Autodesk Q4 Earnings Call Highlights

Key Points

• Autodesk said it finished fiscal 2026 above the high end of guidance across billings, revenue, non‑GAAP operating margin, non‑GAAP EPS and free cash flow; Q4 revenue rose 19% (14% ex‑transaction model) and billings rose 33% (30% cc, 32% cc ex‑model), with the new transaction model contributing roughly $137M to revenue and $185M to billings in Q4.
• Margins and cash flow were strong: non‑GAAP operating margin climbed 120 bps to 38% (GAAP flat after a $100M restructuring charge), Q4 free cash flow was $972M, and the company repurchased $333M of stock in the quarter (about $1.4B for FY26, ~50% of FCF) with a long‑term target to allocate roughly 50% of FCF to buybacks.
• Fiscal 2027 guidance embeds prudence for sales/go‑to‑market disruption — Autodesk guided billings of $8.48B–$8.58B, revenue of $8.10B–$8.17B, non‑GAAP operating margin of 38.5%–39% and free cash flow of $2.7B–$2.8B; management expects the transaction‑model tailwind to wane and flagged $135M–$160M of restructuring cash outflows for the year.

Autodesk NASDAQ: ADSK executives said the company finished fiscal 2026 with results above the high end of its guidance ranges, while outlining fiscal 2027 expectations that incorporate caution around near-term disruption from sales and go-to-market changes.

Quarterly results exceeded guidance as transaction-model effects continued

CEO Andrew Anagnost said Autodesk delivered “strong fiscal 2026 results” with billings, revenue, non-GAAP operating margin, non-GAAP earnings per share, and free cash flow all above the high end of guidance. CFO Janesh Moorjani described the fourth quarter as “another robust quarter,” adding that underlying momentum was similar to prior quarters and better than the assumptions embedded in Autodesk’s guidance.

Moorjani said total fourth-quarter revenue grew 19% as reported and in constant currency, including an approximately $137 million contribution from the company’s new transaction model. Excluding that impact, revenue grew 14% in constant currency. Billings increased 33% as reported and 30% in constant currency, including an approximately $185 million contribution from the new transaction model; excluding the model’s impact, billings grew 32% in constant currency.

In discussing demand drivers, Moorjani said Autodesk again saw strength in architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO), “particularly in construction and emerging markets,” with sustained investment in data centers, infrastructure, and industrial buildings more than offsetting softness in commercial. He also pointed to strength in enterprise business agreements (EBAs), product subscription billings, billings linearity during the quarter, and upfront revenue.

Margins and cash flow reflected restructuring and operating leverage

Fourth-quarter GAAP and non-GAAP operating margins were 22% and 38%, respectively. Moorjani said GAAP operating margin was broadly flat year over year, primarily due to a $100 million restructuring charge tied to Autodesk’s go-to-market optimization. Non-GAAP operating margin increased 120 basis points year over year, helped by operating leverage from revenue outperformance and cost discipline, partly offset by margin drag from the new transaction model.

Autodesk generated fourth-quarter free cash flow of $972 million, which Moorjani said benefited from overall billing strength and billings linearity. On capital allocation, the company repurchased about 1.1 million shares for $333 million in the quarter. For fiscal 2026, share repurchases totaled $1.4 billion—“a bit more than 50%” of free cash flow—reducing shares outstanding by 2.1 million shares. Moorjani said recent share price weakness drove increased repurchases under the company’s programmatic buyback grid, lowering the average purchase price and reducing share count further.

Fiscal 2027 outlook embeds prudence around sales restructuring

Moorjani said Autodesk’s fiscal 2027 guidance assumes a broadly stable macroeconomic environment and includes discrete prudence tied to operationalizing its sales optimization plan. He said the company expects potential disruption again in fiscal 2027 and believes “both the probability and the potential impact of disruption are higher” because the restructuring focus is on customer-facing sales functions.

He noted that fiscal 2027 billings growth will no longer receive a tailwind from the new transaction model or the transition to annual billings for most multi-year contracts, and Autodesk expects billings to be slightly more weighted to the second half of the year due to assumed short-term disruption early in the year and the weighting of the largest EBA cohort in the fourth quarter.

For revenue, Moorjani said the noise from the new transaction model will diminish through the year, from roughly a 3.5 percentage point tailwind in the first quarter to about 1.5 percentage points for the full year. He added that near-term billings impacts from restructuring are reflected in implied revenue growth later in the year.

Autodesk guided for fiscal 2027:

• Billings: $8.48 billion to $8.58 billion
• Revenue: $8.10 billion to $8.17 billion
• GAAP operating margin: 26% to 28%
• Non-GAAP operating margin: 38.5% to 39%
• Free cash flow: $2.7 billion to $2.8 billion

On cash flow drivers, Moorjani said Autodesk expects cash restructuring outflows of $135 million to $160 million in fiscal 2027. He also said the company does not expect to pay meaningful U.S. federal cash tax in fiscal 2027 due to R&D investment provisions in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” with U.S. federal cash taxes beginning to normalize in fiscal 2028. He characterized the net effect of those discrete cash movements as “immaterial” to fiscal 2027 free cash flow.

Moorjani also said stock-based compensation is expected to fall below 10% of revenue in fiscal 2027, continuing a multi-year trend. The capital allocation framework remains unchanged, with Autodesk expecting to apply roughly 50% of free cash flow toward buybacks over time, subject to acquisitions.

Strategy highlights: cloud convergence, consumption models, and AI “agentic” workflows

Anagnost emphasized Autodesk’s focus on “the convergence of design and make in the cloud,” enabled by platform capabilities, industry clouds, and AI. He said customers are demanding convergence to reduce risk, increase quality, optimize costs and resource use during design and build, and enhance efficiency during operations.

He cited momentum in Forma for Construction (which he described as previously known as Autodesk Construction Cloud) and provided examples of customer wins and expansions, including Prestige Group in India selecting Autodesk as its core design delivery platform, a major U.S. utility win-back that displaced a competitor, a hyperscaler expanding its partnership around data centers and facilities, and Arup expanding and standardizing on Forma for data-centric workflows and AI-driven insights.

In manufacturing, executives described customers seeking unified data and AI-driven automation through a consolidated platform, citing multiple deployments and competitive displacements involving Fusion and other Autodesk manufacturing solutions. Moorjani later added that manufacturing “continued to perform well,” that the Make business (including Construction and Fusion) grew 23%, and that construction revenue accelerated during the quarter.

Anagnost also highlighted AI-driven productivity features in Fusion, including Sketch AutoConstrain. He said the model has delivered over 3.8 million constraints since launch, up from 2.6 million in the prior quarter, and that acceptance rates for AutoConstrain suggestions to commercial users have grown to nearly two-thirds, with 90% of those sketches fully constrained.

Q&A: AI ecosystem positioning, channel incentives, and platform monetization

During Q&A, Anagnost said Autodesk’s goal is not to compete directly with frontier model providers, but to ensure the combination of frontier models and Autodesk’s proprietary foundation models is “always better than what a frontier model can do alone,” citing Autodesk’s data, domain context, and AI expertise as key advantages.

He also addressed product positioning between Forma and Revit, describing Forma as focused on cloud and AI-enabled tools while Revit benefits from workflow enhancements, with tight coupling intended to bridge customer transitions over time. He discussed Autodesk’s investment in World Labs, calling world models important for physical AI and suggesting the partnership will start in media and entertainment workflows while expanding over time into other areas such as digital twins and automation-related use cases.

Autodesk also said it will discontinue disclosure of direct versus indirect revenue percentages, with Anagnost noting most transactions now come in directly under an agency model. He said channel incentives are being aligned with Autodesk’s own focus on new business creation and expansion, with renewals compensated lower than new business.

Separately, executives discussed Autodesk Platform Services (APS) and API monetization. Anagnost said the company is targeting monetization of “machine usage” of its intellectual property, particularly customers running sophisticated, repeated API usage that calls functionality in Autodesk’s cloud. He said there were positive early signs in the fourth quarter, while emphasizing Autodesk does not want to impede standard adoption and integration for non-agentic usage.

About Autodesk NASDAQ: ADSK

Autodesk, Inc NASDAQ: ADSK is a software company that develops design and creation tools for the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC), manufacturing, and media and entertainment industries. Headquartered in San Rafael, California, the company was founded in 1982 and is best known for pioneering CAD (computer-aided design) software. Autodesk sells products and services to a global customer base, including architects, engineers, contractors, product designers, and content creators.

The company's product portfolio includes industry-standard design and modeling applications such as AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor, Fusion 360, Maya and 3ds Max, as well as cloud-based collaboration and project management platforms like BIM 360 and Autodesk Construction Cloud.

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