SAP’s balance sheet check
The price has not been off the mark for years and has been down about 30 percent since the beginning of the year.
Düsseldorf For the anniversary, SAP wants to spread a festive atmosphere among the shareholders: the software manufacturer is paying a special dividend of 50 cents on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. In total, it should be 2.45 euros per share. This brings the payout ratio to a whopping 54 percent – up from 41 percent in 2020.
Despite the rain of money, however, the shareholders are not in a mood to celebrate. At the Annual General Meeting on May 18, the Executive Board and Supervisory Board will have to listen to criticism. “Things are no longer going smoothly at SAP,” says Markus Golinski, fund manager at Union Investment.
First of all, it is the high costs that are imposed on shareholders. The transformation of the software company, which wants to offer its services more and more via the cloud, is expensive. The demand for storage space, computing power and software from the data cloud is high, but SAP has to invest tens of millions in infrastructure to benefit from it. In short: SAP has a cost problem.
