Workiva Inc. (WK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Brad Reback with the Stifel research software team. Those in the room, thanks for joining us as well as those on the webcast. Next up, we have Workiva, Julie Iskow, CEO. Julie, thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here.

So maybe just real quickly, I would think most people know the Workiva name, but there may be a few new in the audience, be it in person or digitally. Why don't you provide us a couple of minute quick overview on who Workiva is and where you sort of reside in, I'll call probably the office of the CFO.

Okay. Sure. So Workiva was started around 2008, rolled out the first product in 2010. And we started initially with some engineers and accountants. And they developed capability, cloud capability to help companies transform the way they did financial reporting, and started out at SEC reporting, and that was about 15 years ago. And since that time, we've rolled out other capabilities related to it with audit risk management controls, GRC capabilities. And more recently, we've rolled out an offering for environmental, social and governance, ESG or sustainability reporting. So now what we have is financial reporting; nonfinancial ESG or sustainability reporting; along with GRC, governance, risk and control. So we are essentially the only cloud platform -- cloud-native platform that offers the breadth there for what we call assured integrated reporting. The integrated report being financial data, nonfinancial or ESG data within the assurance with the audit capability around it. So that's how we go out to the world. We are -- our strategy essentially has several vectors of growth associated with it. It's -- we continue to be best-of-breed capabilities. We've got our modern platform that just continues to get more open, intuitive, intelligent and connected worth of data. And we work heavily with partners particularly consulting and advising partners to accelerate our growth. And we, of course, have broadened out our footprint and globally. So we continue to focus on those growth vectors and continue to go out in the world with an assured integrated reporting platform.

So maybe take a minute and talk about the auditability -- capability, right, how important that is across the platform. It seems to me that's the commonality.

Sure. I mean, control, when you think about financial reporting, regulatory reporting, certainly is an area of compliance that's important, but controls so you need audit and controls with it. And that is applicable for financial reporting. And it is, of course, now with ESG regulations coming around the world, it's also very applicable having controls around the nonfinancial data or ESG or sustainability data as well. So it's a thread across both of those areas.

That's great. And on the ESG side, how much of that was you all being proactive, seeing that as an opportunity versus your customers pulling you in that direction?

It really was -- we had developed a platform for transparent reporting with data and narrative together wherever you -- and where we excel in the area of data narrative together where data integrity, data accuracy and data consistency are necessary. And we developed some proprietary innovation and capability that helps companies report this critical business data. And it turns out that the ESG data or nonfinancial data requires those same capabilities. It's collecting data, it's mapping to your frameworks. It's data management and so forth and ultimately, the report for multiple stakeholders. So those same capabilities that you need for financial reporting were therefore ESG and just so happened that the trends in the world over the last few years have come to be -- it became an obvious market for us. So it wasn't you were being pushed to do it. It was just the world -- the trends in the world with investor scrutiny and regulatory reporting and move to the cloud becoming just not even optionally more digital transformation, financial transformation being kind of table stakes. These things are happening on the world around us. And we just happen to have a platform beautifully suited for not just financial reporting, but for ESG reporting as well. So it was kind of a natural extension. I mean we worked at it. We took it through our growth solution team and did our homework and so forth and built the cases around it and went out in a very deliberate way. But it really was, wow, we have this platform. The world around us has changed, and we are perfectly suited for it. So it was only about 2 years ago that we rolled it out, but it's fast becoming a top booking solution for us, has been for several quarters.

So if I got my numbers right, I think you have about 5,000 customers?

In total across the world at Workiva?

Yes.

It's over 6,000.

Okay. So little dated so 6,000. Obviously, there's some opportunity for net new with the company coming through IPO, but it feels like a lot -- at least historically, a lot has come from a displacement, right? So can you maybe talk to what you've historically displaced? Is it predominantly homegrown solutions? Or are there third parties out there?

It's kind of the status quo. A lot of people do -- a lot of companies do reporting with Microsoft or Google. We do have some competitors out there, the legacy printers that also do some financial reporting as well. It's not their mainstay, but they've moved into that market and a little bit of software. But we're the leading player in the market for financial reporting. We do have the 6,000 customers, but 2/3 of our customers spend less than $100,000 with us. So we have a huge opportunity for account expansion, which we've been putting a lot of emphasis on. Account planning and account expansion and selling full platform, whether at once or over a period of time. And we've had some financial reporting SEC customers since 2011, 2012, 2013, and they're starting -- we're able now to go back and sell ESG to them. So you started talking about the new logo versus none. We do try to keep a blend of 50-50 new logos to bring in new companies and then 50% we try to harvest, right, quarter-over-quarter. So try to keep both of those. We don't want to lean too heavily on one or the other. Sometimes depending on the economy and what's going on, we might lean 60-40, 40-60, but we try to keep at that blend. So we continue to count expand but bringing new companies to ultimately expand.

So you mentioned the economy. Look, financial reporting in general is not negotiable. It doesn't matter if your business is up 50% or down 5%, right? You still have to report. So maybe you can talk about some of the tailwinds and headwinds that you see during an economic cycle as it relates to the business.

Sure. I mean we can all see, I think -- I mean we're a software company. We're not immune from what's going on, particularly in SaaS. And so we all know what the economy is bringing with it and we're, like other companies have some slowness in the deal cycles. You face a lot of buyer scrutiny out there. More approvers in the deals and procurement gets a little persnickety and so forth. So we are seeing some deals extend out a quarter or 2 longer. So we're definitely seeing that. And that's not so much in our control nor is -- one of our markets that's low right now. We have -- one of our solutions in financial reporting is capital markets, an area of capital markets. And we sell S-1. We help companies go through their IPO. It's our S-1 solution. So now -- you can imagine in 2021, we had a plethora of wins in capital markets, a lot of IPOs happening. And over the course of the last few years, it's dropped. It never goes to 0 for us because we always have follow-on offerings that we have in our capital markets, but it's been low. So those kind of things like the impact of the market itself and low IPO numbers and then, of course, economy. Those are things we can't really control. When you think about the upside and the tailwinds, I mean, you mentioned it, regulatory. The regulatory market for ESG has increased in complexity and it's increased in existence, right? There's something in Europe called the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, if you may or may not be familiar, but it has passed and it requires companies to report their Scope 1, 2, 3 emissions. Ultimately, over the course of the years, a few years, it will require audit assurance on that data, and there will be ex-payroll tagging. And of course, Workiva has all of that. But not only do you have to report admissions but you also -- you need to have an integrated report. Your financial report, you have to have your financial data, you have to have your nonfinancial ESG or sustainability data in that same report, the integrated report. And you'll ultimately need assurance on it, audit on it, and that is our platform. So that's tremendous upside. And that's a defined regulation, and it begins -- companies need to begin complying with that next year. The 2024 data needs to be reported on in 2025. So that's right here, right in front of face. A little bit of a time element for us to go out and go after that market. And that's significant upside for us. California, too, they rolled something out not long ago. Several months back, there's an S -- 2 laws, SB 253 and 261. And the gist of that is if you're a $1 billion company or more and you have any business in California at all, you are required to disclose Scope 1, 2, 3 emissions. And that's significant as well. That's a tailwind. So then, of course, the SEC as well has come out with their regulation in March. They disclosed what it was, climate disclosure rules. So we all know what's in it. We know what it would look like. It's on hold right now, there's a stay on it but the SEC has made it very clear that they will be fighting any pushback on it, and we expect that to happen in the next several quarters as well. So regulatory, in general, is a big tailwind for us. Also just global. I mean, we are still 15% outside of North America. That opportunity is huge whether it's ESG, financial reporting or GRC. A lot of opportunity globally, and we are getting our muscle. We built out capability for localization on the platform, so we can do it very quickly and move into different markets. So we've got emerging markets and moved into various Latin America and Europe, of course, is our heaviest outside of North America geo, but also in APAC as well. So there's a lot of opportunity globally. There's a lot of opportunity for ESG. And of course, the platform. And the regulatory tailwinds, investor scrutiny, those are trends we love and they're front and center these days so.

On CSRD, if I'm an existing Workiva financial reporting customer, and I spend $1 with you. I know this is a difficult question to answer. But roughly, what's going to be the CSRD uplift? Is it going to be $0.25, $0.50, another $1?

No. I mean we are seeing similar dollar values for what we call our ESG solution. And you might be an American -- a U.S. company, we would sell ESG. And then if you also want to comply to CSRD because you have material business there or you have vendor -- or you're a vendor of a customer there, we would add an additional amount on to help you comply with those CSRD regulations. So it's not necessarily won and done. So we are seeing numbers not far from the SEC.

Got it. So dollar for dollar or roughly that?

It depends on size, nature of the company, the complexities, the value we're bringing, how hard it is to comply and what you've got. Every companies are very different. So it's a value-based pricing. But yes, we're not seeing something like half the price of SEC.

Got it. And domestically, I know, like you said, some of the SEC rules have made it into court. But what are you hearing from customers as it relates to the pending election? Does that cause a potential, "Hey, I'm going to wait until 4Q?" Or not really?

Customers want to do business. And if you want to do business around the globe, you will need -- whether you're selling in those locations, whether you have material business in Europe, for example, or whether you sell to a company, right? They're going to be asking, you're going to be asked to disclose your nonfinancial data, whether you're needing to comply or not. So if you want to do commerce, you -- there's a recognition that you will need to report on data. You'll need to disclose data, the nonfinancial data. And look, we sold ESG, and I mentioned before, it's like 7 quarters and counting. So the top 3 of our booking solution, not a regulation in place in the U.S., and we've been selling it and businesses recognize. Their stakeholders, our customers, their stakeholders are the millennials and Gen Zs. They've got employees, right? They are playing globally. It's a global world, you are going to play by global rules. And so this is about business, it's about looking at your risks and surfacing those and risk management. It's not necessarily the regulation. Now having said that, of course, there are those companies that we call box checkers or compliers. They're going to wait until the very last minute. But forward-looking companies, bigger companies with complexities, they've already done it or they're doing it now or will be doing it soon. And this is not about because the SEC is telling me too or because I have to comply with CSRD. It's good business, it's capitalism, right? That's what it is. If you want to play in the market of capitalism, you will be doing what is necessary for you to win.

So Julie, you mentioned it before that the economy broadly has caused some elongation of sales cycles. And you all have been very transparent about some of those headwinds over the last several quarters. If you sort of look at the current guidance, not for 2Q but for the current year, any sense how much those headwinds and slightly less robust bookings have created? To what extent the drag is on '24 subscription growth rates?

Yes. U.S. and the word subscription. Total revenue, of course, we have our, as I mentioned, partners. We're outsourcing our lower-margin services out. So that's part responsible for the flattened growth or lower growth over the years. But from a subscription revenue point, yes, we've been very open about a little bit slower bookings, softer bookings in 2023, and we've baked that into the guide. And that's primarily what that is.

But -- so just...

No worse than -- nothing is different this year than last. It's not getting worse. In fact, a little bit, obviously, seen some IPOs and there's momentum building, and we had some record bookings quarters in Europe last year and even in APAC. So there's reason for optimism, and we feel optimistic but we did -- softer bookings last year translates into slightly lower subscription numbers, and that's really what it is. But no doom and gloom, nothing different this year from a downward perspective.

Right. So to your point, when things accelerate, we should see that a few quarters later in subscription growth accelerating?

Yes. Yes. And we're doubling down. I think we're selling better in the environment where you understand when you're in a market like this, in an environment like this, you need to do more value and selling. You need to get your business cases refined. You need to do your pitch a little stronger. And it's a little bit of a different selling motion. So doubling down on that kind of activity and that motion is helpful and yes.

Maybe you can talk a little bit about the evolution of the sales force in the go-to-market. But is it sure feels like your -- you mentioned a little bit more back to the base, CSRD being an example where you can sort of double the spend with the customer overnight, that you can ask for a bigger check.

Did I say overnight? I take few nights.

Depends on when they signed the take, right?

Yes. I mean the sales has been a big focus area for me as I've come into the role, even being the Chief Operating Officer. It's an evolution. I mentioned to you earlier when we started the conversation that we started down as a single solution for SEC reporting. We now have financial reporting, which has half a dozen major solutions in it, whether it's multi-entity reporting or management reporting or -- so there's a lot of financial reporting. So we're multi-solution there. And then we have the suite of governance, risk and compliance capabilities and then, of course, ESG. And it's -- you move from selling a single solution, a single transaction to then multiple solutions. And now we're selling an assured integrated reporting platform. And the platform matters, right? Particularly in time like this when CIOs and CFOs are looking to consolidate in a harder or more challenged economy. But that takes a different skill level, right? It takes different abilities to sell a platform than it does to do a quick transaction. Also, I mentioned partners being such an important growth vector for us. That takes a different skill. Have we had success with partner sales and understanding the benefits and the why you go co-selling with partners or you work harder to sell the partner services because ultimately, it means quicker deals for you, it means we sell higher, it means we sell more. It means we sell more broadly. It means the partner helps us stay stickier and bring more value of our -- of the platform to the customer. It takes a different breed of seller, a different profile of seller to sell that way with partners to sell the platform, who understand scale, who understand how to account, plan and manage. Again, other than the single transaction. And the newer hires that we've been bringing in have had that. And of course, we start with the sales leadership. We recently hired some sales leadership from places like ServiceNow, who have scaled from a few thousand people to 20,000 people who understand what it takes, who's seen success with partners. And so we've been moving the sales organization in that direction, and we're hiring sellers and -- who have those skill sets as well. And we're also taking our wonderful salespeople, the ones that we believe can make it and enabling them. We've hired new sales enablement. So we're changing the profile of the seller. We're enabling them in a way that enables them to sell differently and higher and larger and broader and in bigger numbers, bigger dollar signs. So that's one thing. We're also getting a little more strategic around our strategy and where we sell and especially in Europe when you have different geos and they all require a little bit nuances, differences in the culture, the buying culture and so forth. So we have that to contend with. So we're just up-leveling, in general, the selling organization. We also started with the -- as we went to multi-solution, a very expensive sales model. We've got overlay teams for our solutions. So we're rethinking that. We're bringing in some hunter -- the hunter-farmer differentiation, things like that. So we're making changes all around. We've made great progress, but I'll be the first to admit, there's lots of room there for opportunity, for efficiency and productivity enhancements. But it really does matter who you've got. It's the staff, it's the strategy and it's the structure of the organization called our 3Ss there, we focus.

Europe has been pretty darn solid for you over the last several quarters, right? The growth rates been ahead...

Yes. 2023 it would be something clicked, yes.

Yes. So would you say Europe is ahead of the U.S. in some of these changes? Or is it more just kind of it was behind in scale, it's moving?

No. I mean Europe is ahead with the way they go to market with partners, and that's sort of by necessity because we're not as well known there. In the U.S., we have -- we're 90% of the Fortune 100, 85% of the Fortune 500, 80% of the Fortune 1000. That's a great -- that's an enviable client list to go after and go expand accounts. And they're starting to buy 2, 3, 5, 10, 12 solutions from us. So U.S. has that down and better at that. But Europe, of course, is better at partners. Their partner first the whole way. And they have that motion down. APAC even better because we're less well known. So there's areas where we're better, but U.S. is probably more solid in direct sell and it just has a long -- has much more experience in it. And by the way, we ramped up Europe during the pandemic, hard to find great talent. So we've got some work to do there. And we have been -- we've been working hard, which is why 2023, you saw some significant change there. We crossed over something there in Europe in 2023. But this is what it's about, execution, sales execution. The market is beautiful. The opportunity is there. Regulatory wins in our favor. The trends in the market are there. Our platform is exactly what's needed in the market from a financial reporting and the ESG solution together with assurance. So it really is left for us to execute globally around the world and go-to-market execution is really a huge focus.

Let me see if there are any questions in the audience.

U.S. companies doing business in Europe had to do CSRD?

Yes, it's a few years down the road. But yes. And even if it's a certain -- you have to be a material size or in the third-party industry -- the different industries but yes, if you're doing -- if your business material is in Europe, you will need to comply with CSRD.

Go ahead. If you have a follow-up.

Can I ask in Europe like the companies looking to take a solution that we can address that...

Well, there's -- they estimate there's 50,000 companies that ultimately will need to comply over the period of probably up through 2028, '29, '30, right? However, from our perspective, not every one of those is interesting to us. Maybe 10,000, 15,000 is -- might be interesting. We're looking -- we're in mid-market. We'll go down to the $500 million, right. But multibillion and beyond, that's where we've been playing. But -- so we won't go to all of those and it's phased in.

[indiscernible]

Absolutely. There are competitors. In every one of our spaces, there's competitors. But again, it's not just an ESG solution or an emission solution. It's -- you truly -- the regulation is assured integrated reporting, financial, nonfinancial and assurance. And we are the only tech platform that provides all 3 of those in 1 unified solution. And we have, of course, the ex-payroll tag. I mean taxonomy is in defined draft taxonomy is out there. But we don't expect this to be a hockey stick that suddenly thousands of companies are going to come knocking on the door. It's long durable growth. Not everyone will decide I'm going to buy technology and do it right out of the gate. They'll try it with their own solutions or put something together. They'll wait to see what the consequences are. They'll find out how challenging it is. They'll wait for complexity. So we don't expect. But the companies that know they need to do it right for business reasons, we expect to have opportunity for those.

I was just going to say, it looks like you're layering on about $90 million of that per share. How much of that is coming from the newer ESG products versus the traditional...

We don't give -- we don't go to that level of granularity with the numbers, but suffice it -- and bookings, it's been our top bookings, one of our top 3 booking solution for almost 2 years now, 7 quarters. And so that takes a little bit of time. It's not a substantial amount of our revenue at this point but a big portion of the new bookings does come. But remember, we have a broad portfolio. So it's not like it's better than all the others combined. We have -- like I said, we've got audit and risk management controls, policies and procedures in the GRC suite. We've got 6, 7, 8 financial reporting solutions. And so it's one of the top solutions when we look at all of those. So I want to keep it in perspective, but we've crossed over barriers, and we do have the leading solution in the space.

[indiscernible] like a couple of years ago. Do you think that continues to decelerate if we look at a 3 to 5 year period, what sort of reasonable...

No. I believe we can get back in subscription revenue as we were talking about in the high teens and 20s. I mean the -- we have a relatively untapped TAM. We are the only platform offering this combination of financial and ESG reporting with GRC. I'm saying we can get there. The opportunities there, it's about us and execution. And sure, there are things like the macro and our capital markets is down. But we believe with execution, the right execution, that opportunity is out there for us to go after.

And then maybe just wrapping up on things you can control. And since you've arrived, you've done a masterful job controlling OpEx, right? So as you know, we've had some discussions in that over the years. What have you done internally from a cultural standpoint to sort of change the mindset?

People want to work on winning teams, right? And a winning team is a great culture, people-first culture, but it's also high performance. And we talk about that a lot. We want to be a winning team. And we also talk about the fact that when you move from $500 million, $600 million, $700 million to $1 billion, it's a different company. You've got to have rigor, you've got to have discipline, right? And that's just -- those are conversations we have. We've been doing more performance management. People understand that. They want to win, too. It's not just about going into work and having a great time. We all want to win. And I think having those conversations open and candid, we all know where we're headed, and we're working together to get there. And so the concept of being on a winning team, which is the high-performing team is the way we talk about it. So we are definitely bringing more discipline in the way we operate and continue to talk about $1 billion. You get to $1 billion and beyond you've got to do something differently than what you've done before. And it's being embraced and few are stepping up and they're enthusiastic about the mission and the opportunity in front of us. I mean, it truly is a -- we call it a generational opportunity but it really is an opportunity for us to have an impact. And I think that motivates people to perform well and execute.

Well, I think that's a perfect place to stop winning in a $1 billion.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Julie.

Appreciate being here. Thank you, all. Happy to answer any questions.