SAP agrees to buy Business Objects for 4.8 bln euro

By Georgina Prodhan, European Technology Correspondent

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - SAP (SAPG.DE) has agreed to a cash offer to buy software group Business Objects BOBJ.PA BOBJ.O for about 4.8 billion euros ($6.8 billion) in the face of an aggressive acquisition spree by rival Oracle (ORCL.O).

The world's leading business software maker said on Sunday the primary driver for the acquisition, its biggest and a reversal of its avowed organic-growth strategy, was the potential to gain new business.

Germany-based SAP is racing to more than double its customer base to 100,000 by 2010, mainly by winning more small and medium-sized companies as clients.

Its 42 euros-per-share offer represents a 20 percent premium over Business Objects' closing price on Friday and values Business Objects at about 4.07 billion euros.

SAP said the transaction including costs was worth just over 4.8 billion euros and would be financed through cash and loans.

Franco-American Business Objects, whose business-intelligence software helps companies to mine mountains of data to detect market trends, reported preliminary third-quarter results just after SAP's announcement that fell short of expectations.

It said that according to preliminary results it would report earnings per share of $0.36-$0.39, compared with the average estimate of $0.51 in a Reuters poll of analysts.

Sales would be between $366 million and $370 million, also below the poll's average of $385.1 million.

Business Objects has more than 43,000 customers, according to its own data, and made 2006 sales of $1.25 billion. It says about 40 percent of its customers are already customers of

SAP.

SAP Chief Executive Henning Kagermann told a conference call: "The biggest driver was definitely growing new business."

The two companies said they would continue to offer standalone software as well as integrated solutions from an unspecified future date.

Business Objects also offers its software on demand over the Web as so-called software as a service, a fast-growing market pioneered by Salesforce.com (CRM.N) that removes the need for companies to manage their own software infrastructure.

SAP plans to start selling a broader on-demand offering next year, though the launch has been delayed, and Oracle inherited on-demand customer-relations service Siebel.com with its acquisition of Siebel Systems two years ago.

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