SAP’s Sapphire Stage Set: Dividends in Hand, Two AI Acquisitions in the Pipeline

SAP shareholders collected a €2.50-per-share dividend on Thursday, but the real payout may come next week when the software giant takes the stage in Orlando. The annual Sapphire conference, running from May 11 to 13 at the Orange County Convention Center, will see CEO Christian Klein, COO Sebastian Steinhaeuser, and CTO Philipp Herzig lay out exactly how the company intends to turn its artificial intelligence ambitions into hard revenue.

The dividend, approved at the May 5 annual general meeting, totalled roughly €2.88 billion. For investors nursing a stock that has shed more than 43% over the past twelve months, that cash distribution offers modest solace. The shares closed Thursday at €149.32, leaving the company nursing a year-to-date decline of about 26% and trading well below its 200-day moving average.

A Cloudy Picture, With a Caveat

The backdrop for the analyst day is solid but not unblemished. Cloud revenue jumped 27% in the first quarter to approximately €5.96 billion, while cloud ERP suite sales climbed 30%. Non-IFRS operating profit rose 24% to €2.87 billion, pushing the operating margin to 30.0%. Yet total revenue fell short of expectations, and management acknowledged that one-off quarterly effects artificially inflated the cloud growth rate — meaning a slowdown is likely in the second quarter. Geopolitical uncertainty, particularly in the Middle East, adds another layer of risk to the full-year outlook.

SAP is sticking with its 2026 guidance nonetheless: cloud revenue between €25.8 billion and €26.2 billion, and non-IFRS operating profit of €11.9 billion to €12.3 billion.

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A Twin Acquisition Blitz

Just days before Sapphire, SAP announced two strategic takeovers that signal a direct challenge to rivals Snowflake and Databricks. The acquisitions of data specialist Dremio and Freiburg-based AI startup Prior Labs follow the March purchase of Reltio, creating what the company describes as an end-to-end data pipeline. Reltio cleanses the data, Dremio unifies access across sources without requiring migration or conversion, and Prior Labs supplies the tabular AI models that predict business outcomes such as payment delays or customer churn.

Prior Labs, founded only in 2024, is the standout bet. SAP plans to invest over €1 billion in the startup over the next four years, aiming to turn it into a leading AI lab for structured data. Dremio was valued at $2 billion by investors in 2022; the current purchase price remains undisclosed. Both deals are expected to close by the third quarter of 2026, pending regulatory approvals.

The Dremio Deal in Context

The Dremio acquisition, announced just before Sapphire, will bring an open data-lakehouse platform into SAP’s portfolio, designed to accelerate agentic AI and strengthen the SAP Business Data Cloud. It fits neatly into the broader narrative Klein is expected to push in Orlando: that SAP can monetize AI by embedding it directly into the enterprise workflows its software already powers.

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What the Market Wants to Hear

With the stock trading at roughly €149 and showing an RSI of 75.5 — technically overbought in the short term, yet still about 3% below its 50-day average — the market is waiting for specifics. Klein and his team need to demonstrate how the AI strategy translates into measurable revenue growth, not just technological capability. The twin acquisitions and the dividend payout have set the stage, but the real test comes next week when the curtain rises in Orlando.

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