FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - Strong momentum in the cloud business of US competitor Oracle also boosted SAP shares on Tuesday. "Oracle is benefiting from the boom in demand for AI," said one trader. This is also helping SAP, as this software manufacturer also has artificial intelligence (AI) as fuel up its sleeve.

With a gain of 0.9 percent to 175.10 euros, the shares of the Walldorf-based software company made up most of their previous day's losses and are thus back on track towards their record high. This was reached last Thursday at 178.48 euros.

In the USA, Oracle gained almost 14 percent to 129.77 US dollars, which would be a new record. The last record high of 127.54 dollars was set around nine months ago.

"It is becoming increasingly clear that the AI boom is not just limited to the semiconductor industry, but is also increasingly driving other areas of technology," commented market expert Andreas Lipkow. Data centers and the cloud sector are also playing a key role in the spread of AI technologies. "At Oracle, this can be seen in the figures for database applications and services for cloud infrastructure." This can only be applied to SAP to a limited extent. However, the German software company also recently announced its intention to position itself more strongly in the AI sector.

Specifically on Oracle's figures, analyst Chandramouli Sriraman from the investment bank Stifel wrote: "The US company exceeded expectations in the areas of cloud services and license support as well as cloud licenses and on-premise software. "Demand for cloud solutions was solid, albeit with a slight slowdown compared to previous quarters."

Sriraman was particularly positive about the momentum of Oracle's business in terms of orders. This and the optimistic commentary from management as well as the confirmed Group targets for the 2025/26 financial year had caused the share price to soar by a double-digit percentage.

In this context, the Stifel analyst wrote about SAP: "SAP remains one of our top recommendations in Europe". He bases his optimism on the continuing cloud momentum at the Walldorf-based company. According to him, this is likely to continue into the 2025 financial year and will be driven by the very strong growth of the total order backlog in the cloud area at the end of 2023 and the accelerated growth of the current cloud order backlog in the fourth quarter of 2023.

JPMorgan analyst Toby Ogg is also convinced of SAP's growth prospects, which he believes are currently underestimated. "We believe that 10 percent or more is achievable, with the possibility of reaching 12 to 13 percent by 2026/27," he wrote in a study published on Tuesday. The business mix is shifting towards faster growing cloud revenues./ck/men