Loan info still shows gaps

Operating profit, excluding share-based compensation, amortisation and other charges, was 1.57bn, compared with the average estimate of 1.58 billion euros.

SAP is investing heavily in research and development and sales of its business apps, data analysis and Internet of things software, which means profit – up 4 percent – isn’t growing nearly as quickly as sales. It hired nearly 3 000 people in the first half of the year.

Profit margin at the Walldorf, Germany-based company remained suppressed as it spends to build cloud-computing capacity. Operating margin was 27.2 percent, compared to analysts’ 28.1 percent average estimate. Investors are looking for margins above 30 percent starting next year.

“If you invest in the cloud, you expand quickly – you will look at a margin impact,” McDermott said. “But here’s the good news. Because we did the hiring in the first half of the year we’ll get the leverage of that in the back half ” and in 2018.

While it raised its outlook on overall revenue, SAP stuck to a forecast first issued in January for 2017 operating profit of 6.8bn to 7bn. It expects 2017 cloud subscriptions and support revenue of between 3.8bn and 4bn at constant currencies, up as much as 34 percent from 2016’s

2.99bn. – Bloomberg MOZAMBIQUE should take steps to address information gaps that remained regarding the use of loans granted to three state-owned companies, the IMF said. It visited Mozambique from July 10 to 19 to discuss findings of an audit by risk-management firm Kroll into the country’s $2 billion (R25.83bn) in hidden loans to tuna fishing company Ematum, security firm Proindicus and Mozambique Asset Management (MAM). The audit showed about a quarter of the money remained unaccounted for. – Reuters