

The combined impact of the above factors and the mechanics of the associated business model switch are expected to lead to muted non-IFRS total revenue growth as well as flat or slightly lower non-IFRS operating profit over the next two years, followed by accelerated non-IFRS total revenue and double-digit non-IFRS operating profit growth from 2023 onwards.

By 2025, this trajectory is expected to take SAP to:

• More than €22 billion non-IFRS cloud revenue
• More than €36 billion non-IFRS total revenue
• More than €11.5 billion non-IFRS operating profit
• A significant expansion of the Company's more predictable revenue share to approximately 85%

Extended Earnings Conference Call

SAP senior management will host an extended earnings conference call including slide presentations to discuss the key drivers behind the updated mid term ambition on Monday, October 26^th, from 2:00 – 3:30 PM (CET) / 1:00 – 2:30 PM (GMT) / 9:00 – 10:30 AM (EDT) / 6:00 – 7:30 AM (PDT).

This extended earnings conference call will be webcast live on SAP's website at www.sap.com/investor and will be held in lieu of a virtual capital markets day in the fourth quarter. The presentation slides will be published prior to the earnings call on SAP's website at www.sap.com/investor as well.

The full Q3 2020 Quarterly Statement can be downloaded from http://www.sap.com/investors/sap-2020-q3-statement.

Additional Information

This Quarterly Statement and all information therein is unaudited.

The 2019 comparative numbers for first nine months only include Qualtrics revenues and profits from acquisition date of January 23rd.

Definition of key growth metrics

Current cloud backlog (CCB) is the contractually committed cloud revenue we expect to recognize over the upcoming 12 months as of a specific key date. Thus, it is a subcomponent of our overall remaining performance obligations following IFRS 15.120. For CCB, we take into consideration committed deals only. CCB can be regarded as a lower boundary for cloud revenue to be recognized over the next 12 months, as it excludes utilization-based models without pre-commitments and committed deals, both new and renewal, closed after the key date. For our committed cloud business, we believe the expansion of CCB over a period is a valuable indicator of go-to market success, as it reflects both new contracts closed as well as existing contracts renewed.

Share of more predictable revenue is the total of non-IFRS cloud revenue and non-IFRS software support revenue as a percentage of total revenue.

Global commerce is the total commerce volume transacted on the SAP Ariba, SAP Concur and SAP Fieldglass Networks in the trailing 12 months. SAP Ariba commerce includes procurement and sourcing spend.

For explanations on other key growth metrics please refer the performance management section of SAP's Integrated Report 2019, which can be found at www.sapintegratedreport.com.

About SAP

SAP's strategy is to help every business run as an intelligent enterprise. As a market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 77% of the world's transaction revenue touches an SAP® system. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers' businesses into intelligent enterprises. SAP helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want – without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables business and public customers across 25 industries globally to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, SAP helps the world run better and improve people's lives. For more information, visit www.sap.com. 

For customers interested in learning more about SAP products:
Global Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24
United States Only: +1 (800) 872-1SAP (+1-800-872-1727)

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