Thanks to the weak euro, Europe's largest software manufacturer SAP got through the difficult third quarter better than feared.
Adjusted for special effects, earnings before interest and taxes were at almost 2.1 billion euros at the previous year's level, as the Dax heavyweight announced on Tuesday in Walldorf.
That was more than analysts had previously estimated on average.
Adjusted for exchange rate effects, the operating result would have fallen by 8 percent.
Management had already indicated that investments in the cloud business would weigh on results.
CEO Christian Klein spoke of a turning point in a conference call;
the fourth quarter is likely to be significantly better.
Sales increased by a total of 15 percent to an unexpectedly high 7.84 billion euros.
Two-thirds of the growth came from currency effects.
While software licenses were weaker than expected, SAP was able to show a 38 percent increase in sales in the declared growth area from the cloud, driven by the core software S/4 Hana.
The bottom line, however, was that SAP's net profit fell by 61 percent to 547 million euros.
A year ago, venture capital fund Sapphire Ventures, which invests primarily in startups, had seen equity results boost profits significantly.