Norges Bank Acquires New Shares in SAP SE $SAP

Norges Bank acquired a new stake in SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) in the 4th quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund acquired 336,683 shares of the software maker’s stock, valued at approximately $81,784,000.

Several other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Fisher Asset Management LLC grew its stake in SAP by 1.2% in the fourth quarter. Fisher Asset Management LLC now owns 14,728,881 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $3,577,793,000 after purchasing an additional 179,550 shares during the last quarter. Bank of America Corp DE grew its stake in SAP by 58.1% in the second 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 grew its stake in SAP by 130.9% in the third 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 grew its stake in SAP by 3.2% in the third 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, Ameriprise Financial Inc. grew its stake in SAP by 2.8% in the third quarter. Ameriprise Financial Inc. now owns 1,120,408 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $296,828,000 after purchasing an additional 30,806 shares during the last quarter.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several equities analysts have issued reports on the company. Piper Sandler lowered SAP from an “overweight” rating to a “neutral” rating in a research note on Tuesday, April 14th. Santander upgraded SAP from a “neutral” rating to an “outperform” rating in a research note on Friday, April 24th. BMO Capital Markets cut their target price on SAP from $210.00 to $200.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, April 24th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reiterated a “neutral” rating on shares of SAP in a research note on Tuesday, March 24th. Finally, HSBC upgraded SAP from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, April 22nd. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, eleven have given a Buy rating and seven have issued a Hold rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $288.00.

SAP Price Performance

Shares of SAP stock opened at $184.89 on Friday. SAP SE has a fifty-two week low of $158.58 and a fifty-two week high of $313.28. The firm has a market capitalization of $227.14 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 24.99, a PEG ratio of 2.06 and a beta of 1.12. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.11, a quick ratio of 1.07 and a current ratio of 1.07. The stock’s 50-day simple moving average is $173.63 and its 200-day simple moving average is $204.83.

SAP (NYSE:SAP) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Friday, February 27th. The software maker reported $1.99 earnings per share for the quarter. SAP had a return on equity of 17.31% and a net margin of 20.08%.The business had revenue of $11.06 billion for the quarter. As a group, equities analysts forecast that SAP SE will post 8.39 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

SAP Increases Dividend

The firm also recently declared an annual dividend, which was paid on Friday, May 15th. Stockholders of record on Tuesday, May 5th were paid a dividend of $2.9291 per share. The ex-dividend date was Tuesday, May 5th. This is a positive change from SAP’s previous annual dividend of $2.54. This represents a dividend yield of 170.0%. SAP’s payout ratio is presently 28.92%.

SAP Company Profile

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.