SAP wanted to use the proceeds from the US IPO of Qualtrics mainly to reduce debt. An increase in the dividend is now also being discussed.
Europe’s largest software company, SAP, wants to use the proceeds from the US IPO of its market research subsidiary Qualtrics to primarily reduce debt. However, CFO Luka Mucic said in a conference call on Friday that the supervisory board would also be proposed to increase the dividend.
According to Mucic, the previous day with the sale of shares, SAP achieved revenues of around 2.4 billion US dollars (2.0 billion euros). 500 million dollars of this would be made available to Qualtrics as liquidity, around 1.9 billion would flow to Walldorf, said Mucic.
For 2019, SAP paid a dividend of 1.58 euros. As a rule, the company presents the official dividend proposal in February.
Turbulent year
With the pandemic and strategic U-turns, SAP has had a turbulent year. Sales declined slightly due to the reluctance of customers and exchange rate effects, while earnings before interest and taxes adjusted for special effects barely grew.
The bottom line was that the net profit climbed by more than half to 5.3 billion euros, partly because SAP had spent a lot of money on downsizing the year before. In addition, the falling share price meant that far fewer expenses were incurred for share-based compensation for employees.
