SAP's revenue in the fourth quarter grew by 12 percent, helped by strong growth in the market for its cloud applications, its HANA in-memory database and mobile applications.
Revenue in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31 was ¬5 billion (US$6.6 billion at the exchange rate on the last day of the quarter), up 12 percent from the same quarter a year earlier, according to IFRS (international financial reporting standards). Software and software-related service revenue for the quarter was ¬4.2 billion, up 14 percent from a year earlier.
The business software vendor also forecast Wednesday non-IFRS software and software-related service revenue growth of 11 to 13 percent at constant currencies this year, with software and cloud subscriptions revenue to increase in a range of 14 to 20 percent.
While revenue from software grew 9 percent to ¬1.9 billion in the quarter, cloud subscriptions and support revenue grew by a whopping 2,000 percent to ¬126 million from ¬6 million a year earlier. Revenue from HANA was nearly ¬200 million in software revenue in the fourth quarter, totaling 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 percent 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 percent 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 percent from the previous year. Software and cloud subscription revenue of close to ¬5 billion was up 19 percent, while support revenue was ¬8 billion, an increase of 14 percent. Operating profit was down 17 percent to ¬4 billion, also impacted by costs of acquisitions and share-based compensation. Net profit was down 18 percent 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 percent 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.
John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com