When SAP acquired the data analysis company Qualtrics at the end of 2018 under former CEO Bill McDermott, the US company appeared to be a good addition to the portfolio. However, it turned out that the proximity to SAP was an obstacle for some Qualtrics customers, and the strategic preferences in Walldorf soon shifted. Just two years after the takeover, Qualtrics went public and SAP sold some of its shares. A good four years after the acquisition, SAP initiated the sale of the remaining stake last year. In doing so, the Walldorf-based company not only created space for new ideas, but also made a profit on the bottom line. This year, SAP received the Corporate Finance Award from Börsen-Zeitung in the Large Caps category for the transaction.

When the sale of Qualtrics was announced last year, a financial investor would probably have mourned the missed opportunity, as Qualtrics had a market capitalization of 32 billion dollars at times following its IPO. When the sale plans were announced in January 2023, the valuation reached a good 8.5 billion dollars. From a trading perspective, more could have been achieved. „But that was not the intention,“ explains Georg Kniese, Global Head of Corporate Development and M&A at SAP, in the Börsen-Zeitung Corporate Finance Award podcast.

Rather, SAP wanted to focus more strongly. Managers like to refer to the statement that every strategy has its time – and time apparently demanded a different strategy in the 2023 sales year than in the 2018 acquisition year. „This journey is one of the stories that the software industry is writing,“ says Kniese. Topics cannot be planned in the long term like in other industries. For him, the Qualtrics transaction is an example of how a company realigns itself and adapts to market conditions. For him, this is one of the most important „lessons learned“ from the transaction: in an industry with fast cycle times and a dynamically changing environment, you have to continuously adapt your own strategy.

Qualtrics 2023 was a good fit for someone else's strategy: the financial investor Silver Lake joined a consortium with the Canadian pension fund CPP Investments and the transaction was finalized within a few months. The complexity of the transatlantic deal was considerable, as Qualtrics' listing on the US stock exchange entailed regulatory requirements from the local supervisory authorities. On the seller side alone, there were ultimately three „gravitational fields“, Kniese recalls: Qualtrics itself, the majority shareholder SAP and an Independent Committee of the Board of Directors, which is required by regulations to avoid conflicts of interest. Each of these three parties also brought investment bankers and legal advisors to the table – the minimum number of participants in meetings was often 25 to 30 people. „You can imagine that communication becomes incredibly time-consuming.“

The Walldorf-based company ultimately sold its Qualtrics stake for a net profit of 1.4 billion dollars. A positive side effect: Qualtrics had regularly depressed SAP's margin, and this undesirable influence has also been eliminated since the sale. Kniese sees the sale as a good result for all parties involved: the offer to customers remains intact, Qualtrics can develop more freely outside the Group. And SAP retains a net profit and can concentrate on its current strategy, which has a strong focus on artificial intelligence – another topic that was much less present three years ago.

For Kniese, this is further proof that strategy adjustments are part and parcel of the software industry. Companies need to remain agile and capable of acting – „always within the framework of the current strategy“. Qualtrics fitted into the strategy both when it was bought and when it was sold: „We have simply developed our strategy further.“