|San Francisco|5 min read
IT WAS A bloodbath. On January 29th SAP, whose applications are widely used to manage everything from inventory to payroll, said during an earnings call that it expected a “slight deceleration” in its cloud-based software business in 2026. Its share price plummeted by 15%. That of ServiceNow, whose tools help businesses automate various tasks, dropped by 13%, even though in the latest quarter its revenue grew faster than analysts had expected. Even software companies that released no news suffered, with Salesforce down by 7% and Workday by 8% (see chart 1).