SAP Keeps Buying Back Stock While Betting Its Next Chapter on AI Agents

SAP repurchased 590,000 shares from September 21-25, 2026, as CEO Christian Klein pushes AI agents into core customer operations ahead of Q3 results.

SAP is pressing ahead on two fronts at once: shrinking its share count through steady buybacks and staking its future on artificial intelligence that reaches deep into customers' core operations. The Walldorf-based software giant disclosed that it repurchased 590,000 of its own shares between September 21 and September 25, 2026, executed through the Xetra electronic trading platform.

The bulk of that activity was concentrated on a single session — September 24, when 550,000 shares changed hands as part of the program. With those purchases, the cumulative total bought back under the current initiative climbed to 8,895,886 shares as of September 25. Management frames the effort as a way to return surplus cash to shareholders and lift per-share value, while steadily trimming the free float available on the market.

Christian Klein's Vision: AI Agents as a Historic Opening

Running alongside the capital returns is a broader technological pivot championed by CEO Christian Klein. In an interview with the dpa news agency, Klein described AI-related products as a historic growth opportunity for the company. The goal, he said, is to embed so-called AI agents directly into customers' central business processes, their data structures, and the day-to-day steering of their operations.

SAP has already backed that ambition with concrete product moves. At its own Transformation Excellence Summit, the company rolled out functional extensions for SAP Signavio, SAP LeanIX, WalkMe, and SAP Cloud ALM. It also added the TabPFN-3.5 Plus model to its SAP AI Core platform, giving business customers expanded analytical capabilities right inside their operational systems.

Demand for such transformation work is not purely theoretical. BERNMOBIL, the public transport operator, is modernizing its process landscape using cloud solutions and an architecture designed to support future AI applications — a live example of the kind of project SAP is courting.

Wall Street Warms Up Ahead of the Q3 Print

Analyst sentiment has shifted in SAP's favor in recent weeks. Jefferies raised its price target to EUR 220 and reiterated a "Buy" rating, while U.S. banks Jefferies and Citi both lifted their targets and reaffirmed their buy recommendations — a wave of upgrades that gave the stock a lift in the sessions that followed.

Investors now have a fixed date circled: October 21, 2026, when SAP will release its third-quarter 2026 results. The report is scheduled for 22:05 CET, with a conference call for analysts and investors following at 23:00 CET. That interim statement will be the first real test of how strongly the new software offerings and cloud demand are translating into revenue and operating profit.

A Subdued Tape Into the Numbers

Market action has been muted in the run-up. On Friday, the stock closed at EUR 184.70, down 1.4 percent on the day, and it remains well below its 52-week high of EUR 242.00. Since the start of the year, the shares have shed 12 percent. With the quarterly report approaching, attention is increasingly fixed on the cloud business and whether enterprise software demand holds up in the current environment.