SAP SE $SAP Stake Lowered by Sands Capital Management LLC

Sands Capital Management LLC reduced its stake in shares of SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) by 10.5% during the 4th quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 394,117 shares of the software maker’s stock after selling 46,153 shares during the period. Sands Capital Management LLC’s holdings in SAP were worth $95,735,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other institutional investors and hedge funds have also modified their holdings of SAP. Brighton Jones LLC lifted its stake in shares of SAP by 91.1% in the 4th quarter. Brighton Jones LLC now owns 2,633 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $648,000 after purchasing an additional 1,255 shares during the last quarter. Baird Financial Group Inc. acquired a new stake in shares of SAP in the 1st quarter valued at $242,000. AQR Capital Management LLC lifted its stake in shares of SAP by 49.0% in the 1st quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 16,309 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $4,378,000 after purchasing an additional 5,363 shares during the last quarter. UBS AM A Distinct Business Unit of UBS Asset Management Americas LLC acquired a new stake in shares of SAP in the 1st quarter valued at $2,681,000. Finally, Sivia Capital Partners LLC lifted its stake in shares of SAP by 2.3% in the 2nd quarter. Sivia Capital Partners LLC now owns 3,050 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $928,000 after purchasing an additional 69 shares during the last quarter.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several equities research analysts recently issued reports on the stock. Zacks Research lowered shares of SAP from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Thursday, March 5th. The Goldman Sachs Group reaffirmed a “buy” rating and issued a $265.00 price objective on shares of SAP in a research note on Wednesday. Weiss Ratings lowered shares of SAP from a “hold (c)” rating to a “hold (c-)” rating in a research note on Thursday. Santander raised shares of SAP from a “neutral” rating to an “outperform” rating in a research note on Friday, April 24th. Finally, BMO Capital Markets reduced their price objective on shares of SAP from $210.00 to $200.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research note on Friday, April 24th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twelve have issued a Buy rating and seven have issued a Hold rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $283.40.

SAP Stock Up 0.1%

SAP stock opened at $164.33 on Monday. The firm has a market cap of $201.87 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 22.21, a P/E/G ratio of 1.84 and a beta of 1.12. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.11, a current ratio of 1.07 and a quick ratio of 1.07. SAP SE has a fifty-two week low of $158.58 and a fifty-two week high of $313.28. The firm has a fifty day moving average price of $173.97 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $202.30.

SAP (NYSE:SAP) last released its earnings results on Friday, February 27th. The software maker reported $1.99 earnings per share for the quarter. The firm had revenue of $11.06 billion during the quarter. SAP had a net margin of 20.08% and a return on equity of 17.31%. As a group, analysts forecast that SAP SE will post 8.37 earnings per share for the current year.

SAP Increases Dividend

The company also recently announced an annual dividend, which was paid on Friday, May 15th. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, May 5th were given a dividend of $2.9291 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Tuesday, May 5th. This represents a yield of 170.0%. This is a positive change from SAP’s previous annual dividend of $2.54. SAP’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 28.92%.

SAP Profile

SAP SE is a global enterprise software company headquartered in Walldorf, Germany. Founded in 1972 by five former IBM engineers, the company’s name is an acronym for Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung (Systems, Applications & Products in Data Processing). SAP develops and sells software and services that help organizations manage business processes across finance, human resources, procurement, manufacturing, supply chain and customer relationships.

SAP’s product portfolio spans on‑premises and cloud offerings, anchored by its enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions such as SAP S/4HANA and the SAP HANA in‑memory database and platform.