SAP share: up 12.5 percent

On the same day, it was also announced that the US hedge fund Elliott of founder Paul Singer had invested 1.2 billion euros in SAP. The sum corresponded to around one percent of the stock market value at the time and the SAP share price jumped by 12.5 percent.

On the evening of April 24, the share price was just under 115 euros. Shortly before this, analysts at Goldman Sachs had put the target price at 121 euros, Credit Suisse at 120, Deutsche Bank at 108 and UBS from Switzerland at 105.

The SAP balance sheet was exactly as expected: A substantial operating loss due to the upcoming reorganization and staff reductions; strong revenue growth in the cloud business because the Callidus and Qualtrics acquisitions are reflected in the balance sheet - but only there!

Anyone who has closely followed Qualtrics' activities in Germany in recent months has seen an agile company that has avoided any common ground with SAP like the devil avoids holy water. But that's another story.

We can now speculate about the share price: Everyone is happy because what was expected happened. Equity professionals fear nothing more than unforeseeable complications. Or perhaps everyone wants to latch on to the potential success of the US hedge fund Elliott - getting rich in the slipstream?

The fact is, as so often before, that CFO Luka Mucic has once again done an excellent job and reached deep into his bag of tricks. At the annual results press conference, he mentioned restructuring measures that will also sustainably improve CapEx.

For example, it was announced that Intel servers will be replaced by IBM Power servers for long-term IT, Hana and cloud investments - but that's another story. More on this in the upcoming E-3 cover story June 2019.

SAP boss McDermott has lied again, as he did in the FAZ interview: He still claims that former Chief Technology Officer Bernd Leukert left the Group voluntarily. And at the annual press conference, he said that after ten years as SAP CEO, he now has the best Executive Board imaginable!

Now that Chief Cloud Business Officer Rob Enslin has left for Google and Chief Service Officer Michael Kleinemeier is without a potential successor. The SAP share price in no way reflects SAP's complex problems.

The balance sheet figures will remain good to excellent in the medium term: It takes a long time for a supertanker like SAP to come to a standstill. There is still plenty of potential from the past that can be utilized - and Bill McDermott will remain on board until then.