Just what the title says. Change my mind. Here’s my rationale.
A public company usually focuses on either profit maximization for its shareholders or customer acquisition for future profit maximization for its shareholders. This usually means heavy investments in human resources, infrastructure and technology.
Share buybacks make great sense when these investments are in place and the company has a surplus. Also buying back shares when the share price is low makes great business sense.
Share buybacks for SAP do not make sense. There needs to be heavy investment for infrastructure for the cloud, technologies around the AI roadmap, acquisitions that make long term business sense and training of employees on AI skills. SAP needs to make good on all the promises made to customers in the recent years so they don’t feel like we’ve sold them a lemon. So it makes no sense that SAP is laying off employees to generate cash it doesn’t have to buy back shares. And it doesn’t make sense that 2023, 2024 and 2025 share buybacks took place at a price that’s higher than the current share price knowing full well that the share price will drop more in a few years because of this idiocracy.
SAP has authorized a new share repurchase program of up to €10 billion, which is set to start in February 2026 and is expected to be completed by the end of 2027! This is insane. No one in their right mind would think that this is a good strategy. Unless they personally benefit from it somehow. Or unless it’s to give a short term boost to the share price because they are incompetent to think of anything else that may improve it.
https://www.sap.com/investors/en/stock/share-buy-back/2026.html