Brazil remained weak because of political turmoil and "North America had a slower than anticipated start to the year," said CEO Bill McDermott during this week's earnings webcast. CFO Luca Mucic said that there had been a delay in several sales. "We did sign many of the deals we were supposed to sign in the last week in March already," he said. However, the cloud business continued to boom, rising 35 percent to $761.7 million for the first quarter, 31 percent in constant currencies. S/4 Hana was once again the driving force, bringing in 500 new customers in the quarter, nearly a third of them new to SAP. McDermott said this shows the software company's ability to upgrade its installed base and take customers from competitors.
SAP 1Q LICENSES WEAK Featured
SAP had single-digit revenue growth for the first quarter ended March 31 in what the company says is usually its weakest quarter. However, profit after tax rose to $641.2 million, up 38 percent over last year in IFRS terms, although an increase of only 9 percent on a non-IFRS basis. License sales were a drag on revenue, increasing only 1 percent to $3.57 billion. The revenue numbers missed SAP'S guidance and the Americas were a big factor in that.
