SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 4 of 10

James Goodman: Yes, good afternoon. Thank you very much and Luka, all the best for the next chapter. My question is on the Qualtrics announcement, if I could ask you to elaborate perhaps a bit further there on the rationale. Why now when if you say the business has matured so much since the original acquisition and has worked very hard around the integration with certain other assets in the portfolio on the cross-selling opportunities as well? I mean you talked about a strong ongoing relationship with Qualtrics, clearly. But any detail there would be helpful, including no circumstances under which you would or wouldn’t sell it, given what’s happened to valuations in the space and whether they’re specific use of the proceeds? Thank you.

Christian Klein: Yes, I’m happy to answer that question. And look, when we did the first step with the IPO in 2021, we already, of course, have thought and planned what could be actually the end goal and what could be our journey together. So, you are right. We invested heavily in the last years into the integration and embedding XM into our solutions. And we have seen great sales success and go-to-market success, tripled sales. But then also, I would say, around Q3, Q4, we were sitting together with the Qualtrics management team, we’ve and said, hey, actually, what we are doing, we can continue to do also in the future by embedding Qualtrics and our products go-to-market together, while we can also consider a sale which allows SAP on the one hand side, to free up investments and efforts to double down on our growth in the core, which is super strong.

You have seen the S/4HANA cloud numbers. The platform is booming. While Qualtrics can also, of course, go even more out and close another great partnerships with other partners in the market. And last but not least, we were jointly also of the opinion that we can significantly enhance also the value for the Qualtrics and the SAP shareholders. And that actually what made us came out of — why we came to this decision to consider the potential sale. And it’s a great asset. It’s by far the best product in the XM category. So we’re actually also seeing a lot of interest and, yes, we are very positive about the ongoing process.

Luka Mucic: The process should also be straightforward, because Qualtrics is really set up independently already since some time. They have a dedicated leadership team. They have a strong culture across the organization. So it’s really straightforward, does not require any carve-out efforts or anything like. But perhaps to just add to the rationale, I think, one financial reason that we are also taking seriously, because we want to make sure we maximize value, as Christian has said. And to the shareholders of both Qualtrics as well as SAP, is that we have seen in the — in particular, in the last year, that while I think both Qualtrics and SAP make progress in the partnership and we drive good results. Also Qualtrics, I think, had not only a decent performance in 2022, but is also now guiding to stronger profitability while continuing on its march to gain share in the experience management space.

Page 4 of 10