Workday, Inc. (WDAY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Our next guest, third time's a charm maybe, someone very special. I want to introduce Carl as somebody -- how many of you know somebody who's been a CEO, CFO, COO and a venture capitalist in their lives? Do you know anybody?

No, I don't. And I'm not sure who's crazy enough to do all that.

That's our next guest, Carl Eschenbach, CEO of Workday. Welcome back to Goldman Sach Communacopia.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. So it's good to be at your conference, Kash.

It's been an amazing conference. Thanks to people like you that make the content attractive for our clients to make it worth their while to fly all the way [ from parts of the world ].

Yes. It's definitely worth our time as companies to spend time with great investors and partners. So we appreciate you putting this conference on. It's good to be back.

It's great to be with you. Great to be with you. So Carl, I want to start off with a tough question. Workday has been a founder -- first of all, disclosures, conflict disclosures relating to Goldman Sachs and linked to Workday IR safe harbor, both of those can be found on the Goldman Sachs website and the Workday websites, respectively.

With that out of the way, I want to start off with Workday has been a founder-led company. It's tough to be an operational CEO coming in and filling that role. So how complicated this is? And why is this not even tougher than you ever thought before?

Well, this is an interesting question because if you know Kash, he goes off script and he goes off script right away with the very first question, so I appreciate that, Kash. It's a great question. When I decided to step back into an operating role now almost 2 years ago, one of the reasons I decided Workday was the right fit for me was because I knew Aneel. We've known each other. We've been in the industry a long time. And I also got to serve on the Board for 5 years before coming back into the operating role. And I think it is not easy. Granted, it's a great question. But I think you can make it easier if you do a couple of things. So first and foremost, I think for both Aneel and I, at our age and where we're at in our careers, we don't have an ego. We're only trying to drive value for our customers, partners, employees and shareholders. So if you focus on what the ultimate outcome of the company is that you want as opposed to what you want for yourself or your ego, I think that makes a big difference. I also think we have different skill sets. Aneel is a deep product thinker. I think he's one of the greatest enterprise software minds we've had in our industry. I've come up through sales, marketing, operations and product earlier in my career. So I think we have different skill sets that are complementary. And as Aneel has become the Exec Chairman of the Board, I think the symbiotic relationship that we have and how I leverage him. In fact, we had a board meeting yesterday, and I got to leverage him on the product side where I needed them. I just think it's worked really well, but it's not easy. But I think it does go back to trust and respect and belief in one another and throwing the ego out the door the day you walk in and you don't care who's doing what, you're just more interested in creating value across those three constituents I talked about earlier.

That's great. Where do you see the company going in the next 5 years? If you were to come back to Goldman Sachs Communacopia 2029, what would you like Workday to look like?

Yes. Well, I think on our earnings call just a few weeks ago, obviously, many of you were on the call, we laid out a financial profile that has us growing good growth over the medium term through the next, if you will, 2.5 years. And while we maintain really solid growth, we think we can expand operating margin at the same time, and we can do that at scale. And that framework we laid out is one that says we're going to grow 15% through FY '27 on the growth side, and we're going to expand operating margins to 30% over the next couple of years. And that's on the back of already expanding operating margins by 500 basis points in the last 2 years. So we're going to see a 1,000 point expansion in operating margin over a 4-, 4.5-year period. So we can continue to grow, grow when I'm talking about growth at scale, we're $8 billion today plus going to $10 billion, and we think we can grow 15% and expand operating margin going forward. All at the same time, we continue to think of new innovative ways to drive technology to market in new and innovative ways to go to market at the same time, and then we layer in some M&A along the way. I think the growth profile of the company will look significantly different than it did just a few years ago, just leaning into HCM and getting more and more into FINS. We have a lot more areas and surface area that we can get growth from. So I think this new financial profile that we laid out, my partner, Zane, is the CFO of the company, and I feel really good about it. And I think we're going to be able to achieve it, and then we're going to get operating leverage, continue to invest and grow at scale.

So expanding margins and still growing at 15%. How confident are you? You put out the target, but what are the things that give you confidence that you can achieve these targets?

Yes. So let's start, let's break it down. On the growth side, I think we have -- if you look at where we're getting growth in the past versus even today and then thinking about the future, our growth envelope has expanded significantly. We're getting growth from our core market of HR. Obviously, we're now leaning heavily into financials and more and more, we're leaning into full-platform or full-suite sales. And that momentum is really picking up. We also are thinking about growth as we think about segmentation. We've moved from just being a very big large enterprise sales motion to medium enterprise to the top end, if you will, of SMB or the low end of the medium enterprise where we're now selling into companies that have 500 to 1,000 employees. So we've segmented the market further, and we're also continuing to drive our industry strategy. And that industry strategy continues to pay off for us, Kash, when we think about how to grow the company. We don't have a single, I like to describe it as anchor tenant industry or vertical, that if it has an outage, our growth slows. We're selling into many different industries. And then we're focused on international. We have a significant opportunity to push the business more international, and we only get 25% of our business outside the U.S., yet it represents more than 50% of our TAM. So -- and then lastly, we're thinking about how do we leverage a partner ecosystem. A couple of years ago, sitting up here with you, we talked about the big 4 or 5 system integrators deploying our technology. Now we're talking about partners as a source of growth and innovation in helping us drive pipeline. So growth as a whole, we just have more areas to cover to drive durable growth over the next few years. And on the operating margin side, I just think the rigor in which we're inspecting the business and how we're running it is different than it's been and run in the past. We're more thoughtful. We're more strategic about our investments. And now we're starting to get operating leverage out of some of the investments we're making that go from being, if you will, a headwind on margins as you do the investment to a tailwind as they start to materialize going forward. And then we're also being smarter about our global workforce, right? And where we're deploying resources and assets in the future, historically, a lot of it has been here in our headquarters in California. Now we have a global footprint of offices around the world that gives us access to a lot more talent, and we can deploy in these locations. And we've recently opened offices up, for example, in Costa Rica and in India, and we're leveraging them. So from the day I started 2 years ago, I said this is a company that I fundamentally believe that we can drive growth and expand operating margin at the same time. They didn't have to come at odds with one another.

Yes. And I'm glad in some sense, we lowered the threshold a little but gives you a lot more breathing room to explore over the next 3 to 4 years, how you can grow sustainably at a 15% clip while driving operating margins.

Yes. I mean we still...

That must be a lot of...

Like the 15% growth, we still got, we're going to have to work hard to achieve that. It's a target we feel good about. And it's because of all these expanded growth opportunities I just articulated that we feel good about the top line. And then again, we can expand the operating margin. I'm very confident in our capability of doing it. And I think the company, quite frankly, is we're driving a lot of evolution and change across the company. But I feel really good about how the 20,000 workmates I get to serve every day are coming along on that journey, and believe we're driving the company in the right direction, both on the growth side and sustainable growth and expanding operating margins. And as you do that, they also start to work differently and smarter and they're much more prudent about where they're making their investments. So I think everything is coming together nicely.

Got it. Carl, what are the changes you've made to the company on the operational side in your last 1 year as sole CEO?

Yes. So listen, I talk a lot internally about speed and agility. I think speed is one of the best business strategies you can have. If you're moving faster than your competition, you're ahead. So we talk a lot about the speed and pace of innovation, the speed and pace of how we make decisions. I think also now having -- I hate to say this number, I was thinking about this driving in today, 35-plus years of experience of understanding how to grow businesses on the go-to-market side, I think we've done a lot on the partners. We've expanded into new markets. So we're doing a lot of things different on the go-to-market side. We're launching it to federal in a very successful way right now. If you look at the federal market, when it comes to HCM or ERP or financials, we talked about how there's still a lot of on-premises software in the enterprise for financials. For example, if you think about it in the federal market, it's even a lot more on-premises. So it's -- so we're just thinking differently. And then the other thing I feel really fortunate that we've been able to attract some incredible talent, and we've been able to marry up incredible talent like Zane, our CFO, our new CMO. We brought a new head of services. We brought a new head of Europe. We have brought a new head of APAC, new head of Japan, a new head of sales operations. We brought in an amazing talent in the company, and it's been very actually fun and if I can say, rewarding to see them come together with a lot of people you know, Kash, have been at Workday a long time, kind of like Aneel and I, that same relationship has formed below us. And everyone is coming together and driving towards a mission and goal. And seeing that come together, it's not us versus them or the old guard versus the new guard, we're all one and the same. And I think that's one of the most rewarding things that I can say over the last 2 years. Hopefully, I've helped serve and shepherd that symbiotic relation.

It comes across in my conversations with people that work for you. You're a huge galvanizing force, and they feel very inspired they can run through brick walls.

Yes. Thank you.

Maybe not brick walls, but...

Yes, I don't want to break walls. I create gaps that they all want to run through with me. But I do drive a lot of change, and I understand that. And I have to be conscious of that to make sure that all the change and the evolution that we need to do to maintain the numbers we just talked about, that the company keeps up with that transformation.

Gili is looking at me saying, "Kash, you've not asked an AI question," so I'm going to let you ask the AI question.

Over 10 minutes in, you guys are way behind.

Yes. Well, it should probably come up when I ask you this question around the conversations that you're having with customers. And what are the key trends that you're seeing? And how does that influence the kind of decision and directions that you're galvanizing the group behind and driving the company towards?

Yes. So as we spend time with customers, I'll break it down to two different, if you will, constituents or personas that we speak to a lot. First, on the HR side, I think talent is a key imperative right now when you speak to CEOs. They're all trying to figure out how to recruit, right, and also not only recruit but then how to hire and then how to retain them. Because a significant portion right now in our industry of how to grow a business isn't just on the recruiting side, it's how you retain them. And one of the ways you retain them is you give your employees an amazing user experience. And that's what we're talking to our customers about, is how do you give your employees a user experience that makes them want to stay in the seat where they're at today and not move around in the industry like we've seen in the past. I think it's about maintaining your workforce. On the financial side, I think the financials and CFOs today are thinking about how to leverage all the data assets they have and how to drive deeper insights to really think about the business going forward. And quite frankly, I think on the finance side compared to the HR or HCM side, I think we're still in the early days of that transformation. There's a lot of legacy systems on-premise and people are still thinking about how do they improve the efficiencies of their financial systems and drive deeper insights going forward. And then the last thing I'd say, we are having a tremendous amount of success right now in meeting both of them in the same conversation. What I mean by that, if you look at some of the most successful industry segments we have today around health care, around, if you will, state local government or higher education. Decisions are being made on a full-platform, full-suite basis where they want both HR and financials at the same time. We don't talk separately about the two because that dataset getting to AI is highly valuable for customers. And when we talk to customers today and a conversation of AI comes up, I fundamentally believe an investment in Workday is an investment in AI. And the reason for that is quite simply, we have one of the most highly curated datasets in the industry to train off of. It's not the size of the dataset, it's a highly curated dataset and the context behind that, that drives business value back to our customers. And we, with AI, I think, can lead the enterprise through both HR and finance to show true business value and business impact. We can help people accelerate what they're doing. We can augment what they're doing. And ultimately, what we want to do is not just have employee impact, but we think we can transform business process, business workflows because we are the system of record for HR and money. So AI is top of mind and it's something we're talking to our customers about every day.

A common theme in this conference and through the conversations that we've been having with those companies and investors is really about engagement with AI and the data and thinking about also bringing in Workday and the changes that you've brought to the company in terms of product like bundled pricing and packaging. How are you thinking about the awareness that you can bring and the value that customers can actually extract from the platform and bringing that to market in the right way?

Yes. So I'm going to -- there's a couple of different questions in here, Gili, I'll answer. So first and foremost, next week, this is not a plug, but I'm just articulating this to share with the follow-up to your question, is we have our user Rising conference next week in Las Vegas. The attendance is through the chart, significant growth versus last year. And there, we're going to be talking about what we're doing today around AI and the business value customers get today from Workday. We have more than 50 different, if you will, use cases in production today that customers are taking advantage of. Now that being said, we have not rushed to market like a lot of the other software vendors out there or our peers and said we're going to charge you a big uplift, 10%, 15%, 20%, 30% for access to those capabilities. We believe our customers pay us a subscription fee and they expect innovation and we should deliver that back. So that's what we're doing today. And I will tell you, our monetization strategy, if you go and talk to our customers, they are highly grateful and thankful for the way we're approaching it. That being said, there are certain use cases that we can monetize, and we are when it comes to AI. Like talent optimization, how do you leverage and get access to the skills you have inside your company and how do you actually drive, if you will, internal recruiting? We also now have something called Extend and Extend Pro, which is an AI API gateway and also a developer platform that has a Copilot to allow people to develop on top of our platform. We also acquired, as you know, HiredScore, which is absolutely the best talent acquisition, AI-driven solution in the market and also helps with internal recruiting as well. So we're taking an approach that's very thoughtful in how we monetize it. But the innovation engine behind what we're doing around AI is rapidly expanding, and we're going to be showcasing a whole slew. I don't want to spoil it. My marketing people would kill me, but next week is going to be a really important and game-changing week for Workday. You should think about AI in leveraging that dataset. That's the key. It's the dataset we have other people don't.

Carl, I wanted to ask you a question on the dataset. Your former colleague, Pat Grady, was on stage with us just a couple of hours ago.

He's still my colleague here a little bit.

Okay. Okay. So it's good. I suppose you know his views on just -- since he shared that with the broader stage, his view is that the data incumbency, you cannot take it for granted. The data can be inaccessible. But I'm sure as an application SaaS incumbent, you have a very strong view on the parts of the data and how the data can be used to train your LLMs, et cetera. What is the counter to more of a venture capitalist peers' viewpoint that things could be disrupted. He said he does give the SaaS incumbents an advantage because they have the data, but it's not 100% clear that it is easily accessible, that you cannot rest on it. And I'm sure you're very aggressively looking at how you can leverage this data better than any other start-up can. Can you talk to us more about how this data really a source of competitive advantage?

Yes. Well, I had dinner with them last week. So maybe I was peppering him with like, we have the data, right? You're -- a lot of what we're seeing in the industry when it comes to AI and these start-ups, right, they're very powerful and a bunch them will emerge, right, and become very large companies. And a lot of them will -- there will be carnage and wreckage at the same time. And that's because a lot of the data they're training off of is the Internet. And that's why you hallucinate, right, where when you have a highly curated set of data and you're training off of it to drive specific business value back to your customers, I think it's a very big advantage for companies like us. As I always say, Kash, you know this, there's 3 systems of record that matter in the enterprise that power all enterprises, it's your people, your money and your customers. And we have 2 of the 3 and training off of that and if you want to, leveraging something like Extend Pro, which is an API, an AI API to bring in other datasets or bring in other foundational models, you can do that at the same time. So we're not just limiting what we can do with that data, but you can bring in third-party data and then bring it together like we're doing with Salesforce and drive business outcomes for your customers.

Yes. And he exactly said that, too. So this LLM magic is accessible to the SaaS incumbents. So they have equal opportunity to tap into that innovation while still taking advantage of the data [ that they have ].

And the other thing you'll start to see and you'll hear people speak about is as we create agents that actually drive true business transformation that work in conjunction with humans, you're going to see someone, agent like Workday start to have agent-to-agent relationships with other agents out there, leveraging multiple, if you will, different foundational models to drive business value for our customers. So there's a lot we can do. But listen, it's the fact. It's not the size of the data you're training off of, right? It's the quality of...

Gili is probably saying, "I'm so glad, Kash. I'm tired of being your agent. So look at your own agent, okay?"

Yes.

So that's what she said.

Well, depending on how nice you are on callbacks in that, we'll have an agent.

Yes, I know. Well, I got to tell you, we hosted Marco Argenti, our CIO. His last point was you got to be nice to your LLMs. Be kind. Treat them like your children, parent them really well, and they will behave and they'll -- right.

We're always, we're always nice.

Am I being nice?

Yes. I mean I think when we're talking about agents, right, and then we're thinking about their business model that we have right now in most of the application software companies, seat-based models, a little bit of consumption-based models, how are you thinking about that evolving? And the relevancy, particularly maybe within HCM and if that's different within FINS?

Yes. So we're always thinking about new pricing models. For example, things like Extend, right, is more consumption and usage based. But today, we are a seat-based pricing model for HCM. And the reason for that is when someone deploys Workday, it is used by every single person in the company. There is a seat-based pricing model that works for HCM and a little bit for FINS as well. So it works for us today. We'll think about things in the future. But I think because of the applicability of the platform touches every employee, it is the right model for us. Now the good news is when we're in hyper-growth mode like employees are being hired at an accelerated pace over the last few years, it's a tailwind. If there's a little bit of moderation in growth on head count, it becomes a headwind. So we just have to navigate that. And the way we navigate that to still drive growth is we sell back into our installed base, right? We have 10,500 customers. We have 60% of the Fortune 500. We have the opportunity to sell back into our installed base. And if the seat count doesn't grow, we still sell more products and services back into those customers. So I think there's other ways to grow the business that are slightly different and just purely seat based, and we're thinking about that as we go forward as well. And we do have some, for example, with some of our AI solutions, it's much more consumption based, too.

How would you characterize the market readiness for example, within FINS, right? Because that one is naturally a little bit more behind, I think, HCM when it comes to cloud penetration. And there's, of course, a few different dynamics in the industry that will drive a lot more cloud usage and migration over the next few years. How do you see that kind of evolving? And how are you particularly going after that opportunity?

So first, we see it as a very large opportunity because of the lack of progression, if you will, or movement to the cloud like we saw with a lot of other things like HCM and other parts of the SaaS-cloud world. FINS is still behind. We talk about 25% moving to the cloud. That may have gone up to 30%, but that still represents a 70% on-premises target opportunity for someone like a Workday. So we're leaning heavily into investing in our FINS business across multiple dimensions. Number one, we continue to lean into the product and the product capabilities. We think it has the ability to now service large enterprises at scale. We continue to think about how we internationalize the product to make sure that we can meet the needs of multinationals. So we're leaning heavily into the product feature functionality to meet the multinationals because we do see demand there. And then on the go-to-market side, we are doing two things. Number one, we built out a very dedicated, very specific sales force to focus on this opportunity that you just articulated over the last year. They're starting to yield and right, we're getting the productivity curve we want from them. We still have a ways to go. And then lastly, we're finding partners. Partners are leaning in more than ever to Workday because they see the opportunity when someone moves a financial system to the cloud, someone's got to implement it. Someone's got to do the migration. And the partners are now helping us drive that, and they're also building their own technology and innovation on top of that platform. And then the last thing is, while we talk about financials in the FINS opportunity, the one thing we always come back and talk about is the growth of full platform and full suite, right? So our FINS business is driving a full-platform sale deep into our customers. We talk about health care, we talk about financial services, we talk about service-based industries where the data becomes one and the same when you're doing financial planning, you're doing employee planning, that all comes together. And that investment we're making in financials is pulling through full-suite deployments and sales for us on a global basis.

Carl, can you talk a little bit more about the partner strategy? So it looks like it's a brand-new thing in the playbook for Workday. So 1 year into this new love for the partner strategy or new love for partners, how are they responding? What more avenues do you see ahead to tap into the partner community to expand your scope of business?

Yes, it's a great question, and it is part of our growth, right? It's really been impressive to see in the last 18 months, actually, the gentleman who leads our partner organization who's a longtime Workday direct salesperson, we put him in the role 18 months ago and he gave an update at the Board. And I had him do that because 1 year ago, he talked to the Board about the launch of our new partner strategy, and we showcase what it looks like 1 year later, and the growth is phenomenal. The growth from driving pipeline, right, the growth from being able to have them resell our technology, the growth in strategic partnerships and how we're leveraging, it is all leading to us getting operating leverage on the go-to-market side and generating revenue. Just last quarter, we announced two very strategic business partnerships, one with Equifax for employee verification and with Kainos, who's leveraging something we call Built on Workday, where they can develop very specific solutions for Workday customers all developed on top of, if you will, the Workday Marketplace. So it's a big part of our driver. And then the last thing I'd say, Kash, is they're driving pipeline growth. Our pipeline growth, we've shared some of those statistics on the earnings call, quarter-over-quarter, the increase in the pipeline that they're driving for us is absolutely phenomenal. So this strategy is paying out across innovation, across go-to-market, across resell, co-sell. And an example of that is we now have the ability to sell -- we have payroll in certain markets, but we don't have global payroll. We can now resell on our paper global payroll from Strada, which is the old Alight, and we have partnerships with the likes of ADP, right, that are just different strategies than we've had in the past. So the ecosystem, and I like to use this term, right, we're trying to develop not just an ecosystem, but as we open up the aperture around the Workday platform, what we're actually building is an entire economy, right, for people to leverage.

I say introvert to extrovert.

There you go. Yes. And we -- again, we...

Aneel, if you're listening, I love you, but introvert to extrovert.

Yes, I get it.

Yes, yes. So Carl, as companies grow -- become larger, they mature, it's hard to really innovate. How do you think about how can Workday innovate at the scale that you're at? And what's the role of M&A and tuck-in acquisitions in that regard?

Yes. So one of our six core values is innovation. So we will never stop innovating. We have an incredibly powerful product and technology team around the world that's driving innovation. We'll be showcasing it next week. But innovation doesn't just come in the form of organic innovation that comes in inorganic innovation. And as we said on the earnings call and we say when we're in front of our employees and our investors, we're inquisitive. We have a strong balance sheet. We have $7 billion of cash. Our ability to go out and look for acquisitions that are adjacent to our platforms, both HCM and financials, is something we're very interested in. And I will just tell you we're actively in the market speaking because there's a lot of assets out there right now, both from the venture-backed community and the private equity community as well in our respective markets who have assets that will become available, and we're going to look at everything if we can drive growth without being highly dilutive to the bottom line.

Will that -- so you still would largely expect to keep that 15% growth rate and 30% operating...

Yes. So the framework that we laid out the 15% and 30% over the next 2.5 years is basically a continuation of the technology tuck-in acquisitions we've done. If we do something material of size, it either changes the top line or it's more dilutive to the bottom line, we'll update and reflect that in revised medium-term guide.

Carl, we have just a few more minutes left, but I'm curious to hear like what your conversations with customers and employees are kind of saying, and I think there's a lot of choppiness in the macro. And how is that determining like their positioning and what they're thinking -- their IT priorities kind of going into the back half of this year and even [ for the long term ]?

So yes, on our earnings call, right, we get asked about the macro all the time, the selling conditions and it seems like at least...

Like somebody on the stage has been asked that question.

Yes. For the last couple of years, I actually now describe it is this is the new norm. I think we all -- if you go back kind of pre COVID, right, this was the normal operating environment and the sales environment we were all facing with. Then we saw this hyper-growth over the last few years, and it's moderated again, but it's been pretty consistent. And there is a lot of scrutiny out there, and customers need to see a strong ROI or a total cost of ownership advantage to make a decision. This actually plays into our favor. And I say that because there's a lot of tools, there's a lot of software, there's a lot of applications that have been bought over the last few years. Now people are trying to drive consolidation. And when you do consolidation, you consolidate on a platform. And Workday is a platform. By the way, we have two of the best apps in the world between our HCM and our financials, but we're a platform. And because we're a platform, our customers are talking to us about how do we consolidate and drive a better total cost of ownership, leveraging something like Workday, that is a constant conversation. And then the next conversation is going back to what you asked earlier, how do you layer AI on top of that to even drive more efficiencies at scale? And that's the conversation we have with our customers. It's consolidation. It's a better ROI. It's simplifying their operating environment and then leveraging AI to drive efficiency gains and a step function change in human productivity.

On that note, Carl, we wish you well in your role and successful Rising next week. We really appreciate the partnership with Goldman. And I know it takes commitment to come out and spend time with us and our clients, but we really -- thanks for making the time.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody. Have a great conference.