SAP shares drop despite solid results

Guidance was seen as overly cautious by disappointed investors

SAP shares have dropped more than two per cent

Shares in SAP dipped by two per cent, despite the company announcing solid second-quarter results, outperforming many analysts' expectations.

The software firm announced service revenue of £1.9bn for the second quarter of 2010, an increase of 16 per cent compared with the same period last year.

It also claimed that software and related service revenue would rise by nine to 11 per cent if sales from recently acquired database specialist Sybase were taken into account.

As a result, SAP slightly raised its sales outlook for the full year but the guidance was seen as overly cautious by some analysts and it disappointed investors, who sent SAP’s share price down by more than two per cent, according to the Financial Times.

The news came after software rivals Oracle and Microsoft reported double-digit growth in recent months, demonstrating that customers are now spending on software projects that were postponed last year due to the economic crisis.