SAP shares fall as UBS downgrades on AI monetization concerns

Movers Written by: Angela Harmantas 14:26 Wed 26 Aug 2026 --> Disclaimer No investment advice About this content Editorial Standards & Policies Share article About this content × About Angela Harmantas Angela Harmantas is an Editor at Proactive. She has over 15 years of experience covering the equity markets in North America, with a particular focus on junior resource stocks. Angela has reported from numerous countries around the world, including Canada, the US, Australia, Brazil, Ghana, and South Africa for leading trade publications. Previously, she worked in investor relations and led the foreign direct investment program in Canada for the Swedish government. She earned a Bachelor of... Read more About the publisher Proactive financial news and online broadcast teams provide fast, accessible, informative and actionable business and finance news content to a global investment audience. All our content is produced independently by our experienced and qualified teams of news journalists. Proactive news team spans the world’s key finance and investing hubs with bureaus and studios in London, New York, Toronto, Vancouver, Sydney and Perth. We are experts in medium and small-cap markets, we also keep our community up to date with blue-chip companies, commodities and broader investment stories. This is content that excites and engages motivated private investors. The team delivers news and unique insights across the market including but not confined to: biotech and pharma, mining and natural resources, battery metals, oil and gas, crypto and emerging digital and EV technologies. Use of technology Proactive has always been a forward looking and enthusiastic technology adopter. Our human content creators are equipped with many decades of valuable expertise and experience. The team also has access to and use technologies to assist and enhance workflows. Proactive will on occasion use automation and software tools, including generative AI. Nevertheless, all content published by Proactive is edited and authored by humans, in line with best practice in regard to content production and search engine optimisation. SAP shares fall as UBS downgrades on AI monetization concerns Published: 14:26 26 Aug 2026 EDT SAP (NYSE:SAP) faces a slower path to monetizing artificial intelligence, according to UBS, which downgraded the German software giant to Neutral from Buy on concerns that agentic AI is reaching customers too slowly. The Swiss bank said SAP remains a dominant system of record with a deep moat around its core enterprise resource planning business, but the pace of "out-of-the-box" AI agent delivery is lagging. SAP has rolled out just 17 such agents to date, with another 15 in ramp-up, leaving its target of 200 by year-end looking difficult to reach, UBS analysts wrote. The complexity of SAP's largest customers, many running multiple ERP instances across different versions and often on private cloud deployments with custom coding, complicates the company's ability to deliver standardized AI tools, according to the note. UBS said it is hearing positive signals on customers building their own agents through Joule Studio, but adoption remains gradual, making it hard to disprove bearish views on SAP's AI relevance in the near term. UBS expects cloud backlog growth to decelerate in the second half of the year toward management's guided ~23% constant-currency pace, down from Q2's 26% (24.6% organic), a slowdown likely to pressure shares without clearer AI traction. UBS also cited falling cloud gross, higher AI token costs pressuring R&D spending, a 100 million euro cut to 2026 EBIT guidance from acquisition dilution, and management's warnings about IT spending risks tied to the Gulf conflict. UBS said it prefers Amadeus within the sector. Shares of SAP were down 3.4% on Wednesday. Continue reading