SAP announces intent to take Qualtrics public

SAP today announced its intent to take Qualtrics public through an initial public offering (IPO) in the United States. Qualtrics is the market leader and creator of the Experience Management (XM) category, a large, fast growing and rapidly evolving market. SAP intends to remain the majority owner of Qualtrics. SAP’s primary objective for the IPO is to fortify Qualtrics’ ability to capture its full market potential within Experience Management. This will help to increase Qualtrics’ autonomy and enable it to expand its footprint both within SAP’s customer base and beyond.

“SAP’s acquisition of Qualtrics has been a great success and has outperformed our expectations with 2019 cloud growth in excess of 40%, demonstrating very strong performance in the current setup,” SAP CEO Christian Klein said. “As Ryan Smith, Zig Serafin and I worked together, we decided that an IPO would provide the greatest opportunity for Qualtrics to grow the experience management category, serve its customers, explore its own acquisition strategy, and continue building the best talent.”

SAP currently owns 100% of Qualtrics shares. SAP will retain majority ownership of Qualtrics and has no intention of spinning off or otherwise divesting its majority ownership interest. Ryan Smith intends to be Qualtrics’ largest individual shareholder. The founder and current management team of Qualtrics will continue to operate the company.

SAP will remain Qualtrics’ closest and most important co-innovation and go-to-market partner.

A final decision on the IPO and its conditions and timing is pending and subject to market conditions.

Since SAP, as majority shareholder, will continue to fully consolidate Qualtrics, the transaction is not expected to have an impact on SAP’s 2020 or longer-term financial targets.

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