SAP Sees Q2 Sales Sky, With Increase In SMB Customer Base
While SAP is best know for its enterprise-class ERP and CRM applications, sales of its Business All-in-One application suite for the midmarket and BusinessOne applications for small companies have been growing steadily and channel partners account for a big chunk of those sales.
Tuesday, while discussing SAP's second-quarter financial results, SAP co-CEO Henning Kagermann said the number of All-in-One customers increased 18 percent in the quarter to more than 12,100 while the number of BusinessOne customers grew 32 percent to 20,000.
SAP reported that total sales increased 18 percent to $4.46 billion in its second quarter ended June 30. That included a 25 percent increase in software revenue to 1.4 billion U.S. and a 21 percent increase in software and software-related service revenue to $3.22 billion.
"Our string of double-digit growth quarters continues," said co-CEO Leo Apotheker during a conference call with financial analysts.
But the company's profitability dropped 9 percent year-over-year to $636.8 million. SAP executives attributed the earnings decrease, in part, to the costs of integrating Business Objects' operations into SAP. The companyacquired the business intelligence software vendor in January for $6.8 billion. Sales and marketing costs also increased in the second quarter largely due to hiring of additional staff.