UPDATE: Bank of America Upgrades SAP to Buy

Bank of America raised its rating on SAP AG

from Neutral to Buy and increased its price objective to $85. Bank of America noted, "We upgrade SAP to Buy (from Neutral) … on greater confidence on the company's ability to launch new in-memory solutions and maintain a stable core business. Core (ex HANA) licences growth of 3% coupled with modest success in in-memory solutions (+40% in 2013) drives our above consensus licence revenue growth of 14% in CC in 2013 (street at 10%). Post the last two dilutive cloud acquisitions, we think SAP should expand margins for the next 3 years from the 32.1% in 2012E to 34.6% in 2015E." SAP closed at $70.94 on Thursday.