SAP Investors Look for Growth

By Paul Shread Feedback SAP may lead the business intelligence market, but its growth rate has stalled.

SAP (NYSE: SAP) has a commanding lead in the business intelligence market, but the German software giant has had its struggles of late. Investors will get their latest look at how the company is doing when it reports its quarterly results tomorrow morning.

SAP enjoys a wide lead over rivals Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL), SAS and IBM (NYSE: IBM) in the market for business intelligence, analytics and performance management, according to Gartner.

But the competition has gotten tougher. Its aggressive and acquisitive rival Oracle routinely trumpets market share gains over SAP in its earnings announcements, while business analytics was one of IBM's strongest sources of growth in its recent earnings report.

SAP, meanwhile, has endured earnings disappointments and a management shakeupearlier this year.

Analysts are expecting flat sales from SAP for the next couple of quarters, but brighter times are forecast for next year, with 8.2 percent revenue growth predicted for 2011, according to Thomson Reuters.

SAP is expected to report quarterly sales of $3.5 billion tomorrow and earnings of 59 cents a share.

Analysts will likely be watching the company's earnings report and conference call for any effect from the European debt crisis, as well as the company's plans for the fast-growing Saas market and its acquisition of Sybase.

SAP Investors Look for Growth

Related Articles