Jacob & Thread: Earnings report
cbs.marketwatch.com
SAP's 1st quarter profits flat
shares surge as results beat expectations
By Suzanne Miller, CBS MarketWatch
Last Update: 5:57 AM ET Apr 21, 1999
WALLDORF, Germany (CBS.MW) -- SAP AG, Europe's biggest
software company, said Wednesday that its first-quarter net income was
unchanged from last year's at $91 million.
It also said pretax profit for the period fell 1 percent to $183 million,
better than many analysts had feared after the business software company
warned last month that its three-month profits would be considerably
below the year-ago level because of a short-fall in sales. At the time,
SAP's (SAP: news, msgs) shares were punished by 7 percent. Sales for
the period grew 22 percent to 1.076 billion euros.
Investors clearly brightened on the news Wednesday; the shares rose 9
percent. That gave the Frankfurt Xetra DAX a helping hand, as SAP
comprises 4.3 percent of the index. SAP's shares have fallen 29 percent
since the start of the year, making them the single worst performer on the
DAX.
"The first quarter results are better than expected, taking into account the
effects of adopting U.S. GAAP, careful management of expenditures and
headcount increases, as well as several major contracts in Europe signed
during the last week of the quarter," said Henning Kagermann, SAP
co-chairman and chief executive.
He also said the company still expects sales for fiscal 1999 to 20 to 25
percent. |
