By George Glover

SAP stock has been struggling lately, so investors will be hoping that quarterly earnings due after Wednesday's close mark a return to form.

The German software provider's U.S. shares are down about 9% over the past three months, sliding after its second-quarter revenue and cloud sales missed analysts' expectations. The S&P 500 is up about 7% over the same period.

The rough patch has taken some of the shine off Europe's third most-valuable company, which had previously looked like the continent's only tech name capable of taking on the U.S. Magnificent Seven. SAP shares have tripled over the past three years, powered higher by the artificial-intelligence boom driving sales for its cloud business.

The stock accounted for half the gains in Frankfurt's flagship DAX index last year.

Once again, the key figure for investors is likely to be cloud revenue, given how important AI is for SAP's future growth story. Analysts are expecting revenue from cloud subscriptions and support to climb 22% from a year ago to 5.31 billion euros ($6.17 billion), according to a FactSet poll.

The Street is forecasting that earnings will climb to EUR1.49 a share, up from EUR1.23 a share a year ago. SAP could do with that sort of growth, because shares aren't cheap: They trade at 43-times trailing-year earnings, a premium to peers Salesforce and Dassault Systèmes.

Write to George Glover at george.glover@dowjones.com

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October 22, 2025 04:00 ET (08:00 GMT)

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