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Autodesk continuously touts that they are in a big transition from product sales to subscription and that huge growth is just around the corner. Do you discoun

Autodesk continuously touts that they are in a big transition from product sales to subscription and that huge growth is just around the corner. Do you discount those claims?

adventured 9y ago
I don't see why it would be necessary to discount such claims. The claims are worthless. They're not worth considering at all, until they prove something (and right now they're running a substantial credibility deficit). Ten years of zero net growth, and four years of declining profitability, should tell you everything you need to know about what's actually happening. They've spent most of their profits from the last decade on faking EPS growth with buybacks while their business was languishing. Now things are so bad, they're hatcheting their most valuable resource: their people. I think they spent ~$188 million buying back their stock in the first quarter, while losing over $100m in operating income. They paid $85 per share for those shares. Around 80 times earnings, if earnings were still at the old 2013 levels. It's financial suicide. They're driving Autodesk into a wall at high speeds, while destroying their balance sheet trying to keep the stock propped up with buybacks far beyond what they can actually afford based on present profitability and a reasonable outlook the next few years (which is why they're firing 13% of their staff). Or put it another way. The cost of the share buyback announced last year could cover the cost of the 13% of workers that are getting fired, for at least two decades. Autodesk long ago got into the IBM financial engineering business. The consequences of that are getting more unavoidable by the year.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- sitkack 9y ago
  > Or put it another way. The cost of the share buyback announced last year could cover the cost of the 13% of workers that are getting fired, for at least two decades. Do you have any pointers on how to do this kind of financial analysis of a public company?
pmorici 9y ago
Frankly their change to a subscription model caused me to look for alternatives to the one product I use from them; Eagle CAD. It's really ticked a lot of people off.
mcguire 9y ago
I'm not sure how you can get growth out of subscriptions if their market is effectively saturated. It will prevent complete collapse, but growth?
- pzone 9y ago
  The growth comes from transitioning from a costly model of hiring hundreds of slick guys in suits trying to convince customers to upgrade every year or so, to a simpler model of collecting credit card data and assuming customers are going to pay annually. What happens after the transition is a more interesting question.

Autodesk continuously touts that they are in a big transition from product sales to subscription and that huge growth is just around the corner. Do you discount those claims?

adventured 9y ago

I don't see why it would be necessary to discount such claims. The claims are worthless. They're not worth considering at all, until they prove something (and right now they're running a substantial credibility deficit). Ten years of zero net growth, and four years of declining profitability, should tell you everything you need to know about what's actually happening. They've spent most of their profits from the last decade on faking EPS growth with buybacks while their business was languishing. Now things are so bad, they're hatcheting their most valuable resource: their people. I think they spent ~$188 million buying back their stock in the first quarter, while losing over $100m in operating income. They paid $85 per share for those shares. Around 80 times earnings, if earnings were still at the old 2013 levels. It's financial suicide. They're driving Autodesk into a wall at high speeds, while destroying their balance sheet trying to keep the stock propped up with buybacks far beyond what they can actually afford based on present profitability and a reasonable outlook the next few years (which is why they're firing 13% of their staff). Or put it another way. The cost of the share buyback announced last year could cover the cost of the 13% of workers that are getting fired, for at least two decades. Autodesk long ago got into the IBM financial engineering business. The consequences of that are getting more unavoidable by the year.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sitkack 9y ago
> Or put it another way. The cost of the share buyback announced last year could cover the cost of the 13% of workers that are getting fired, for at least two decades. Do you have any pointers on how to do this kind of financial analysis of a public company?

pmorici 9y ago

Frankly their change to a subscription model caused me to look for alternatives to the one product I use from them; Eagle CAD. It's really ticked a lot of people off.

mcguire 9y ago

I'm not sure how you can get growth out of subscriptions if their market is effectively saturated. It will prevent complete collapse, but growth?

pzone 9y ago
The growth comes from transitioning from a costly model of hiring hundreds of slick guys in suits trying to convince customers to upgrade every year or so, to a simpler model of collecting credit card data and assuming customers are going to pay annually. What happens after the transition is a more interesting question.