According to the international financial reporting standards (IFRS), SAP’s revenue in Q4 2012 grew by 12%, which was helped by strong growth in the market for its cloud applications, its HANA in-memory database and mobile applications.
Revenue in the fourth quarter was €5 billion, up 12% from the same quarter a year earlier, said SAP. Software and software-related service revenue for the quarter was €4.2 billion, up 14% from a year earlier.
On Wednesday, the business software vendor also forecast non-IFRS software and software-related service revenue growth of 11% to 13% at constant currencies this year, with software and cloud subscriptions revenue to increase in a range of 14% to 20%.
While revenue from software grew 9% to €1.9 billion in the quarter, cloud subscriptions and support revenue grew by a whopping 2,000% to €126 million from €6 million a year earlier. Revenue from HANA was nearly €200 million in software revenue in the fourth quarter, totalling almost €400 million for the full year, while the mobile business contributed more than €220 million to software revenue, SAP said.
SAP’s operating profit was, however, down by 5% in the fourth quarter to €1.6 billion because of expenses on share-based compensation and acquisition-related charges, and net profit dropped by 8% 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 €16 billion, up by 14% from the previous year. Software and cloud subscription revenue of close to €5 billion was up 19%, while support revenue was €8 billion, an increase of 14%. Operating profit was down 17% to €4 billion, also impacted by the costs of acquisitions and share-based compensation. Net profit was down 18% 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% at constant currencies. The full-year 2013 non-IFRS cloud subscription and support revenue contributing to this growth is expected to be around €750 million at constant currencies, it said. SAP also expects full-year non-IFRS operating profit in 2013 of up to €5.95 billion at constant currencies, from €5.21 billion in 2012.
