The current rating of the stock analysts on the SAP share

At last year's Annual General Meeting, SAP CEO Bill McDermott promised shareholders an SAP market value of around 300 billion euros in three to five years. As things stand, that would be a threefold increase and even with a share price of 122 euros, this target has not yet been reached.

In an interview with Manager Magazin in January of this year, Bill McDermott explained that his predicted share performance was simple mathematics. Which is somewhat reminiscent of the SAP saying "run simple".

In any case, he wants to triple cloud sales and double total sales and profits. McDermott is aiming for SAP sales of 100 billion euros by 2032, he said in 2012.

At the moment, however, it does not look like this "simple" success story: McDermott is trying to improve its contribution margin by a tenth of a percent with redundancies and layoffs. Around 4500 employees worldwide are to be made redundant. Financial experts assume that this will reduce the margin by a maximum of
0.1 percentage points.

With the layoffs now taking place, SAP is losing many valuable employees with unique Hana and Abap knowledge. In California, an entire Hana development department with 250 experts was laid off. A good overview of the quality and quantity of the current wave of layoffs can be found at thelayoff.com/sap-ag.

SAP is dismissing its experts at an inopportune time, as many technical platform problems have not yet been solved. The Hana database is a fascinating IT jewel, but is still far from being robust and stable enough for operational ERP operations. SuccessFactors, the cloud HR solution acquired many years ago, is still not seamlessly integrated into the SAP core system.

The technical side of the SAP world is only understood in its entirety by very few experts. It is therefore not surprising that many financial analysts see the share price at well over 100 euros despite the numerous internal problems at SAP. The table on this page shows the assessments of the individual financial houses. The range extends from 98 euros (Oddo BHF and UBS) to 122 euros (Berenberg). The reasons given by some analysts are interesting. They see a strength of the SAP system in the core business with software licenses. Indeed, by adapting its own license model, SAP can quickly and significantly increase sales, see "indirect" use: by simply changing the model, new license payments can become due "overnight" for existing customers.

The figures from the annual report and the current share price appear satisfactory to successful. "In view of our strong growth in 2018, our shareholders should participate in this success. That is why we are proposing a dividend increase of 7 percent," said Luka Mucic, Chief Financial Officer of SAP. "We are pleased that our shareholders support our course of sustainable and profitable growth and our goal to improve the way the global economy operates and people's lives." SAP's Supervisory Board, in consultation with the Executive Board, has decided to propose a dividend of €1.50 per share to shareholders for the 2018 financial year. The proposed dividend represents an increase of €0.10 compared to the previous year's dividend of €1.40. What few people know: SAP's internal comparative figures to its competitors paint a rather sad to worrying picture.

What do the equity analysts at Banks and research houses on the share?

The current ratings and price targets of equity analysts for SAP shares: