SAP Q4 revenue boosted by cloud, HANA, mobile
Software and software-related service revenue will grow by 11 to 13 percent this year
By John Ribeiro | IDG News Service | Published 09:49, 23 January 13
SAP's revenue in the fourth quarter grew by 12 percent, helped by strong growth in the market for its cloud applications, its HANA in-memory database and mobile applications.
Revenue in the fourth quarter ended 31 December was £4.2 billion, up 12 percent from the same quarter a year earlier, according to IFRS (international financial reporting standards). Software and software-related service revenue for the quarter was £3.5 billion, up 14 percent from a year earlier.
The business software vendor also forecast Wednesday non-IFRS software and software-related service revenue growth of 11 to 13 percent at constant currencies this year, with software and cloud subscriptions revenue to increase in a range of 14 to 20 percent.
While revenue from software grew 9 percent to £1.6 billion in the quarter, cloud subscriptions and support revenue grew 2,000 percent to £106 million from £45.2 million a year earlier. Revenue from HANA was nearly £168 million in software revenue in the fourth quarter, totaling almost £336 million for the full year, while the mobile business contributed more than £185 million to software revenue, SAP said.
SAP's operating profit was however down by 5 percent in the fourth quarter because of expenses on share-based compensation and acquisition-related charges, and net profit dropped by 8 percent in the quarter from a year earlier. The company acquired cloud-based human capital management tools company SuccessFactors in February, and cloud-based e-commerce vendor Ariba in October.
For the full year, total revenue was £13.4 billion, up by 14 percent from the previous year. Software and cloud subscription revenue was up 19 percent, while support revenue increased of 14 percent. Operating profit was down 17 percent to £3.3 billion, also impacted by costs of acquisitions and share-based compensation. Net profit was down 18 percent to ¬2.8 billion. The number of employees has gone up by 8,700 FTE (full-time equivalents) in the year, of which more than 4,800 came from acquisitions.
The company has said that its profits were also lower in 2012 because of a large reduction in the provision for the TomorrowNow litigation with Oracle in the previous year.
SAP expects full-year 2013 non-IFRS software and cloud subscriptions revenue to increase in the range of 14 to 20 percent at constant currencies.
