SAP's Buyback Accelerates as Wall Street Backs AI Story Ahead of October 21 Print

SAP bought back 590,000 shares on Xetra between September 21 and 25, up from 50,000 the prior week, as Jefferies and BofA lifted targets.

SAP is heading into its third-quarter report with two distinct signals for investors: a buyback program that has suddenly found a higher gear, and a chorus of bullish analyst revisions that stand in contrast to a share price that has slipped this year.

The Walldorf-based software group disclosed its ninth interim update on the repurchase program, revealing that it bought back 590,000 of its own shares on Xetra between September 21 and 25. That marks a sharp pickup from the prior reporting week, when only 50,000 shares changed hands under the program. The cumulative tally now stands at 8,895,886 shares acquired through September 25.

Analysts Move First

Before the buyback update landed, brokers had already been repositioning. Jefferies raised its price target on SAP from EUR 210 to EUR 220 on September 22, keeping a "Buy" rating. Analyst Charles Brennan pointed to expectations of solid order intake in the third quarter as the basis for the upgrade.

A day earlier, Bank of America lifted its own target to EUR 226 and reiterated its buy recommendation. The US bank cited a survey of 325 chief information officers that underscored SAP's competitive strength and accelerating S/4HANA migrations. At the same time, BofA flagged that broad monetization of artificial intelligence will take time to materialize — a caveat that sits alongside the more immediate optimism about core demand.

The willingness of enterprise customers to keep investing in mission-critical software infrastructure is viewed across financial markets as a dependable buffer against macroeconomic headwinds.

Klein's Palantir-Style Play

Management in Walldorf is not waiting for that monetization to happen on its own. According to a September 18 report by Manager Magazin, CEO Christian Klein is planning new specialist units modeled on Palantir's approach, aimed at clearing the hurdles that have slowed AI adoption and unlocking additional revenue.

For shareholders, the move represents an attempt to make the sales organization more agile and to steer customers more directly toward new applications. Whether those measures are enough to visibly revive momentum will become clearer when the company reports.

Product Push and Industry Recognition

The operational restructuring is being reinforced by a broader portfolio overhaul. At the Transformation Excellence Summit in Atlanta, SAP unveiled enhancements across SAP Signavio, SAP LeanIX, WalkMe and SAP Cloud ALM. These tools are designed to help customers govern the deployment of autonomous AI agents within business processes. A new system, SAP Ariba Spend Analysis and Insights, was also introduced to provide deeper analysis of procurement data.

The technological direction has already drawn recognition. SAP was placed in the "Leader" category in the IDC MarketScape for AI-enabled direct spend, an acknowledgment of its efforts to make business processes more efficient through advanced data analytics.

Klein himself has framed the opportunity in expansive terms. Speaking to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur on Monday, he said AI products offer SAP "gerade die größte Chance für einen weiteren wirklichen Schub" — the single biggest opportunity for another genuine surge.

The Numbers Ahead

All of these threads converge on October 21, when SAP is scheduled to publish its third-quarter figures. The report is widely regarded as the key gauge of whether the hoped-for momentum in order intake and migrations is already showing up in the hard numbers.

In the meantime, the stock is trading at EUR 184.16 in Wednesday's session, down 0.8% on the day but still above its 50-day moving average of EUR 177.89. Pre-market trading on Wednesday had the shares at EUR 185.40, roughly 4.2% above that same average. Since the start of the year, the stock is down 12%.