Rimini Street rose 24.31% on record SAP services sales as SAP's free Joule runtime ends December 31
The third-party support vendor rose 24.31% on record SAP-services sales in the same week SAP made Joule agents free through December 2026. Same customers, two bills, and SAP starts charging in January.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
Rimini Street+23.81% — Rimini Street, up 23.81 percent today, the company that makes its living supporting SAP+0.18% — SAP, up 0.18 percent today and Oracle−6.21% — Oracle, down 6.21 percent today systems the vendors would rather replace, reported record third-quarter sales of services for SAP software on October 29, 2026 4. The stock closed at $4.96 the next day, up 24.31% 4. That is the market paying up for the one thing SAP's growth story cannot price: the customers who have not moved.
SAP put its counteroffer on the table four days earlier
At TechEd, SAP's annual developer conference, on October 27, SAP launched the machinery meant to make third-party support obsolete: Joule Work and Joule Studio for building enterprise agents from more than 70 AI models, a new Enterprise AI Gateway that consolidates authentication, policy enforcement, monitoring and auditing for every AI interaction, an assistant for EU AI Act compliance, and a managed Joule Studio runtime that runs customers' custom agents free through December 2026 2.
The free runtime stays free through December 31, 2026; SAP starts charging in January 2. Building first, billing after, is a deliberate purchase of habit: once a customer's agents run on SAP's runtime, the January invoice lands on a system that already does the work.
The two bills compete for one budget, and both grew last quarter
SAP's own quarter, reported October 21, crossed €10 billion in total revenue for the first time, with cloud revenue up 26% and the Cloud ERP Suite up 29% 6. Rimini's quarter ran the other direction from the same wallet: revenue of $112.1 million, up 8.3%, and adjusted revenue, which strips out the PeopleSoft support book Rimini is winding down, up 10.7% 4.
The forward gauges lean further Rimini's way. Adjusted calculated billings rose 21.9% to $78.0 million, adjusted EBITDA rose 52% to $15.1 million, and remaining performance obligations, the contracted backlog, stand at $652.9 million, just below the company's record 34. Billings, the forward gauge, are growing twice as fast as revenue, which says the deferral is accelerating, not fading.
Growth resumed in Q2 2026, then Q3 2026 lifted revenue to a record
Data
| Rimini Street revenue | |
|---|---|
| Q3 24 | 104.67M |
| Q4 24 | 114.21M |
| Q1 25 | 104.2M |
| Q2 25 | 104.11M |
| Q3 25 | 103.43M |
| Q4 25 | 109.79M |
| Q1 26 | 105.47M |
| Q2 26 | 111.08M |
| Q3 26 | 112.06M |
One installed base, two growth rates: SAP's cloud grows faster, Rimini's billings close the gap
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Rimini adj. billings | 21.9% YoY |
| Rimini adj. revenue | 10.7% YoY |
| SAP cloud revenue | 26% YoY |
| SAP Cloud ERP Suite | 29% YoY |
The pitch in one customer's words: Khimji Ramdas Group, an Omani conglomerate, said Rimini cut its SAP support costs by 80%, freeing funds for AI innovation without migrations or replatforming 4. SAP's answer to that customer is Joule, free until the bill starts.
Rimini's own numbers cap its bull case
The record quarter rests on the installed base rather than conquests of new accounts. Active clients grew 1.9% to 3,214 and revenue retention is 90%, so a tenth of the book walks off every year 3. Revenue grew 8.3% while the client count grew 1.9%, so the extra dollars came from existing relationships renewing and expanding 34.
The limits show in management's own words. CEO Seth Ravin told analysts clients are still early in identifying which processes to hand to AI, and the commercial contribution of Rimini's agentic suite in 2027 is unclear 3. The margin gains came from process efficiency and labor relocation, not internal AI 1.
Gross margin has hovered near 61% for two years, below the mid-60s Rimini promises for 2027
Data
| Gross margin | |
|---|---|
| Q3 24 | 60.7% |
| Q4 24 | 63.7% |
| Q1 25 | 61% |
| Q2 25 | 60.4% |
| Q3 25 | 59.9% |
| Q4 25 | 60.4% |
| Q1 26 | 59% |
| Q2 26 | 60.9% |
| Q3 26 | 61.4% |
What decides it next
Watch three dates: December 31, 2026, when SAP's free runtime lapses and billing starts in January 2; Rimini's fourth-quarter guidance of $117 million to $119 million 4; and its January 14, 2027 Investor Day, where the 2027 plan lands alongside targets of roughly $1 billion revenue at mid-60s gross margins 1. Until then, every dollar of Rimini's $652.9 million backlog is a meter running on SAP migrations not yet signed 41.
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