Autodesk Inc
NASDAQ:ADSK
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Autodesk Inc
Earnings Call Analysis
Q4-2024 Analysis
Autodesk Inc
The company anticipates a successful fiscal year 2025, with expected revenues ranging from $5.99 billion to $6.09 billion, marking a growth of roughly 9% to 11% from the previous fiscal year. When considering adjustments for certain factors such as a new transaction model, acquisitions, true-up revenue discrepancies, and foreign exchange impacts, the underlying revenue is projected to grow by over 10%.
The company strategizes to maintain its non-GAAP operating margins steady, in the vicinity of 35% to 36%, mirroring fiscal year 2024 figures. Despite expecting a modest improvement of about 1% in underlying margins, this is likely to be offset by the transitional costs associated with moving reseller costs from contra revenue recognition to being accounted for under sales and marketing expenses. Incremental investments in personnel, processes, and automation are anticipated in support of this transition to a transaction model that is envisaged to yield long-term benefits in optimizing business operations and financial output.
In terms of free cash flow, the company's outlook is to generate a robust amount between $1.43 billion and $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2025. This financial metric is considered by the company to be a crucial indicator of their performance through the transition period to a new transaction model and annual billings for multiyear contracts.
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Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Autodesk's Fourth Quarter and Full Year Fiscal 2024 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]
I would like to hand the call over to Simon Mays-Smith, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator, and good afternoon. Thanks for joining our conference call to discuss the fourth quarter and full year fiscal '24 results. On the line with me are Andrew Anagnost, our CEO; and Debbie Clifford, our CFO.
During this call, we will make forward-looking statements, including outlook and related assumptions, products and strategies. Actual events or results could differ materially. Please refer to our SEC filings including our most recent Form 10-Q and the Form 8-K filed with today's press release for important risks and other factors that may cause our actual results to differ from those in our forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements made during the call are being made as of today. If this call is replayed or reviewed after today, the information presented during the call may not contain current or accurate information. Autodesk disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements.
We will quote several numeric or growth changes during this call as we discuss our financial performance. Unless otherwise noted, each such reference represents a year-on-year comparison. All non-GAAP numbers referenced in today's call are reconciled in our press release, or Excel financials and other supplemental materials available on our Investor Relations website.
And now I will turn the call over to Andrew.
Thank you, Simon, and welcome, everyone, to the call. We finished the year strongly, delivering 14% constant currency revenue growth in the fourth quarter of fiscal '24. Resilience, discipline and opportunity again underpinned our robust financial and competitive performance. Autodesk's resiliency comes from its subscription business model and its product and customer diversification, which balances growth across different regions and industries.
Renewal rates remain strong and new business growth and leading indicators were consistent with recent quarters. Despite ongoing macroeconomic policy and geopolitical headwinds we saw a growing usage, record bid activity on BuildingConnected and cautious optimism from channel partners.
Disciplined and focused execution and strategic capital deployment through the economic cycle enable Autodesk to realize the significant benefits of its strategy while mitigating the risks of having to make expensive catch-up investments later on. With the new transaction model, we are approaching the final phase of modernizing our go-to-market motion, which has involved updating our infrastructure, retiring old systems and business models, and building more durable and direct relationships with our customers and ecosystem. At the same time, we were advancing a multiyear process to develop lifecycle solutions within and between our industry cloud, powered by shared platform services and with Autodesk's Data Model at its core. Together, these will enable Autodesk, its customers and partners to create more valuable, data-driven and connected products and services.
Having led the industry in generative design, we are leading again in 3D generative AI. Autodesk is getting closer to a transformational leap where Autodesk AI is to 3D design and make where ChatGPT is the language. Our new multimodal foundation models will enable design and make customers to automate low-value and repetitive tasks and generate more high-value complex designs more rapidly and with much greater consistency. We can already generate 3D representations from images 10x faster and with vastly higher quality than currently available through the AI.
We're bolstering our homegrown capabilities and data with partnerships and acquisitions in existing and adjacent verticals. Our recent bidirectional integration of Fusion with Cadence and the acquisition of Payapps are good examples.
Discipline and focus when executing our strategy and deploying capital also underpin our opportunity. Our go-to-market and platform initiatives will drive even greater operational velocity and efficiency within Autodesk, which will free up further resources to invest in our industry clouds and capabilities, including AI and sustained margin improvement. And with a modernized go-to-market motion, lifecycle solutions and platform services, Autodesk will fulfill its potential to break down the silos within and between manufacturing, AEC, and Media & Entertainment, enabling our customers to unleash their data and design a better world built for all.
I will now turn the call over to Debbie to take you through our quarterly financial performance and guidance for fiscal '25. I'll then come back to update you on our strategic growth initiatives.
Thanks, Andrew. Our financial performance in the fourth quarter and for the fiscal year was strong, particularly in our Enterprise business. Early renewals and strong upfront revenue from Enterprise Business Agreements or EBAs, and federal governments, drove some of the outperformance relative to our expectations in both Q4 billings and revenue. Overall market conditions and the underlying momentum of the business were consistent with the last few quarters.
Total revenue grew 11%, and 14% in constant currency, with upfront revenue driving 2 percentage points of that growth. By product in constant currency, AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT revenue grew 7%, AEC revenue grew 18%, Manufacturing revenue grew 16%, and M&E revenue was up 8%. AEC and Manufacturing benefited from EBA true-up and upfront revenue.
By region in constant currency, revenue grew 19% in the Americas, 11% in EMEA and 8% in APAC.
Direct revenue increased 19% and represented 39% of total revenue, up 3 percentage points from last year, benefiting from strong growth in both EBAs and the Autodesk Store. Net revenue retention rate remained within the 100% to 110% range at constant exchange rates.
Billings declined 19% in the quarter, resulting from the transition from upfront to annual billings for multiyear contracts as expected, though slightly offset by some early renewals in North America. As part of our implementation sequencing for the new transaction model, we shifted our North American price increase from the end of March to the beginning of February. This resulted in some renewals moving from Q1 fiscal '25 to Q4 of fiscal '24, which modestly boosted billings in January.
Total deferred revenue decreased 7% to $4.3 billion, an expected result of the transition from upfront to annual billings for multiyear contracts. Total RPO of $6.1 billion and current RPO of $4 billion grew 9% and 13%, respectively. Early renewals drove about 1 percentage point of current RPO growth. Total RPO growth decelerated in Q4 when compared to Q3, when we closed our largest ever EBA. The year-over-year deceleration was due to the lower mix of multiyear contracts in fiscal '24 when compared to fiscal '23, which I mentioned last quarter. In line with recent quarters and our expectations, we again saw some evidence of multiyear customers switching to annual contracts during the quarter.
Turning to the P&L. GAAP and non-GAAP gross margin were broadly level while operating margin was modestly lower in the fourth quarter, primarily due to the timing of Autodesk University costs shifting from Q3 to Q4, which we flagged last quarter. As expected, full year non-GAAP operating margin was level year-over-year, but up about 1 percentage point at constant exchange rates. Fourth quarter GAAP operating margin was up 40 basis points year-over-year and about 1 percentage point at constant exchange rates, partly due to a reduction in stock-based compensation as a percent of revenue. At current course and speed, the ratio of stock-based compensation as a percent of revenue peaked in fiscal '24, we expect it to fall to 10% or lower over time.
Free cash flow for the quarter and full year was $427 million and $1.28 billion, respectively, with early renewals providing a modest tailwind in the fourth quarter. The most significant free cash flow headwinds from our transition from upfront to annual billings for multiyear contracts are now behind us, which means our free cash flow troughed during fiscal '24 and will mechanically rebuild over the next few years.
Turning to capital allocation. We continue to actively manage capital within our framework and deploy it with discipline and focus through the economic cycle to drive long-term shareholder value. As you heard from Andrew, we continue to invest organically and through complementary acquisitions to enhance our capabilities and the industry clouds and platform that underpin them.
During the quarter, we purchased approximately 300,000 shares for $63 million at an average price of approximately $217 per share. We have now offset estimated dilution from our stock-based compensation program well into fiscal '26. We will continue to repurchase shares opportunistically to offset dilution from stock-based compensation when it makes sense to do so.
Now let me finish with guidance. Overall, end market demand has remained pretty consistent over the last few quarters. Macroeconomic and one-off factors like the Hollywood writer's strike dragged on the new business growth rate during fiscal '24 and will modestly drag on revenue growth in fiscal '25, but Autodesk's resilience and robust underlying demand for its products and services reinforce its long-term growth potential.
Turning to revenue. I want to highlight 4 key puts and takes impacting growth in fiscal '25. First, let me talk about the new transaction model. We've added some slides to the earnings deck to help illustrate how to think about this shift, which I'll briefly summarize.
The new transaction model enables Autodesk to build closer, more direct relationships with its customers and partners. And to better understand and serve them with more data, more self-service and greater predictability. It will be a cornerstone of the data services that Andrew talked about earlier.
As you can see from Slide 11, the transition mechanically drives higher revenue and cost, is broadly neutral to operating profit and free cash flow dollars and as a headwind to operating margin percent. About $600 million of payments made to resellers and developed markets in fiscal '24 were accounted for as contra revenue.
As this business moves to the new transaction model, these payments will shift to marketing and sales expense over the next few years, all else equal, with the timing of cost recognition not materially different than before. The change affects a substantial majority of our business but note that emerging markets and our federal government business will remain on the buy/sell model for the foreseeable future.
The pace of the shift will primarily be determined by the mechanical build from ratable subscription revenue accounting and the rate of regional rollout of the new transaction model. While the former is relatively easy to predict given the ratable revenue recognition of our subscription business model, which builds over time. The latter will in part be determined by what we learn as we roll out the model further.
We gained useful insights from the successful rollout in Australia, and we're expecting to learn more as we roll out with much higher volumes in North America this year. We will be able to apply those learnings when we launch in EMEA. Our fiscal '25 guidance assumes the new transaction model is deployed in North America in Q2 of fiscal '25 and provides about a 1 percentage point tailwind to Autodesk's revenue growth and a 3- to 4-point tailwind to billings growth.
Second, the acquisition of Payapps, which closed on February 20, is expected to contribute about 0.5 point of revenue growth in fiscal '25.
Third, token consumption for the fiscal '21 EBA cohort exceeded consumption predictions made during the pandemic, which resulted in true-up payments in fiscal '24. Token consumption in the smaller post-pandemic fiscal '22 EBA cohort is tracking more in line with predictions, which means we expect fewer true-up payments in fiscal '25. This pandemic echo effect is about a point of headwind to fiscal '25 revenue growth.
And fourth, our rolling 4 quarter foreign exchange hedges means that FX is expected to be about a 1 percentage point headwind to reported revenue growth in fiscal '25.
Bringing this all together, we expect revenue of between $5.99 billion and $6.09 billion in fiscal '25, which translates into revenue growth of about 9% to 11% compared to fiscal '24. Adjusting the midpoint of our guidance to exclude noise from the new transaction model, acquisitions, the absence of EBA true-up revenue and FX we expect underlying revenue to grow more than 10% in fiscal '25.
Moving on to margins. We're going to manage our non-GAAP operating margins between a range of 35% and 36% in fiscal '25, with the goal of keeping them roughly level with fiscal '24. This means we expect a roughly 1 point underlying margin improvement will be broadly offset by the margin headwinds from the new transaction model. As we transition to the new transaction model, we'll see operating margin headwinds from the accounting change of moving reseller costs from contra revenue to sales and marketing expense.
We'll also have incremental investment in people, processes and automation. But over the long term, we expect that this transition to the new transaction model will enable us to further optimize our business which we anticipate will provide a tailwind to revenue, operating income and free cash flow dollars even after the incremental costs we expect to incur.
Moving on to free cash flow. We expect to generate between $1.43 billion and $1.5 billion of free cash flow in fiscal '25. In Australia, some channel partners accelerated renewals ahead of the transition to the new transaction model to derisk month 1 of the transition. Because the new transaction model will be rolled out in Q2 in North America, it may be that the behavior we saw in Australia occurs also in North America, which may accelerate billings and free cash flow to earlier quarters, but should not materially change the outlook for the year.
Excluding $200 million from fiscal '24 free cash flow from multiyear upfront billings, which are now billed annually, in fiscal '25, we expect free cash flow growth of about 35% at the midpoint of our guidance. We expect faster free cash flow growth in fiscal '26 because of the return of our largest multiyear renewal cohort, the mechanical stacking of multiyear contracts billed annually and a larger EBA cohort.
As we navigate the new transaction model transition, the pace of the rollout will create noise in the P&L. So we think free cash flow is the best measure of our performance. At current course and speed, our free cash flow estimate for fiscal '26 at the midpoint is approximately $2.05 billion, which is in line with consensus estimates.
In the context of significant macroeconomic, geopolitical, policy, health and climate uncertainty, the mechanical rebuilding of our free cash flow as we transition to annual billings for multiyear contracts gives Autodesk an enviable source of visibility and certainty.
We continue to manage our business using a Rule of 40 framework with a goal of reaching 45% or more over time. We are taking significant steps toward our goal this year and next. We think this balance between compounding growth and strong free cash flow margins captured in the Rule of 40 framework is the hallmark of the most valuable companies in the world, and we intend to remain one of them. The slide deck on our website has more details on modeling assumptions for Q1 and full year fiscal '25.
Andrew, back to you.
Thank you, Debbie. Let me finish by updating you on our strong progress in the fourth quarter. We continue to see good momentum in AEC, particularly in infrastructure and construction, fueled by customers consolidating onto our solutions to connect and optimize previously siloed workload through the cloud. The cornerstone of that growing interest is our comprehensive end-to-end solutions encompassing design, pre-construction, field execution through handover and into operations. This breadth of connected capability enables us to extend our footprint further into infrastructure and construction and also expand our reach into the mid-market. As a sign of that growing momentum, we closed a record number of deals over 100,000 and $1 million in construction accounts in the United States and worldwide during this quarter.
Let me give you a few examples. First, VINCI, a world leader in concessions, energy and construction has been leveraging Autodesk solutions to streamline its operations and drive international expansion. With a platform approach, Revit customizations and BIM as a standard practice, VINCI has achieved significant time savings annually and captured more business abroad. In Q4, VINCI renewed its fourth enterprise business agreement with Autodesk expanding the deployment of Autodesk Construction Cloud on major projects to further integrate its data and workflows and ensure a seamless transition from design through construction.
Second, after a competitive RFP process early in the year, Fortis Construction an ENR 400 firm based in Oregon, ran a thorough peer assessments and selected Autodesk Construction Cloud for a 6-month pilot with the confidence gained during the pilot and close alignment between its construction technology vision and Autodesk's Road Map to a connected design, build, operate platform, Fortis committed in Q4 to a multiyear agreement across preconstruction and construction.
And third, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation recently chose Autodesk Construction Cloud as the primary tool powering its project delivery collaboration center, which will manage the project delivery of infrastructure projects in the state. In large part due to our software inclusive open ecosystem.
Again, these stories have a common theme. Managing people, processes and data across the project life cycle to increase efficiency and sustainability while decreasing risk. Over time, we expect the majority of all projects to be managed this way, and we remain focused on enabling that transition through our industry cloud.
With the acquisition of Payapps, Autodesk will embed payment and compliance management into the project life cycle. It can take an average of 83 days for subcontractors to get paid after putting work in place. And because of the risk, many will not bid on a project if a general contractor or an owner has a reputation for slow payments. Our goal is to leverage technology that eases the burden of construction payment management in a simpler, faster and more efficient process for all construction project stakeholders.
Moving on to manufacturing. We made excellent progress on our strategic initiatives. Customers continue to invest in their digital transformations and consolidate our Design and Make platform to grow their business and make it more resilient. In automotive, we continue to grow our footprint beyond the design studio into manufacturing and connected factories as automotive OEMs connect data and shorten handoffs through the design cycle.
In the U.S., a leading manufacturer leveraged AEC Solutions, Fusion and Autodesk Platform Services to develop a connected factory that delivered a much greater ROI to significantly faster design durations product prototyping and data federation. Through its expanded EBA signed in Q4 it is exploring using VR studio tools in customization and increasing its adoption of Autodesk Construction Cloud to bring its new factories to life.
We continue to serve some of the largest manufacturers in the world with the full breadth of our portfolio as they design and make both products and factories. One of the largest private manufacturers in the U.S. leverages our Advanced Manufacturing portfolio, including Fusion, Powermill and Moldflow, which has helped reduce rework in plastic design by 20%.
To build clean energy solutions, it utilizes our AEC Collections, including BIM metadata, assembly breakout and installation instructions for its building products. In Q4, the customer increased its EBA with Autodesk and plan to expand our partnership beyond Revit and Autodesk Construction Cloud to support the digitization of its factories.
Fusion remains one of the fastest-growing products in the manufacturing industry and ended the quarter with 255,000 subscribers, driven by the growing number of customers who recognize the value of cloud-based workflows enhancing efficiency, sustainability and resilience within their organization. As the breadth and depth of Fusion's features and capabilities expand, we're beginning to drive adoption by larger companies and serve higher value segments of the professional market through extensions. As we do this, commercial subscriptions will become less complete indicators of Fusion's performance relative to the value we can realize and our reporting will change to reflect that.
In education, we are preparing future engineers to drive innovation through next-generation design, analysis and manufacturing solutions. In the fall, the University of Delaware selected Fusion for more than 600 students to use in an introduction to engineering class, replacing a competitor's solution. Fusion was chosen because it facilitated better team collaboration, was easily adopted thanks to available teaching resources and provided a single integrated platform to learn CAD, simulation and CAM.
And lastly, we continue to work with our customers to ensure they are using the latest and most secure versions of our software. In Q4, an American pharmaceutical company look to understand its own usage better and ensure it remains compliant as it transitioned to our named user model. In collaboration with our license compliance team, a preventative audit was conducted to identify risk areas and construct a combination of subscription and Flex tokens for continued access. It is also taking the opportunity Flex enables to trial new products from our portfolio, resulting in an annual spend increase of more than 30%.
Autodesk remains relentlessly curious with propensity and desire to evolve and innovate. Time and again, our success in executing strategic transformation has added new growth vectors. Built a more diverse and resilient business, forge broader, trusted and more durable partnerships with more customers and giving Autodesk a longer runway of growth and free cash flow generation. We are building the future with focus, purpose and optimism.
Operator, we would open the call up for questions.
[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Saket Kalia of Barclays.
Andrew, maybe just to start with you. You talked a little bit more about generative AI on this call, which is great to hear. Maybe just to make sure the question is asked. Can you just talk about what your sort of core engineering customers are saying about generative AI? And I'm sure it's a very long discussion, but how do you think about the value that Autodesk can provide sort of on that journey?
Yes. So first off, let me make it clear that it's our intent to be the market leader in generative AI, just like we were in generative design over 10 years ago. So we intend to lean into this pretty heavily. Our AI lab has been in existence since 2018. It's been where some of the core research that's contributing to some of the things I talked about in the opening commentary came from.
But also, we've been delivering AI in our products for several years now. It's a compelling [indiscernible] just released, drawing automation into Fusion, which allows people to automate manufacturing drawing stack, which is a very labor-intensive effort and it's a high productivity driver for our customers.
So in terms of what our customers are saying to us, one, they're looking for the productivity increases. They're asking, what are they going to look like? What kind of productivity increases are you going to deliver to this? And how are you going to use our data to deliver those productivity increases.
Now in terms of how we're going to do this. There is two avenues that we're going to be approaching here. One is going to be more disruptive to how our customers work. And the other one is going to be basically automating the capabilities and workflows they have today. We have to do both. Both have different value levers, both will have different adoption curves.
Some of the things I talked about in the opening commentary about some of our new tools for generating 3D models from photographs or for incomplete 3D models. Those are disruptive approaches that set up initial model ideas for our customers and allow them to do things initially with a blank slate kind of concept where they create a model from specifications and requirements.
We haven't released any of that yet. We will at some point, release that to a private beta. But right now, it's just something we're really proud of, and we think is really important. That's an important disruptive technology.
The other technologies are also going to look a lot like what we did with Fusion Drawing Automation. There are going to be tools that take the complexity of delivering and creating a 3D model and all of its outputs to a process and take it from months to weeks or sometimes even days. And that's going to make customers who are currently using these tools may be slower in the adoption of more disruptive tools, incredibly more productive.
Both avenues are valid, both are important and both are areas that we're focusing on.
Got it. Got it. That makes a lot of sense. Debbie, maybe for my follow-up for you. Autodesk obviously provides a lot of value to its customers, which you're also able to capture as well. Maybe the question is, can you just talk a little bit about some of the recent pricing actions that have been out there? And what sort of customer behavior that might drive as a result. I think there was a little bit of difference in pricing sort of between 1 year and multiyear subscriptions. How do you think about that impacting the model, if at all, going forward?
Sure. So let's start first with what we did. So there's a couple of things that are going on. We did about a 3-point increase for market factors and then we did a 5% increase for renewals. With market factors, this is something that we've been talking about for a while. Our goal is to streamline pricing around the world. And then for the renewal price change, before the increase, we had a 10-point price differential between new and renewal, and with this move to agency, as we move to the new transaction model, we don't see as much of a need for that delta.
In Q4, what we did was we moved up the timing of the price increase so that we could better sequence things with the new transaction model coming, and that led to some early renewals down the stretch.
That's part of what gave an extra point of growth to current RPO. But the price increase overall was most helpful to billings, but it wasn't material to revenue and free cash flow.
Our next question comes from the line of Adam Borg of Stifel.
Maybe on the transactional model, and thanks, guys, for all of the disclosures around it. Maybe talk a little bit more about the learnings you have from the early customer and partner feedback in Australia. And even now that you have the early days of this direct relationship, anything interesting there that you're learning from your more direct relationship with customers? Be it usage or adoption or expansion that you clearly didn't have before with the prior model.
Yes. Thanks, Adam, for that question. First off, let me just reinforce something here. So I want to make sure that we're all on the same page here about why we're doing this, right? This is a critical part of a relentless ongoing modernization of Autodesk business, getting us ready for the long-term success we expect in a world of AI-driven cloud-based solutions for design to make lifecycles, right? It's a necessary step in this. It's the last big one in our journey of all the ones we've done at this point, and it really has some big benefits for our customers long term.
One, it's going to allow us to understand them a lot better in ways that we can't currently understand them because we don't have the full account record of what the customer is doing. Two, it's going to allow us to deliver a lot more self-service capability to these customers. And three, it's going to turn our partner channel into design, make collaborators and consultants for our customers with their own unique IP and their own services and away from transaction partners. So it's critical that we kind of get on the same page on that.
With regards to Australia, we actually did learn a lot, right? Mostly about the transactions at this point because it was only for 1 quarter and a little bit. It didn't necessarily have a direct impacts on customer behavior.
But what we did learn we've now put into the process. In fact, we actually delayed our U.S. rollout by 30 days based on some of the learnings during the Australia process, we changed our road map for some of the capabilities, updated and upgraded some of the capabilities in the transaction systems to kind of correspond with some things we saw in Australia.
And we also kind of delivered some new enablement materials for partners, and frankly, for customers as well so that they understand how this transaction model impacts their relationship with Autodesk. So we definitely took the learnings through the bank to make sure that we were better prepared and we even gave ourselves a little bit more time based on what we learned to finish up a few things that we think are going to be impactful.
That's great. And maybe just as a quick follow-up. You talked about some success with state DOTs. As you think about kind of the Infrastructure Bill and the stimulus that continues to be deployed, maybe just give a quick update on Innovyze, and just a quick state of the union there and the opportunity as part of the broader infrastructure push?
Yes. So you'll probably hear us use the word name Innovyze a lot less and talk a little bit more about Autodesk Construction -- Water Solutions moving forward, right? So I just want to be clear about that.
Water is and has been a big part of our EBA successes. Larger customers are adding Water Solutions. I think there's an obvious reason for that. Water is just as important as it was before, if not more so. I think you're probably aware that California, we just had yet another kind of flood where people didn't expect to have floods in San Diego, and that's all because water movement, water management infrastructure is moving water in the wrong places. So people need to build and rebuild water infrastructure of all types, water scarcity, water purity, all of these things, water is going to be a big business moving into the future. And it's continued to enhance some of our EBAs with that respect.
Since you mentioned the infrastructure in general, I just want to kind of point a little bit to something that you heard in the opening commentary about PennDOT, right? I think that's a really important story about what's going on there. Why is PennDOT choosing our solutions? What's going on?
Because of the Infrastructure Bill and some of the money that was put in the Infrastructure Build to help some of these departments of transportation understand how to invest in the future, PennDOT looked at its portfolio of tools. They looked at the future, they looked at what they need going out 10, 20 years in the future. What kind of modern stacks they want to work on? And they chose to move to our solutions and incorporate more of our solutions in their environment. That's an important first step in what we're trying to do.
We want to be part of modernizing these departments of transportation with the kind of modern staff that we've created in the end-to-end design to make solutions. That's another vector here to pay attention to as the infrastructure boom kind of continues to roll out into the United States.
Our next question comes from the line of Jay Vleeschhouwer of Griffin Securities.
Andrew, first question concerns the transaction model. And what I'd like to ask about is relating the operational and transactional and accounting systems and compensation systems that you've put in place relative to the scale of your volume. You added well over 700,000 subscriptions in fiscal '24, more than you added in fiscal '23. You've spoken of certain growth expectations for volume over time.
So maybe help us understand the capacity that you have in place now to support the long-term volume growth expectations that you have? Because undoubtedly, you're looking to do substantially more subscription additions than you did in fiscal '24?
Yes. So Jay, obviously, the modernization of Autodesk and its back office infrastructure is, it just about rolling out the new transaction model and the kind of the nuts and bolts of that. It's actually about increasing our internal capacity to do these things at scale, which is exactly what we were trying to test in Australia in the various environments and that we've been testing since then.
So we are very confident that we've not only built a transaction environment, but a cascading set of capabilities that allow us to scale significantly as we move forward. Because you're right, we intend to get deeper and deeper to people's design and make processes and that's going to increase the amount of subscriptions that are being used downstream in other types of make processes, and we have to be able to operate at scale. So this is not just a new transactional model modernization effort. It's a full-scale modernization effort inside of Autodesk that captures all aspects of this.
And the good thing about the cascading rollout, the way we're doing it this year with the U.S. first, is again, we're going to get yet another test on the volume and capacity of the systems that allows us to understand where we're at before we go live with the next level of rollout and volume capture. But, just know that this is more than just a transaction model. It is a full-scale modernization of what's going on under the hood at Autodesk.
Yes. Understood. Second question concerns products and technology. When we think back to the various product sessions and road map sessions that you talked about at AU a few months ago, what do you think are the critical executable product deliverables that you're aiming for this year? Either in terms of improving upon or expanding the existing products such as Revit or other new tools?
Yes. So I'll just hit a few here, okay. First off, in manufacturing, the critical thing that really needs to happen this year for Fusion, for example, is we have to improve our capability to help move Fusion from small teams in the Design and Make part of the business all the way up to supporting full-scale engineering team.
So basically scaling the size of installations inside of our customer base with Fusion. That's going to be through a combination of things we do with our cloud-based data management solutions as well as some of our AI-based solutions, which basically attract people to the product because of the productivity enhancement. But that is definitely an important effort.
There's a second ancillary effort with regards to the Fusion around ensuring that our partnerships with companies like Cadence and the internal EBA capabilities we built the Fusion set us up for a boom in smart products. We want to be the solution that people choose for smart products. We've built enough capability in the Fusion that people can get a certain way, end-to-end with Fusion. And we're partnering to make sure that when things get more sophisticated, we're able to move up into the more sophisticated processes associated with these smart products.
Now when it comes to Forma, Forma and Fusion kind of dance together here. And one of the things that is really important to do as we move into this year is make sure that Forma and Revit play together as our customers try to move forward as they adopt Fusion and also as they use Revit more collaborative in the cloud, that these two products work together in some way that they exchange data and interoperate in ways that nobody else can achieve because the truth of the matter is the work that people are doing with Revit isn't going away. It's a huge amount of what they do. And we need to make sure that, that work is more efficient in a Forma world. So look, for us to not only increase the capability to Forma but increase its relationship with Revit as well, which I think is really important.
The last thing I'll say, just around Media and Entertainment, is we have to continue to take what we're doing with regards to moving beyond post-production special effects into full production management, script to screen capabilities for our customers in the filmmaking industry and make some of that real with the Flow platform.
And that's really the big goal for the Media and Entertainment team is to make Flow real this year and help our customers really see possibilities of integrating new types of complex solutions on top of a single production management environment.
Our next question comes from the line of Joe Vruwink of Baird.
I wanted to ask, so Autodesk has framed growth rates over the long arc of time in that 10% to 15% range. 2025 guidance is obviously holding to the 10%. When you think about 10%, conceptually, is that ultimately, as you would expect, just given the nature of your businesses being exposed to certain end markets that are perhaps now closer to their bottoming or troughing points in a given cycle. And if that maybe is the case, and this is the bottoming point what indications are you watching over coming quarters? To maybe set the stage for a recovery scenario, which, of course, your markets typically do after they reach that bottoming point.
Yes. So thanks. So we continue to target that 10% to 15% revenue growth algorithm. And you're right, the midpoint for fiscal '25 was right at that 10% coming off a year where we did 13% growth in constant currency.
And really, what we've said is that where we end up in that 10% to 15% range is going to be contingent upon the macroeconomic backdrop that we operate in as well as our ability to harvest the opportunities that we have before us across AEC, manufacturing and so on. And so the things that we're watching as we proceed through this year with that 10% midpoint or some of the things that we've been talking about for a while now. So new business growth is really an important indicator of future revenue performance for the company.
And we've said that in this last quarter that new business growth -- grew, but it was relatively soft, consistent with what we had seen over the previous to several quarters. So definitely being impacted by macro and that's one of the factors that's driving the 10% revenue growth midpoint in fiscal '25. So we'll continue to watch that closely.
We also watch product usage. We watch bidding activity on our BuildingConnected platform, and we stay close to our channel partners, trying to understand what they're seeing in terms of their demand. So those are the things that we're going to be watching to see how this year progresses and beyond.
Okay. That's helpful. And then I wanted to follow up on the free cash flow. I think I heard the $2.05 billion for fiscal 2026. At one point, there was a comment that the progression between FY '24 and 2026 that was going to be linear, of course, if you normalize for that $200 million effect -- benefit last year and then comes out this year.
I guess as I look at that in the $2.05 billion, it's not quite linear. It would seem like FY '26 is actually maybe a bit stronger. Did something change in kind of the modeling out of the progression? Just any color there.
Nothing's changed, Joe. So it's, we've said that we anticipate that cash flow would grow greater in fiscal '26 than what we saw in fiscal '25. And when you think about modeling the growth rate, just remember that you have to remove to $200 million in fiscal '24 before we stopped selling multiyear contracts upfront.
Our next question comes from the line of Jason Celino of KeyBanc Capital Markets.
Maybe first for Andrew. Just on the acquisition of Payapps. They were a great partner of yours. Just curious on what drove the decision to acquire them outright versus just extending the partnership?
Yes. All right. So let's, since you opened up the door there, let's talk a little bit about construction in general because I think it's important to kind of highlight what's been going on there. We had a great EBA quarter for construction. Construction saw strong growth in our largest accounts, which is really important for the long-term health of construction.
At a really high level, we also saw an increase in $100,000 deals and $1 million deals, both in the U.S. and internationally. I think that's really important. And this is where one of the things where payoffs comes in, right? Remember, we're going end to end with our solutions here from design, all the way to make, and we want to make sure that we get into the preconstruction planning and other types of our customers' processes.
It takes 83 days for our customers to process payments in their environment. That's just too long. Now we're not getting into the transaction business. What we're doing is we're getting into the business of helping them automate and track those payments across their entire life cycle so that they can get quicker return, reduce that 83 days to be faster and increase their cash flows. This has to be something we tightly integrate into our solution.
So we intend to tightly integrate in this -- this in, just like we rebuilt some of the other solutions we acquired previously into what is today Autodesk Build, which is a new modern platform for doing some of these things. So we thought it was very important to own this so that we can integrate it. And then we went out there and we bought a premium asset. It's a leader. It's a global leader in payment processors it's not a small company. It's not what we could afford. It's what we needed. And I think that's really important.
So when we look forward at a construction right now, we see tools like this being critical as well as our preconstruction tools. And we actually see the deal cycles maybe getting a little longer, but we're competing head-to-head a lot more. And I want to again highlight that, that Fortis deal out of Oregon, which was a head-to-head competitive deal with a pilot period that ended up going fully to Autodesk.
So what we see right now in our business is building momentums, driven by the end-to-end solution and kind of acquisitions like Payapps as well. So when we look forward into next year, we don't see deceleration of the business, we see acceleration.
Okay. No, that's very helpful. And then my quick follow-up for Debbie. Sorry if I missed it, but the 13% constant currency growth we did this year. Did you mention how much was from the strong renewal cohort and then maybe any upfront revenues? I'm just trying to understand the several points of decel embedded in the '25 guide?
Yes. So the early renewal cohort didn't have any impact to revenue really that had more of an impact on billings than it would have on revenue. And then the strength that we saw in enterprise represented about 1 point of growth.
Our next question comes from the line of Tyler Radke of Citi.
Along the similar lines of Jason's question, on construction, Andrew. I'm just wondering if you could provide us an update on the go-to-market changes that you made, I believe, last year? And how you're expecting that business? I mean you talked about acceleration. Obviously, make revenue is growing in the teens. Is this a business you think can be 20% over the medium term? Just help us frame what you're seeing both from the go-to-market and pipeline perspective?
Yes. So as you know, last year was the full year of integrating the Salesforce back into the mainline Salesforce. We went through some of the integration efforts to do that. There were obviously some slowdowns in the business related to integration of those things. Those things are past us now. The business is fully integrated. It's starting the year off not only fully integrated from the get-go, but with all of the processes, plans and capabilities all lined up according to how we want to grow the business heading into the year.
And one of the things I wanted you to notice in my previous commentary is that we're seeing deal activity going up. So the pipeline is actually firming up really well, and we're in more deals. And some of these deals are more competitive, but we embrace that because when we're in a competitive deal, that means we're showing up in places we weren't showing up before because people are calling us in.
That's a really important part of this whole entire process. People are starting to ask themselves what solution do they need for the next 10, 15 years versus what's available out there today. And the end-to-end capabilities we're delivering, especially leaning more heavily into our preconstruction capabilities, which lock in a lot of the cost and complexity and risk of a construction project. This is where we're leaning into this year, and this is where we're going to be driving the growth.
So I think we're past integration issues moving forward into pure execution and scale inside the mainline Salesforce. The EBA success is a great example of that.
That's helpful. And maybe a follow-up for Debbie, and apologies, I've been jumping around calls. But can you just frame how you're thinking about the relative drivers of the top line growth outlook for FY '25 between subs growth and pricing and the usual factors that build up to that?
Sure. So we typically are trying to target roughly 50-50 split of growth coming from volume and it's either price/mix or margin, basically, a partner margin is how we think about it. So across volume and price, again, our target is to do roughly 50-50 in fiscal '25, that would continue to be our goal.
Now there are certainly years where it's going to vacillate between one or the other. And we've talked about how this past year, our new business was growing slower than we would anticipate in a more normal macroeconomic environment. As we look ahead, we're hoping to get that growth coming from roughly equally across those 2, volume and price. So that's how we're thinking about it.
Our next question comes from the line of Michael Funk of Bank of America.
So first, one of your competitors mentioned pressure on projected seat growth, due to the declining ranks of engineers. Are you seeing a similar impact? Or is that not impacting your customers?
We are not seeing a decline in our growth rates because of any pressure out there associated with engineers. As a matter of fact, one of the things that's really important because we're moving into Design and Make processes, we have a pretty broad swath of people that were able to touch.
Also, we continue to displace competitive products in, especially with Fusion in the manufacturing space. So we're not seeing that kind of affects declining basis. We do see customers at times optimizing their installations with Autodesk to try to rightsize things but not because they're downsizing their employment base.
Got it. And then one for you, Debbie, and thank you for the clear on the moving pieces in '25. In the press release, you mentioned that the guidance for growth in '25, you said adjusting for FX, EBA acquisition transaction model, you gave additional data point on the call. Is the right way to think about it, that guidance constant currency ex EBA transaction model and acquisitions is basically 9.5% to 11.5% growth rate in '25? Is that the right very basic math?
So what we talked about was 1 point of headwind from FX, 1 point of headwind from the absence of EBA true-ups. 0.5 point of tailwind from acquisitions and 1 point of tailwind from the new transaction model. So the net effect of that is 0.5 point, so yes.
Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Tusa of JPMorgan.
What would, do you think is in the kind of crystal ball that drive you to the low end of the range? Like what are you concerned about that you can see today? I assume that's part of the macro. But what within the macro would get you to the low end of the range?
We'll continue to watch that new business grows. That's something that we're laser-focused on, and macroeconomic conditions were to shift, then that would be probably one of the first things that would be impacted and that could take us to the lower end of the range. We're watching end market demand pretty closely. So that's why we talk about bid activity on BuildingConnected and it continues to be at record highs. But of course, if that were to take a turn, that could have an impact on us.
And then we monitor the sentiment that we're hearing from our channel partners to understand how they're seeing end market demand and what the impact might be for our business. So those are the types of things that could inform whether or not we would be at the lower end of the range.
Okay. And then just to be clear, I didn't, I thought it was -- when you went through some of the other moving parts on guidance that it netted out to kind of 1 point of tailwind. I guess you're throwing in the EBA true-ups or at least adjusting those out to get to an underlying rate? Is that what, is that part of the calc there?
Yes. Yes. And sorry to go back to the last question because there's just a lot of moving parts here, and it has been to few things. So for revenue in the guide, it's 1 point of headwind from FX, 1 point of headwind from the absence of EBA true-ups, 0.5 point of tailwind from the acquisitions, and 1 point of tailwind from the new transaction model, which is a net negative. So net 0.5 negative headwind as we look into the guidance for fiscal '25.
Okay. And then just one last quick one on the subs. They're up, I guess, they're up 12 for the year, if I have that number right? Your constant currency was 13%. Can you maybe explain what you mean by half coming from volume and half coming from price? It seems like that's a lot from, much more from volume there. Maybe there's some mix or something like that?
Yes. There's definitely a mix effects. And like I said, our target is to have roughly 50-50 between volume and price. But in any given year, we're going to have some puts and takes between that. But when we think about our guidance for fiscal '25, we're targeting that 50-50 mix again.
Our next question comes from the line of Nay Soe Naing of Berenberg.
I've got two, if I may. Starting with, you mentioned a lot of positive developments in the products like ACC, BuildingConnected, Fusion 360. I was wondering how we should think about that when it comes to your Make revenue. And if we look at the growth rates in Make segment, it's been consistent at around 17% on constant currency in the past 3 quarters. Is there a possibility with the positive development that the Make revenue will go back to growth rates in the 20s going forward? That was my first question.
And second question is on the new transaction model, please. I think, Debbie, you mentioned that you're expecting 1 percentage point of growth tailwind from the new transaction in FY '25, which we equated about $55 million. And then the slide deck, you mentioned there's about $600 million of reseller commission in total. So the remaining $450 million -- or so sorry, $550 million or so will that all come through in FY '26? Or will it take longer for all of that or the contract revenue to flush through in your P&L?
So a couple of things. So first, you were a little bit garbled and coming through. So we didn't quite get the first question, and we'll go ahead and try and take those on the call backs. But, when we think about the new transaction model on the $600 million, I think the most important things to take away are the $600 million is a good number to model with as you think about how to model the business during the transition. And the pace at which you'll see the new transaction model costs, that $600 million bleed into revenue and expense over time is really going to be dictated by the pace of the rollout. And so think of it as something that's going to be bleeding into revenue and expense over the next couple of years.
Right. I think in the previous quarter, you mentioned it would take about 2 years to implement this new transaction model. So presumably, this total $600 million bleeding into revenue and cost will take longer than 2 years to complete in totality?
So the act of transitioning the invoicing will take approximately 2 years to complete. But remember that we recognize revenue over approximately 1 year. So it's going to be a little past that. When the invoices at the higher amount bleed into revenue.
Right. Okay. Understood. And my first question is around the Make revenue. The growth rate has been consistent around 17% past 3 quarters. Should we expect that to go back to the 20% plus that we had in the past given the positive developments around the products like BuildingConnected or ACC or Fusion 360?
Our goal would be to drive greater growth from the Make revenue line. That's going to be an important aspect of our ability to achieve our target 10% to 15% growth algorithm over time, and it's an area where we've been making incremental investments. So we anticipate that, that revenue growth rate is going to be higher than the core business.
Ladies and gentlemen, that is all the time we have for Q&A today. I would now like to turn the call back to Simon Mays-Smith for closing remarks. Sir?
Thank you, everyone, for joining us. We look forward to seeing many of you on the roads over the coming weeks, and at our Q1 conference call later in the year. Thanks very much.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.