Episode summary
One Thing Apple, Walmart, and Exxon Share: They All Use This Company | At Barron's
At Barron's
· · Hosts: Andy Serwer · Guests: Christian Klein
Summary
SAP’s CEO Christian Klein argued that the company’s strength comes from running core business processes end to end, not just selling software modules. He described SAP as a global platform used across finance, HR, supply chains, sales, and logistics, with the United States as its biggest market and Asia as its fastest-growing. Klein said large customers including Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Walmart, Exxon, and Chevron use SAP, alongside smaller companies that scale onto its platform.
Klein said macro volatility can be a tailwind rather than a headwind, because inflation, supply-chain disruption, tariffs, and regulatory shifts can increase demand for SAP’s software. He said a weaker dollar is less helpful for a European company with major U.S. revenue, but that the impact is muted because SAP hedges and reports at constant currency. On the EU investigation into maintenance and support practices, he said SAP uses industry best practices and is in constructive dialogue, while declining to comment on specifics.
The core investment case, he said, is AI layered onto SAP’s proprietary business data. Klein expects AI to improve forecasting, workforce planning, payroll, and supply-chain optimization, while helping SAP grow revenue with only underproportional headcount growth. He said the company’s 400,000 customers, cloud migration, and data platform give it a strong base for the next phase of growth.
Key takeaways
- Klein says SAP’s edge is its end-to-end control of finance, HR, supply chain, and front-office workflows, not just standalone enterprise apps.
- He expects AI to make SAP’s software more valuable by combining large language models with mission-critical customer data.
- Klein said SAP is seeing mixed macro conditions, but inflation, tariffs, and supply-chain disruption can actually increase demand for its tools.
- He said SAP expects double-digit top-line growth with headcount growing more slowly, as AI boosts productivity across coding, delivery, sales, and marketing.
- Klein said the company’s 400,000 customers and cloud migration provide a base to sell more AI services rather than rely only on cloud upgrades.
Notable quotes
“the biggest market is the United States followed by our home market in in Europe. The fastest growing market is actually in Asia”
“there's no other tech company who has so much business data than SAP”
“we expect our top line to grow double digit if our headcount would grow proportionally”
“we should first you know do it in the right order and when we are doing that I see more and more private investors also now looking into Europe”
How the episode opens
Hello everyone and welcome to At Barons. I'm Andy Surw and welcome to our guest Christian Klene, CEO of SAP. Christian, nice to see you. Thanks for joining us. — Yeah, great to be here Andy. So SAP is a giant software company based in Europe and primarily makes ERP software, enterprise resource um software. And I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what that is and more specifically what you guys do.
Yeah. So SAP first of all is a truly global company. We are doing business in over 150 countries and I guess this is also what makes the company so exciting.
So you're seeing the world. Second, 50 years ago, our founders started to say, "Hey, why are all these finance people closing manually the books? There's no standard.
So, this is the way how they started. It's still in our DNA. They went to some customers to some companies and then, you know, coded you know some software and what came out is great software for running finance, HR, we are running the supply chains of the world.
So, all the material flows is actually run by SAP software and then of course also the front office sales service. So that is all part of our portfolio. Of course we will talk I guess about AI and data that is of course the underlying platform and then yes and and now of course when you look today at SAP I mean it's actually very high valuable company we have actually um you know a lot of labs around the world as I said and yes it's it's fun to work with.
Yeah. And and just to drill down on the software thing for a second, I mean, you also make CRM producing CRM software at this point.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- company software usage
- apple services
- walmart operations
- exxon energy sector
- sap ceo interview
Companies and tickers mentioned
- AAPL
- WMT
- XOM
- Apple
- Walmart
- Exxon
- SAP
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Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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