Thought Leadership
Many people work with SAP Group programs on a daily basis. Others own its shares – and they are soaring. This pays off for the Group’s managers in particular.
SAP CEO Christian Klein has benefited significantly from the software company’s good business in 2024. The manager earned almost 19 million euros last year, according to SAP’s remuneration report. This is more than two and a half times as much as in 2023, when Klein received around 7.2 million euros. This makes Klein one of the top earners at the largest listed companies in Germany.
Accordingly, Executive Board salaries at SAP are essentially made up of fixed remuneration and short and long-term bonus payments. The bonuses make up the largest part of the salary and are dependent on the achievement of certain targets, among other things.
According to the report, the significant increase in the past year is partly due to the fact that SAP achieved many internal targets. On the other hand, the increase in the share price has driven up the value of the shares that the Supervisory Board grants to managers as a long-term bonus. According to SAP, the share price has risen by 126 percent since 2021.
58 million euros for the entire Executive Board
For CEO Klein, performance-related remuneration accounts for more than 92%. It also accounts for a large proportion of other managers’ salaries. The entire Management Board of Europe’s largest software group earned 58.3 million euros in 2024. A year earlier, it was around 24 million euros.
According to Klein, 2024 was a “fantastic year” for the Walldorf-based software group. SAP was able to increase sales by 10 percent to 34.2 billion euros compared to the previous year. However, the bottom line of 3.15 billion euros was only around half the profit from the previous year. The company incurred several billion euros in one-off costs in 2024 to cut thousands of jobs.
dpa
