As Q2 earnings lower the company giant SAP’s stock, President of SAP North America DJ Paoni is leaving the enterprise company, TechCrunch has learned from sources. SAP confirmed the news, saying Paoni will retire from the company after 26 years.
“We strongly believe that the momentum we are seeing in North America can be attributed to strong leadership, so the search for his successor is underway,” the company said. “An announcement will be made once confirmed. We thank DJ for his incredible contributions and wish him the best in this next chapter.
As head of US Sales, Paoni had a prominent role in the company, driving strategy and day-to-day operations for the region, SAP’s largest market. On many occasions, he has also acted as its public face in the US For example, he spoke about the importance of employee mental health during the pandemic at an event in 2021 put on by The Washington Post.
While there has always been talk of tension between SAP’s American and German headquarters, Constellation Research analyst Holger Müller he said he didn’t see the play here.
“There are always rumblings of tensions between the German and US cultures when an executive leaves the US. And while cultural challenges are common in global companies, they are no more apparent at SAP than to other technology vendors,” he said.
He added that it is intriguing who SAP will choose as Paoni’s successor. “It will be interesting to see who will succeed Paoni, a 26-year veteran of SAP. We may see the generational change that happened at the board level happening now in the SAP regions.”
Executive turnover is not uncommon at the company. Former CEO Bill McDermott stepped down in 2019 after 17 years with the organization and became CEO at ServiceNow shortly after. The company replaced McDermott with a co-CEO setup that included German-based Christian Klein and Jennifer Morgan in the US Six months later, Morgan stepped down. Rob Enslin recently left SAP after a 27-year run to join Google Cloud, and later moved on to become CEO of UiPath.
Paoni’s departure was learned yesterday, the same day SAP announced Q2 2022 earnings. Per CNBC, the company reported overall revenue growth of 13%, with cloud revenue specifically up 34% . However, the company cut its revenue expectations, a pullback linked to the war in Ukraine.
Currently, SAP shares are down 38% from their 52-week high, but up 3.71% from yesterday’s closing price.