SAP's Green Power Deal and NTT Alliance Take a Back Seat to the Cloud Order Book

SAP has moved on two fronts this week — locking in a decade of solar electricity and widening its sovereign cloud reach with NTT — but neither announcement carries a number that investors can plug into a valuation model. The figures that do matter arrive on 28 January 2027, when the group reports fourth-quarter 2026 results and the market gets to test whether its cloud momentum is holding.

MaxSolar disclosed yesterday that it had signed a ten-year corporate power purchase agreement with SAP, covering output from two German solar parks with a combined installed capacity of 36.5 MWp. That figure describes the generating capacity of the plants, not the volume SAP will actually draw down — a distinction worth keeping in mind when sizing the deal's economic weight. The contract sets a long-term framework for renewable supply; on its own it says nothing about earnings.

A partnership without a price tag

The NTT tie-up, announced a day earlier, points in a different direction. The two companies intend to link SAP Sovereign Cloud On-Site with infrastructure and managed operations run by NTT, and the planned cooperation also takes in SAP Business AI. No financial terms were disclosed, which means no revenue or profit contribution can be inferred at this stage. The partnership is a possible support for growth, not proof of it.

Nor should the stock's 5.0% decline yesterday be laid at the door of the NTT news. Treating the cooperation as the cause of that move would not stand up to scrutiny. What counts for the investment case is whether the operating business can keep carrying expectations.

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The order book is the real scorecard

That brings the focus back to the Current Cloud Backlog, which SAP reported at €24,144 million for the third quarter of 2026 on 21 October, up 28%. The figure sits at the heart of the question of how durable the cloud trajectory really is. A rising backlog signals additional contracted business opportunities; how its growth rate evolves is a separate matter, and a large balance alone does not settle it.

Cloud revenue for the same period came in at €6,668 million, a gain of 26%, while total revenue reached €10,270 million and the non-IFRS operating profit stood at €3,030 million. SAP also refreshed its full-year guidance: currency-adjusted cloud revenue of €25.8–26.2 billion for 2026, and cloud and software revenue of €36.3–36.8 billion.

Those numbers drew a swift response from the sell side. Goldman Sachs lifted its price target on 23 October from €230 to €258 and reiterated its buy rating, with analyst Mohammed Moawalla pointing to the strength of the Current Cloud Backlog. The upgrades were a verdict on the operating business — not on the solar contract reported afterwards.

Where the bull and bear cases divide

The optimistic reading requires no flood of new announcements. It requires confirmation that cloud momentum stays strong enough to underpin growth expectations, with rising revenue backing up the backlog. On that view, the NTT arrangement and the AI tools for developers unveiled at TechEd — designed to enable autonomous business processes — slot in as extensions of a business already expanding, rather than as standalone catalysts.

The counterargument centres on deceleration. According to media reports, management signalled after the quarterly figures that it expected a slight slowdown in growth in the fourth quarter. That is an expectation, not reported performance, but it marks the point at which investors need to revisit their assumptions. dpa-AFX reported on 22 October on concerns about AI competition and the absence of concrete metrics tracking those offerings — an assessment that offers no verified trigger for yesterday's share price move, yet remains relevant to the risk case.

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Should order growth fade more sharply, new partnerships and products may not be enough to offset it. Skepticism would deepen if the contribution of AI offerings to the business stays hard to gauge — at which point the question shifts from technical capability to commercial effect.

What the January print has to show

For now, the decision comes down to a straightforward trade-off. The NTT cooperation broadens the picture, and the solar PPA lengthens the company's energy planning horizon. Neither substitutes for evidence that SAP can deliver enough growth operationally. The 28 January release, covering the fourth quarter of 2026, will show how pronounced the anticipated slowdown actually is — and that is the yardstick the next set of figures must be measured against.

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