German software company SAP AG (SAP.XE) Tuesday confirmed its full-year outlook after second-quarter profit rose 12%. Profit after tax in the three months ended June 30 was 661 million euros ($803 million), compared with EUR588 million a year earlier, the company, based in Walldorf in southwestern Germany, said in a statement. SAP already released preliminary sales figures on July 12 that beat market expectations and drove down fears that it may have faced severe problems from the softening world economy, with second-quarter license sales--a key number as they generate a stable flow of support revenue-- rising 26% to EUR1.06 billion. SAP's software manages business tasks such as sales, inventory and accounting, and the company counts a long line of blue-chip names such as BMW AG (BMW.XE) and Nestle SA (NESN.VX) among its customers. It competes with Oracle Corp. (ORCL), as well as Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Salesforce.com Inc.(CRM). The company plans to raise its annual sales to more than EUR20 billion by 2015, up from around EUR14 billion in 2011, helped by new revenue streams from products for mobile devices, its superfast HANA data management technology, and cloud services, which got a boost from the $3.4 billion takeover of SuccessFactors, a provider of cloud-based software that helps companies manage their employees and carry out performance reviews. The strong second quarter also meant that SAP was able to make up for shortfalls in the first three months, when it generated license sales growth of only 4%, mainly because of sales organization issues in North America. SAP Tuesday confirmed that so-called software and software-related service revenue, which includes license sales as well as support revenue and cloud computing subscriptions, is seen rising between 10% and 12% this year. Operating profit is forecast to be between EUR5.05 billion and EUR5.25 billion, up from EUR4.71 billion last year. SAP's guidance includes some revenue that isn't recognized under International Financial Reporting Standards and excludes certain costs and gains, and the company also adjusts its forecasts for currency swings. -Write to Philipp Grontzki at philipp.grontzki@dowjones.com Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires
