Another decent quarter, but FCF guidance for full year is slightly softer than earlier which perhaps led the stock to ~7% decline in AH. But after listening to the call, any potential concern related to FCF should evaporate.
Here are my notes.
2/ Revenue met high end of the guidance for the quarter. Low end of the topline guidance for the full year was increased, and so did margins.
But as mentioned earlier, FCF mid-point guidance for FY decreased from $1.61 Bn to $1.54 Bn.
3/ Why did FCF guidance fall?
ADSK used to have multi-year Enterprise Business Agreement (EBA) for which they would get paid cash upfront, but in exchange EBAs would receive ~10% discount.
ADSK is still doing multi-year EBAs, but switching to annual billings, so less cash...
4/ ...upfront. Instead of 10% discount, now ADSK is giving EBAs 5% discount.
It's a win-win for both ADSK and customer. ADSK still has multi-year contract and give lower discount. Customers have more certainty of price and pay lower upfront cash.
5/ Net revenue retention ~100-110%.
~75% of new customers come from digital channels. Overall, direct sales, which is higher margin, was 34% of total sales (vs 30% last year). LT target of direct vs reseller 50-50.
Non-GAAP Gross Margin ~92%; OPM ~31%, +2 pp
6/ ADSK repurchased 679k shared YTD at avg. price of $278/share. Nothing too aggressive though; mostly offsetting the dilution.
7/ Mandatory question about ADSK's FY'23 FCF guidance which sell-side asks every quarter as they probably worry about implied >50% YoY FCF growth next year.
I don't know how much clearer management can get on this point.
8/ ADSK continues to tinker with their massive 2 mn non-compliant users as they introduce Flex payment i.e. pay-as-you-go
"it's also a tool for reaching the long tail of our customers."
9/ This year or next year's guidance incorporate nothing from the infrastructure bill, but obviously ADSK is going to be a beneficiary of the bill.
Also beneficiary of the semi's cycle. Picks and shovels are really a good business.
10/ Does ADSK still need to do tuck-in acquisitions to complete its platform?
"So there's always a little white space, okay?"
11/ Is labor shortage in construction a headwind or tailwind for ADSK?
"It's actually more of a tailwind because what our customers are struggling with is they're trying to do more with smaller staff."
End/ Overall, solid quarter. Nothing much to worry about for long-term shareholders.
I started investing in 2013. Not in the US, but in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh market reached a stratospheric level in 2010 which is yet to be crossed after 11 years. The index is still ~20% below 2010 peak.
2/ I was a Senior in college in 2013 and decided to major in Finance. I thought I should get into investing.
When I started, the market experienced ~60% drawdown. Even though I had no clue what I was doing, it was hard to go wrong when you invest in such a market.
3/ After graduation, I got a job in research which definitely helped me understand investing a bit better.
Bangladesh market is almost entirely driven by retail investors as institutional investor base is pretty weak. In fact, most institutional investors behave like retail.
“It isn’t that I don’t understand software products, but I don’t know how that industry is going to develop over 10 or 20 years… so anything that’s rapidly developing that has lots of change embodied in it, by my definition, I won’t understand.”
2/ Two companies that I recently studied ( $CRWD and $ROKU) reminded me of that Buffett quote.
Both are run by founders, have executed incredibly well over last few years and enjoyed secular tailwinds on their back. They were nimble, aggressive, and eating incumbents’ share.
3/ Both companies are valued in a way that assumes they will coast through the next 5-10 years.
But when you look at the rate of change in their respective industries, it makes you think whether such assumptions will indeed hold.
One of my core thesis for $Etsy is their ability to scale the brand in international markets. Building two-sided marketplace is not easy, but to do it in multiple countries is even more difficult.
But Etsy might just pull it off.
2/ In 2Q’20, international was 32% of total GMS. In 2Q’21, it reached 41%.
Important to remember how Etsy defines international. If either buyer or seller is outside the US, it is considered international.
3/ When both buyer and seller is in the same country outside the US, that’s considered “domestic international”.
In 1Q’21, Etsy mentioned “International domestic” GMS grew 2x faster than overall revenue.
I was listening to ILtB's episode with Sridhar who played instrumental role in Google's Search success, and is now building Neeva, a subscription based private search product.
As a $GOOG shareholder, I was curious and here's my notes.
2/ In 1Q'21 earnings call, Philipp Schindler explained drivers of search:
I. Number of queries
II. Percentage of queries that have commercial potential
III. Click-through rates
IV. Cost Per Click (CPC)
Sridhar condensed it further: volume of clicks multiplied by CPC
3/ "It turns out that persuading people to query more is next to impossible. All of us have a certain propensity to use search, and it varies from person to person."