Autodesk Makes New Math to Explain Why It Had A Good Quarter

In the first quarter under new leadership, you might have expected to see a turnaround in Autodesk’s predicament. Andrew Anagnost has been sole CEO since June. What is he waiting for?

Seriously, Andrew has taken control of a rather large ship and turning a large ship around –without capsizing it – it going to take time.

And that presumes a turnaround is in order. Those who know more about financial matters (many at Autodesk and in the financial community) have stated the company is on the right tack and sailing towards eventual riches. It's just a matter of time before everyone converts from perpetual to term licensing.

 

Revenue curve is showing an upward arc with last 3 quarters of increases. Chart based on Autodesk data, created by TenLinks.

9 straight quarters in the red. The profit curve is oscillating and appears to be leveling off below $100 million in net loss (last 6 quarters average loss of $143 million). Chart based on Autodesk data, created by TenLinks.

For the 2nd quarter of FY 2018, the company barely upticked in revenue (up 3%) and continued losing money, this time $144 million, even more that of the previous quarter ($130 million).

Autodesk lists $2.1 billion in assets, $1.2 billion in cash or “cash equivalents,: a burn rate of $140 million per quarter puts the company’s life expectancy at 2.1 years. Last year at this time, Autodesk listed $2.5B in cash or its equivalent.

To explain Autodesk’s continued optimism, a new financial mathematics has been developed by Autodesk, called New Metrics, uses  terms like M2S (maintenance to subscription) and ARR (annualized recurring revenue) to prove Autodesk is on the right course. One industry observer struggling to attempts to reconcile general accounting practices to Autodesk math here. Worrisome to another industry observer is the decline in bastions of Autodesk: manufacturing (down 17%) and AEC (down 18%) while low cost AutoCAD LT was up 32%.

While the new math has industry observers -- and engineers -- scratching their heads, financial analysts admit to no such confusion.

Go figure. Autodesk stock surges to record high on the day $144 million loss was announced. Chart from Google Finance.

“Good quarter,” says a financial analyst on the call, buoyed by losses not as much as expected. Investors raised stock price to a record high of $119.73 in midday trading the day of the Q2 announcement, though it fell back as by as much as $6 the following business day.

Comments

[Dave Ault]

This whole thing is a perfect example of how companies have lost their way and have evolved into golden parachutes for upper level management only. https://csimarket.com/stocks/single_dividendpr.php?code=ADSK takes you to dividends paid out to shareholders. Last time was a LONG time ago. Negative income reflected in each share not profits or dividends. This whole distortion of the traditional reason to own stock will not go on forever. It historically was income stock derived for holders each year and capital gains were the icing on the cake. Today companies like Autodesk pay nothing to their investors who only have the fiction of ever increasing increasing share value based on PR, numbers manipulation, to much money chasing to few stocks and get ZERO income out of their shares.
The falsehood that Autodesk is succeeding due solely to share value increases boggles my mind. When the wheels come off, and they will, the fall will be meteoric. I am old enough to remember the S%L and Dot Com crashes which were caused by the exact same thing. Upper management selling tall tales to investors and the game of musical chairs inevitably leave investors and funds without a seat while the guys who caused it leave wealthy. I would really like to know what Anangnost's golden parachute looks like. Smoke and mirrors on the way to destruction.

[Christopher Fugitt]

Can we at least pretend "Deferred Revenue" exists? I know it's a bit of a hard concept to understand, but if we exclude it from the story we are skewing the results to make Autodesk look worse than it really is.

From the financial results "Deferred revenue was $1.78 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2018, which is a 17% increase year over year." If we do the math on that it shows that Autodesk revenue that in the past they were able to recognize it would show a profit of $158 million (this doesn't account for tax or other accounting issues).

With the yearly releases Autodesk was able to count all revenue for a seat of AutoCAD in the current fiscal quarter the sale occurred in. With the move to renting the software Autodesk has to spread the revenue over the rental period of the seat of AutoCAD. So if a user rents a year of AutoCAD Autodesk has to spread the revenue over the 4 quarters ($1,102.50 / 4). This causes the numbers to be skewed. So quarters are going to look bad as customers switch from owning to rental. Last year a customers renewal for owning was recognized as revenue of $1,000, this year it's only $250 for this quarter and then $250 for the next 3 quarters. At some point in the next three years it should balance out and we can then look at the profit numbers quarter over quarter as an accurate picture of the financials.

[Randall Newton, GraphicSpeak]

Your article says (in the caption of the first chart): "Revenue curve is showing an upward arc with last 3 quarters of increases." This is not really true. Quarters should be compared year-over-year, not sequentially. Look at the four most recent quarters and compare each to the year-ago quarter (1Q18 with 1Q17, for example). Revenues are FALLING.