FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Shares in SAP were up 4.4% in Lang & Schwarz pre-market trade on Tuesday after the German software company raised full-year targets on strong cloud business in the third quarter.

Cloud revenue grew 27%, adjusted for currency effects, to 4.35 billion euros ($4.71 billion) in the third quarter, boosted by Cloud ERP Suite resource planning programme sales, which increased by 36%.

Artificial intelligence was a key growth driver, according to CEO Christian Klein. "Around 30% of our cloud contracts in the third quarter included AI use scenarios," he said late on Monday.

Operating profit grew by 28% to 2.24 billion euros, exceeding expectations, due to cost-cutting measures and a comparatively low number of new hires, CFO Dominik Asam said.

The company expects the cost of an ongoing restructuring at around 3 billion euros as it evaluates up to 10,000 of its roughly 100,000 jobs to prepare for the emerging era of AI.

On this basis, the Walldorf-based group raised its full-year cloud and software revenue target to 29.5-29.8 billion euros for the full year instead of 29-29.5 billion euros.

2024 operating profit is now seen at 7.8 billion euros after a previous forecast of 7.6-7.9 billion euros.

($1 = 0.9243 euros)