SAP said it would consider buying back shares to return cash to shareholders, sparking a sceptical response from analysts who said they would rather see the world's biggest maker of business software spend money on acquisitions."Given SAP's strong free cash flow generation over the first nine months of 2011, the company plans to further evaluate buying back shares," the company said in a statement on Wednesday, without providing details.SAP, which competes with Oracle Corp , said free cash flow was 2.64 billion euros ($3.7 billion) in the first nine months, up 42 percent from last year and accounting for 27 percent of total revenue."It is not a massive move but it certainly is one of the options to optimise the financials of the company," SAP's co-chief executive Jim Hagemann-Snabe told Reuters Insider TV.
Oracle Corporation, incorporated in 2005, is an enterprise software company. Shares of ORCL remained unchanged at $32.37. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $24.72 and as high as $36.50. On average, 40841700 shares of ORCL exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 0.
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