SAP's Cloud Backlog Tops €22.9 Billion, But the Buyback Program Is Stealing the Show
Published on 08/08/2026 at 03:11 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The stock is up more than 29 percent in a month, the cloud order book sits at a record level, and the CEO has been buying shares with his own money. Yet for all the momentum building behind SAP, the software giant's recovery story still carries a heavy asterisk: the shares remain nearly 31 percent below their 52-week peak, and the year-to-date scoreboard still shows a double-digit loss.
Friday's session captured the tension neatly. The stock closed at €178.66, a gain of roughly 3.5 percent on the day, pushing the shares back above their 200-day moving average of €173.15 — a level chart watchers had been tracking since the long slide began in August 2025. The technical signal is encouraging, though seasoned traders would caution that an overbought reading now accompanies the breakout, a combination that historically tends to slow rallies rather than end them.
The Order Book Tells the Real Story
The foundation for the recent optimism was laid in late July, when SAP reported second-quarter figures that underscored just how deeply the company's transformation has taken hold. The current cloud backlog — the contracted revenue already secured for coming quarters — climbed 27 percent to €22.9 billion, a record. Cloud revenue rose 22 percent, or 24 percent on a currency-adjusted basis, with the cloud ERP suite leading the way at 25 percent growth, or 27 percent in constant currency. Total revenue advanced 9 percent (11 percent currency-adjusted), while operating profit grew 8 percent under IFRS and 7 percent on a non-IFRS basis.
That forward-looking backlog figure matters more than the quarterly numbers themselves. It represents the visibility SAP now has into future revenue streams, a fundamental shift from the license-and-maintenance model that once defined enterprise software. The company's customers are effectively pre-committing to cloud services years in advance, and that contractual certainty is what underpins the bull case for the stock.
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Growth Has a Price — and It's Visible in the Guidance
The operational strength came with a caveat. SAP trimmed its 2026 non-IFRS operating profit outlook to a range of €11.8 billion to €12.2 billion, down from the previous €11.9 billion to €12.3 billion. The revision isn't a sign of weakening demand; it stems from dilution effects tied to two acquisitions — Dremio, a data lakehouse platform, and Prior Labs, a Freiburg-based specialist in tabular foundation models. Together, the deals are expected to weigh on results by more than €100 million in the near term.
The M&A spree reflects a deliberate strategy. Prior Labs, acquired in mid-July, will operate as a standalone unit with its own research approach and open-source strategy, with SAP committing over €1 billion in investment over the next four years. Dremio, whose acquisition closed shortly before, enables customers to combine data from SAP and non-SAP environments for agentic AI applications. The integration of Reltio, a master data management provider, was completed back in May with a similar goal: preparing enterprise data for AI workloads.
Buybacks, Insider Buying, and Regulatory Relief
While the cloud transformation plays out over the long term, SAP has been supporting the share price more directly through a buyback program of up to €10 billion, scheduled to run through the end of 2027. The most recent tranche, disclosed via a regulatory filing, saw the company repurchase 2,184,430 shares between July 27 and 31 at an average price of €157.62 — a total outlay of roughly €344.3 million. Given where the stock trades now, that buyback already looks well timed.
Adding to the positive signals, CEO Christian Klein purchased shares in the company shortly after the earnings release — an insider transaction that, while not a classic buy signal, offers some insight into how management views the valuation after a year of declines.
Regulatory headwinds have also cleared. The Bundeskartellamt, Germany's competition authority, decided on July 30 not to open an abuse-of-process proceeding against SAP following a complaint from a competitor about the company's maintenance policies. The European Commission similarly closed its review of guidelines for on-premise maintenance and support, a decision SAP welcomed for the planning certainty it provides to the legacy business. For a company whose future depends on long-term cloud contracts, that kind of regulatory clarity is more than a footnote — it's part of the foundation on which the €22.9 billion backlog can continue to grow.
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What Comes Next
Investors now have their sights set on October 21, when SAP reports third-quarter results. Analyst consensus puts earnings per share between €1.83 and €1.87, with revenue expected in the range of €10.09 billion to €10.19 billion. The key questions: whether cloud momentum can sustain its pace, and whether the dilution from recent acquisitions fades as planned.
The building blocks for a sustained recovery are visible — record backlog, active buybacks, insider purchases, and regulatory hurdles removed. But with the stock still down 14.72 percent for the year and trading well below its July 2025 high of €257.70, the market has yet to fully embrace the narrative. Whether this summer's bounce becomes a new chapter or merely a sharp counter-move in a longer correction will depend on what the next earnings report reveals.
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