SAP bucks tech trend with surge in prices

Technology and telecom companies were mostly lower, with the major exception of SAP, Europe's biggest business software provider.

The company saw a huge surge in its share price yesterday after it brought forward its fourth-quarter results by two weeks and announced it had beaten its expectations.

In late trading, the shares were 13.6 per cent higher at #142.10, having been more than 20 per cent ahead at one point in the day.

SAP said revenue growth was about 27 per cent. Mr Kevin Ashton at Deutsche Bank said the only guidance analysts had previously had was for "solid growth" in licence revenues, interpreted to mean about 10-15 per cent.

Last week, Deutsche Bank had said: "We do not rule out a profit warning in the next couple of weeks," which had alarmed investors.

A profit warning from the smaller German rival Intershop, another from the rather bigger US rival Inktomi, and poor figures from US purchasing managers had also taken their toll on SAP's share price.

Yesterday's results helped unwind much of that damage, but Mr Ashton pointed out that the shares were bouncing back from a very low position - they closed on Friday at their lowest since August 1999.

He added that the weakened dollar has weighed on SAP, where 40 per cent of revenues are dollar derived.

Telecoms stocks were lower. Deutsche Telekom was off 2.3 per cent at #34 and Vodafone off 6 per cent at #228.5p.

France Telecom closed 2.4 per cent down at #90.75 after announcing that its flotation of New Orange would put up to 15 per cent of the stock on to the market.

The flotation, due in late January, will be one of the biggest in Europe this year.

Telefonica fell 2 per cent to #18.78 after a report that it wanted to merge its Internet company Terra Lycos into its yellow pages unit TPI. The move would make it easier to repel any hostile takeover for Terra.

The Italian Internet company Tiscali fell 4.3 per cent to #13.39 after buying the number two French ISP Liberty Surf by acquiring the stakes of Kingfisher of the UK and French group Arnault's EuropatWeb.