Key insights
- SAP shares fell despite unveiling an AI roadmap at its Sapphire conference. Goldman Sachs remains positive on SAP's long-term data advantage and migration cycle, but near-term monetization of AI is unclear. Some customers are delaying S/4 HANA migrations pending a clearer AI strategy. Productivity improvements are expected, but meaningful progress isn't anticipated until 2027. This news has a slightly negative impact on US equities due to the potential slowdown in tech spending and delayed AI benefits.
Investing.com -- SAP shares are down 4.7% on Wednesday to their lowest level in over two years, even as the German software giant used its annual Sapphire conference to lay out an ambitious artificial intelligence roadmap, with investors apparently wanting more immediate evidence of monetization.
Goldman Sachs analyst Mohammed Moawalla attended day one of the event in Orlando, describing a keynote from Chief Executive Christian Klein that positioned SAP's Business AI platform as the foundation for autonomous enterprise workflows.
The platform is said to be underpinned by SAP's Business Data Cloud, an expanded knowledge graph, and new partnerships with Anthropic, Amazon Athena, NVIDIA, Microsoft and Google Cloud.
Goldman Sachs said system integrators it met with were broadly positive, reinforcing confidence in SAP's data advantage.
Partners delivered a clear message that "ERP is not dead" in the AI era, arguing that SAP's role as both the creator of business data and the system of record gives it a competitive moat that new agentic entrants will struggle to replicate.
However, Goldman Sachs noted that near-term monetization remains unclear, with partners also flagging that some customers have slowed their S/4 HANA migration plans while awaiting a more concrete AI strategy from SAP.
The bank's checks suggest a 30% productivity improvement in migration time and cost is achievable, but system integrators pointed to the earliest inflection arriving in the fourth quarter of 2026, with most expecting meaningful progress in 2027.
Goldman Sachs maintained its Buy rating and price target of 230 euros, or $271 for the American depositary receipt, saying the long-term investment case around SAP's data moat and migration cycle remains intact despite the stock's near-term pressure.