By Mauro Orru
SAP SE said Thursday that revenue increased in the fourth quarter as its cloud business continued to grow, confirming preliminary figures from earlier this month.
Reporting on a non-IFRS basis, the German software company said total revenue climbed to 7.98 billion euros ($8.97 billion) from EUR7.54 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020, with cloud revenue up to EUR2.61 billion from EUR2.04 billion but software-licenses revenue down to EUR1.46 billion from EUR1.70 billion.
SAP is pivoting away from software-license sales--once its biggest revenue stream--to subscription-based cloud services, banking on a more profitable and predictable model based on recurring revenue.
"The magnitude of our cloud strength is evident. More and more companies are choosing SAP to help them transform their businesses, build resilient supply chains and become sustainable enterprises as they move to the cloud," SAP Chief Executive Christian Klein said.
Operating profit slipped to EUR2.47 billion from EUR2.77 billion, with operating margin down to 30.9% from 36.8%.
Net profit rose to EUR2.19 billion from EUR2 billion.
SAP backed the 2022 targets it set earlier this month. The company expects non-IFRS operating profit at constant currencies between EUR7.8 billion and EUR8.25 billion, and non-IFRS cloud revenue at constant currencies between EUR11.55 billion and EUR11.85 billion.
Write to Mauro Orru at mauro.orru@wsj.com; @MauroOrru94
