1. SAP SE (NYSE:SAP)
Upside Potential as of April 20: 50.89%
Topping our list of the Best Global Stocks is SAP SE (NYSE:SAP). As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, the company stands at the nexus of business and technology.
On April 15, Morgan Stanley lowered its price target on SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) from €220 to €190, but maintained its ‘Overweight’ rating on the shares. The revised target still represents an upside potential of almost 27% from the current share price.
Subsequently, on April 20, the analysts over at Barclays also turned slightly bearish on SAP SE (NYSE:SAP), trimming the firm’s price target on the stock from $283 to $256 (read more details here).
That said, SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) expects to generate a record free cash flow of €10 billion in 2026 amid the rising AI-driven cloud momentum. Moreover, the strong outlook reflects the company’s sustained operating discipline, driving its expense-to-revenue growth ratio towards the lower end of its long-term operating leverage objective of 80% to 90%.
Vulcan Value Partners, an investment management company, stated the following regarding SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) in its Q1 2026 investor letter:
“We purchased two new positions during the quarter: SAP SE and ServiceNow, Inc. SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) is the global leader in enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, which serves as the operating system for many of the world’s largest companies. SAP’s software manages many functions across an organization, including financial accounting, supply chains, customer relationships, human capital, and procurement. SAP and Oracle dominate the global ERP market. We have owned both businesses in the past and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to own SAP again with a substantial margin of safety.
We believe SAP is one of the best businesses in the world. They have over 425,000 customers, including 98 of the 100 largest companies globally. SAP’s ERP solutions often have decades of embedded data, business processes, and software customizations. It is extremely rare for companies to switch ERP vendors due to the cost, time, and disruption risk that switching creates, particularly for large, global enterprises that make up SAP’s core customer base…” (Click here to read the full text)
While we acknowledge the potential of SAP as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than SAP and that has 100x upside potential, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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