SAP (NYSE:SAP) Shares Gap Up – Here’s What Happened

SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) shares gapped up before the market opened on Tuesday . The stock had previously closed at $174.62, but opened at $184.23. SAP shares last traded at $184.37, with a volume of 1,389,870 shares traded.

Analyst Ratings Changes

SAP has been the topic of a number of recent analyst reports. Barclays lifted their price target on shares of SAP from $256.00 to $257.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research report on Monday, April 27th. Citizens Jmp cut shares of SAP from an “outperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a research report on Friday, January 30th. Zacks Research cut shares of SAP from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Thursday, March 5th. Wall Street Zen cut shares of SAP from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Saturday. Finally, Weiss Ratings cut shares of SAP from a “buy (b-)” rating to a “hold (c+)” rating in a research report on Monday, March 16th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twelve have given a Buy rating and seven have given a Hold rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $288.00.

SAP Price Performance

The firm has a market cap of $220.69 billion, a P/E ratio of 24.32, a PEG ratio of 1.90 and a beta of 1.11. The company has a fifty day moving average price of $175.25 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $211.86. The company has a current ratio of 1.07, a quick ratio of 1.07 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.11.

SAP (NYSE:SAP) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Friday, February 27th. The software maker reported $1.99 EPS for the quarter. The business had revenue of $11.06 billion for the quarter. SAP had a net margin of 20.08% and a return on equity of 17.31%. Equities analysts anticipate that SAP SE will post 8.35 earnings per share for the current year.

SAP Increases Dividend

The business also recently disclosed an annual dividend, which was paid on Friday, May 15th. Investors of record on Tuesday, May 5th were given a $2.9291 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Tuesday, May 5th. This represents a yield of 170.0%. This is an increase from SAP’s previous annual dividend of $2.54. SAP’s payout ratio is presently 28.92%.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On SAP

Several institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of SAP. Fisher Asset Management LLC lifted its position in SAP by 1.2% during the 4th quarter. Fisher Asset Management LLC now owns 14,728,881 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $3,577,793,000 after buying an additional 179,550 shares in the last quarter. Bank of America Corp DE lifted its stake in SAP by 58.1% in the 2nd quarter. Bank of America Corp DE now owns 2,650,418 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $805,992,000 after purchasing an additional 973,779 shares during the last quarter. Windacre Partnership LLC lifted its stake in SAP by 130.9% in the 3rd quarter. Windacre Partnership LLC now owns 2,357,225 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $629,874,000 after purchasing an additional 1,336,325 shares during the last quarter. Northern Trust Corp lifted its stake in SAP by 3.2% in the 3rd quarter. Northern Trust Corp now owns 1,560,994 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $417,113,000 after purchasing an additional 49,111 shares during the last quarter. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. lifted its stake in SAP by 7.5% in the 4th quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 1,200,024 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $291,498,000 after purchasing an additional 83,349 shares during the last quarter.

About SAP

SAP SE is a global enterprise software company headquartered in Walldorf, Germany. Founded in 1972 by five former IBM engineers, the company’s name is an acronym for Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung (Systems, Applications & Products in Data Processing). SAP develops and sells software and services that help organizations manage business processes across finance, human resources, procurement, manufacturing, supply chain and customer relationships.

SAP’s product portfolio spans on‑premises and cloud offerings, anchored by its enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions such as SAP S/4HANA and the SAP HANA in‑memory database and platform.