Business travel won't recover in any meaningful way for the remainder of 2020, SAP executives projected as part of the company's third-quarter earnings report. Quarterly revenue for the SAP Concur travel booking and expense system slid 14 percent year over year to €357 million, although that decline is 10 percent in constant currency, according to the company.
SAP in April as part of its 2020 outlook projected some recovery in business travel volumes later in the year, but as the Covid-19 pandemic persists throughout the world, it's clear that won't meaningfully happen, according to the company.
"Regrettably, lockdowns have recently been reintroduced in some regions, infection rates have reaccelerated, and as a result demand recovery has been more muted," SAP CFO Luka Mucic said during a Monday earnings call. "Further and for the same reasons, we now no longer anticipate a meaningful recovery in SAP Concur business travel-related revenues for the remainder of the year."
While SAP CEO Christian Klein noted Concur is "hard to sell in times of Covid," SAP nevertheless in its earnings report cited Uber Technologies, Bridgestone, Sysmex Europe and Keio University as among the organizations who chose SAP Concur solutions during the quarter.
For the third quarter, revenue for SAP as a whole fell about 4 percent year over year to more than €6.5 billion, holding steady at constant currency. Operating profit fell 12 percent year over year to €1.47 billion.