It will cost $8bn to buy ‘experience management’ company Qualtrics - says SAP

German software giant SAP says it will spend $8bn on acquiring US "experience management" firm Qualtrics, betting on fast-paced growth ahead in a new area of data crunching.

 

In a statement late on Sunday, the Walldorf-based group said it

had secured financing of €7bn to cover buying all Qualtrics’s shares as well as costs related to the transaction — the second-largest in SAP’s history.

Qualtrics had planned a stock market flotation in its own right this week. The US company is an industry leader in the comparatively new field of experience management.

Invented in the 1990s, the technique calls for collecting data on customers, employees, brands and products, aiming to sharpen firms' understanding of how they are perceived. Experience management is the "biggest growth driver for our industry and the next frontier for the global economy,” SAP CEO McDermott said in a conference call.

Qualtrics has forecast revenues of more than $400m for 2018. SAP has put its own sales at up to €25.5bn.

CEO Ryan Smith is set to continue running the firm in its new form as a part of SAP's cloud computing division. But it will be backed by the sales power of SAP and its existing 413,000-strong customer base to expand even further, executives say.

“We have an opportunity to take experience management to the world,” Smith said.

Both SAP and Qualtrics’s boards as well as the US firm's shareholders have approved the transaction, which is slated for completion by the middle of 2019.

Investors were wary of the deal as the Frankfurt stock market opened on Monday, with SAP stock shedding 4.4% by 9.55am to trade at €90.00 against a DAX index of blue-chip German shares down 0.75%.

• AFP