The Zhitong Finance App learned that SAP SE (SAP.US) announced the first quarter results. According to the data, the company's Q1 revenue was 8.04 billion euros, up 8% year over year; non-GAAP earnings per share were 0.81 euros.

SAP's first-quarter cloud revenue was in line with analysts' expectations, and a surge in demand for artificial intelligence (AI) drove the German software company's growth.

According to the data, based on a fixed exchange rate, SAP's adjusted cloud revenue for the first quarter increased 25% over the same period last year to 3.9 billion euros (4.2 billion US dollars). In contrast, analysts' average forecast was 3.9 billion euros.

Europe's largest software company has been looking to move customers from its traditional on-premise software to the cloud and provide commercial artificial intelligence services in the cloud to facilitate transactions. This year, SAP announced discounts of up to 50% to existing customers to accelerate the shift to a subscription model, thereby increasing the average spend per customer.

SAP CEO Christian Klein said in a statement: “We are off to a good start to 2024, and we are confident that we will achieve our goals for this year.” “Looking ahead, we have strong growth drivers — commercial artificial intelligence, cross-selling our product portfolio across clouds, and winning new customers, particularly in the mid-tier market.”

The company has joined the trend across the industry to integrate artificial intelligence tools into almost every product. As part of this move, SAP has invested in startups Aleph Alpha GmbH, Anthropic PBC, and Cohere.

SAP said that based on a fixed exchange rate, SAP's current cloud backlog (an indicator of cloud revenue for the next 12 months) has increased by 28% to 14.2 billion euros, the fastest growth rate on record.

In January of this year, SAP announced a restructuring plan to focus on growth areas such as cloud technology and artificial intelligence. The company's IFRS operating profit was affected by provisions of 2.2 billion euros associated with the plan, resulting in a current loss of 787 million euros.

This is the first time SAP has included equity incentive fees in its non-IFRS reports. This put pressure on non-IFRS operating profit, which was 1.53 billion euros compared to the forecast of 1.7 billion euros.

As of press release, SAP rose 1.30% to $180.5 after the market. The stock has risen more than 15% since this year.