Software Maker SAP Becomes Europe's Largest Company

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: German software company SAP overtook Danish healthcare company Novo Nordisk as Europe's largest company by market capitalization on Monday. At 0900 GMT, SAP had a market cap of $340 billion, slightly more than Novo Nordisk, according to Reuters calculations using LSEG Workspace data. SAP is Europe's largest software maker, providing business application software used by companies for finance, sales, supply chain and other functions.

Its shares have surged in recent years, in part due to optimism that its cloud business will be a major beneficiary of recent investment in generative artificial intelligence. While SAP shares are up 7% so far in 2025, underperforming the broader European STOXX 600 index, which is up 8.3% year-to-date, they have clocked a total return of 160% since the end of 2022, far outperforming the STOXX 600's 28%. In contrast, Novo Nordisk shares have underperformed the market in recent months after data from trials of its experimental next-generation obesity drug Cagrisema disappointed investors.

Still growing? still exists?

[MasterRa]

I thought everyone was moving away from SAP... how are they still growing?

Re:Still growing? still exists?

[Z00L00K]

The money earned goes into sales people towards large corporations.

In large corporations they do what "everyone else does" when it comes to software solutions like SAP regardless of if it's good or not. Once you are in the hold of SAP expect to not be able to get out of it.

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[Vintermann]

"Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM" isn't even a metaphor here - the company I currently work for runs a SAP which has been heavily customized by IBM.

Re:Still growing? still exists?

[ctilsie242]

For projects that big, it is about adding a ton of custom workflows. On the SAP stage with the armies of consultants, BASIS admins, ABAP programmers, eventually if you throw enough man-hours at the issue, you will get something working. Same with Epic. Same with Service Now. Same with any enterprise-tier, crazy-expensive tool.

If you get CTSes connected to Git, you can save a lot of time.

Re:Still growing? still exists?

[DrXym]

Probably because like a lot of enterprise software, it's not about being good, or whether people like using it, it's about ass covering. "Nobody ever got sacked for buying ". And once it sinks its claws into a place, it is very hard to get it out because of sunk cost fallacy.

Re:

[thegarbz]

To what? Oracle? IBM?

It's like saying you finally left the Italian Mafia to find a new home among the Japanese Triads.

Re:Still growing? still exists?

[pjt33]

The Triads are Cantonese. The Japanese equivalent is the Yakuza.

Re:

[jmccue]

If you ever get SAP working in your company, it is close to impossible to move away from it. Plus after it is working, SAP can bleed you dry with license fees.

Re: Still growing? still exists?

[godrik]

I don't know the global patterns. But my company is using more SAP products now than 2 years ago.

So maybe some companies are moving out of the ecosystem. But maybe other are doubling down.

stunned they still grow

[bloodhawk]

I don't understand how they get anyone to sign up for SAP anymore, even in just the last 5 years I have seen all of the large SAP projects I have visibility of self implode due to massive budget overruns and under delivery of the product. It seems every SAP project on top of the many millions in licensing will cost just as much if not more in worthless overpriced SAP consultants that struggle with even basic IT concepts.

Re: stunned they still grow

[sonoronos]

The headline is false. SAP is not Europeâ(TM)s largest company. Market cap has nothing to do with size.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Marketcap has EVERYTHING to do with size when talking value.

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[Sique]

"Size" is not a clearly defined dimension. So you are false by the same criterion. If I define the size of a company as the number of people going on Slashdot by the nickname "Sique" being employed by that company, my employer is the largest company.

The problem being, that in a multidimensional world, no single dimensional value can satisfy all things you want from a norm. If you want to know which company will be able to provide you with the largest number of i386 chips in the next quarter, looking at re

Re:

[snowshovelboy]

Hm, how would you measure it? By square meters? Maybe McDonalds is the biggest company in Europe.

Re:stunned they still grow

[thegarbz]

The issue is one that has nothing to do with SAP. Literally every one of these massive database companies will provide you with nothing but negative stories.

We could literally take your post, replace the word SAP with Oracle and post it on the most recent Oracle story and you'll get a +5 informative mod as a result. Likewise for IBM. Cost overruns and overpriced consultants are literally the only offers available in that industry.

Re:stunned they still grow

[jsonn]

The problem is not so much SAP R3 (or any of its major alternatives), but one of expectations. SAP R3 is selling a standardized software for a certain company workflow. If a new customer wants to use it AND is willing to mostly adopt that workflow, SAP R3 is quite a nice system for accounting, logistics and a lot of other aspects. The problem and why a lot of large SAP projects fail is exactly that standardized workflow. If the expectation is that customizing will allow continuing to use the existing workflows, everything becomes expensive and will ultimately fail.

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[nightflameauto]

I don't understand how they get anyone to sign up for SAP anymore, even in just the last 5 years I have seen all of the large SAP projects I have visibility of self implode due to massive budget overruns and under delivery of the product. It seems every SAP project on top of the many millions in licensing will cost just as much if not more in worthless overpriced SAP consultants that struggle with even basic IT concepts.

They're measuring profit potential. Imagine the profit potential for a type of software that sucks so terribly that you have to hire an endless stream of barely functional technicians to try to keep it upright and it never, ever actually delivers. The potential is literally limitless. They can bleed the companies they sell to absolutely dry and simply tell them at every failure point, "It's too bad you didn't have the resources to pull this off." While us tech folks don't get how that flies in the business

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[Kobun]

Which of SAP’s competitors is clearly better on a cost benefit basis? Which of those is the clear leader when it comes to ease of transitioning?

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[bloodhawk]

the reality is for what they are often trying to build you could actually build a custom system that just does what you need for less, or buy one that is more bare bones with the expectation of building the rest with standard devs not SAP consultants running at 2 to 3 times the going dev rate. For instance I look at the most recent one I watched collapse. $150m budget, $200m over budget and still a minimum of 2 years away from completion. This was mostly just payroll and HR records.

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[snowshovelboy]

The problem is once you realize you need something like SAP, your company is already too big to easily change the way it operates, causing you to not really use SAP the way it was designed.

Corporate spreadsheets

[Mirnotoriety]

Looking at a demo. Select from a drop-down box, enter data and rince and repeat. Wouldn't it be a more efficient use of your time to have SAP do it automatically.

Funny

[registrations_suck]

Would be funny if Apple bought SAP, out of its petty cash fund.

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[FirstNoel]

God, it would make the interfaces better, and slow down the name changes.. Every 6 months they change the name of a platform. is it Xi, PI, PI/PO, CPI, BPG, etc etc.

Even in the same freaking version...