|
SAP profit up 16%
|
 |
January 23, 2001: 6:25 a.m. ET
SAP to miss sales target, but sees profit rise to $343.9M
|
LONDON (CNNfn) - SAP AG, the world's biggest business software publisher, said Tuesday it would miss its 2001 sales target by three months, but reported profits rose in the last quarter.
The company revealed fourth-quarter profit rose16 percent to 366 million euros ($343.9 million) from  316 million in the year earlier period. Earnings per share climbed 15 percent to 1.16 in the three months to Dec. 31.
The Walldorf, Germany-based company, which has set itself a three-year target of doubling 1998 revenue to nearly 9 billion by 2001, was widely expected to revise targets as the U.S. economy slows.
 "SAP expects revenue growth through the first-half to slightly exceed the rate it achieved in its 2000 fiscal year," the company said in a statement.
"The group's three-year target of doubling 1998 revenues will take one quarter longer to achieve than originally thought," SAP added.
The company pre-released better-than-expected fourth quarter sales
and operating profit figures on Jan. 8, to stop investors dumping its stock after rival German e-commerce software specialist Intershop AG (AISH) slashed sales and earnings forecasts at the start of the year.
Intershop blamed a slowdown in U.S. information technology spending at the end of 2000 for its profit warning.
Shares in SAP rose more than 50 percent since Jan. 8 after a slew of brokers upgraded their forecasts. SAP (FSAP) fell 4.4 percent at 180.20 in early trade in Frankfurt on Tuesday.
The company also announced plans to buy back 1.5 percent of its preference shares by the end of 2001.
"SAP have told us good figures already this year... but it has to fight against a difficult market," Eckhard Frahm, a trader at Merck Finck & Co in Munich told Reuters.
SAP said sales rose 31 percent to 2.16 billion in the fourth quarter, and full-year sales of its popular mySAP.com, which links web software to traditional database and management tools, totaled 1.3 billion, equivalent to 53 percent of total software sales. 
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
