Autodesk Inc Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Saket Kalia - Barclays Services Corp - Analyst : Okay. Great. Great to see these results. Andrew, maybe just to start with you. given some of the headlines out there this quarter, I was wondering if you could just talk to us a little bit about your appetite for transformative M&A.

Question: Saket Kalia - Barclays Services Corp - Analyst : That's super helpful. Thanks for knocking that out of the way first here. Janesh, maybe for you, great to hear the 41% margin goal in fiscal '29. Can you just walk us through some of the high-level assumptions and also guidance philosophy around that, if you could?

Question: Adam Borg - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company Inc - Analyst : Awesome. Maybe for Andrew, in the script, you talked a lot about success in construction, and it's great to see that continued traction there. So maybe talk about what's leading to this ongoing momentum? How much runway you feel is left on ACC? And any color on what you're seeing both domestically or internationally would be really interesting.

Question: Adam Borg - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company Inc - Analyst : That's really helpful. And maybe just as a follow-up for Janesh. You talked about this, I think, in some of your guidance assumptions. But when you think about the EBA renewal opportunity in the back half of the year, just remind for us maybe the relative size of the cohort this year versus last year and next? And how is the pipeline shaking up in terms of renewals and expansion?

Question: Jay Vleeschhouwer - Griffin Securities Inc - Analyst : Janesh, let me start with you and then Andrew, my follow-up will be more technical nature. So Janesh, with regard to the increased billings guidance for the year, $165 million at the midpoint, can we perhaps parse that in terms of some of the mix dynamics? Could you comment in terms of what you're seeing in terms of customer usage telemetry, mix of collections versus stand-alone? Anything in terms of retention or perhaps gross up for us, if you could, some of those important pieces of the mix that drove the increase in billings guidance?

Question: Jay Vleeschhouwer - Griffin Securities Inc - Analyst : Okay. Andrew, we're looking forward to some of the usual updates at AU in a couple of weeks. But in the meantime, following up on your comments on technology and customer adoption, one of your most important initiatives the last few years has, of course, been APS and your new data models for AEC and manufacturing. And you've spoken to the concept of data granularity, all of those are differentiators. However, we've often seen in the industry over many years that customer adoption of fundamentally new approaches are plumbing, if you will, can perhaps be very time consuming, and we've seen that, REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. AUGUST 28, 2025 / 9:00PM, ADSK.OQ - Q2 2026 Autodesk Inc Earnings Call for example, in TLM over the years where adoption can take quite a long time. So you're doing some very interesting technical work, and you need to do it. But perhaps you could talk about how you're thinking of the adoption of these fundamentally new methods over the next number of years.

Question: Elizabeth Elliott - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Great to hear the operating margin targets in Q2. I'm looking to hear more at the Analyst Day. So for my first question, it sounds like you continue to embed a more cautious outlook from the tariff impact into the low end of guidance. Just given we're further through the initial tariff headlines, how have your customer conversations evolved? And how should we think about the potential for disruption risk to still play out in the back half of the year, the potential of that disruption may be coming in a little bit better than period?

Question: Elizabeth Elliott - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Great. And then just as my follow-up, our conversations with partners, we've heard about how spending time with existing customers on the transaction model rollout has just limited some of the ability to drive new customer demand. just given we're further through the model rollout, you've had some commission changes to incentivize that new business side. How are you seeing channel productivity and execution, particularly on that new business side of the business trend? And what are you assuming for the remainder of the year and the outlook for that new business side?

Question: Taylor McGinnis - UBS AG - Analyst : Congrats on the quarter maybe just on the operating income margin guide for the full year. So if I look at the adjusted numbers for the model change, it looks like it wasn't raised as much as the revenue guide. So could you just maybe walk us through how your expectations for expense growth for the year have changed or are evolving? And where the incremental investments are going? And anything to comment, I guess, in terms of timing of expenses, just given 2Q looks pretty strong.

Question: Siti Panigrahi - Mizuho Securities USA LLC - Analyst : Perfect. Congrats on a really strong quarter. I wanted to ask about this channel activity. It's been a year since the new transaction model and also you talked about some of the channel consolidation. So what impact are you seeing from the new transaction model? Mainly you talked about some partners probably might have gone through the first renewal in June. So I would love to hear any productivity improvement you're seeing there.

Question: Siti Panigrahi - Mizuho Securities USA LLC - Analyst : Okay. That's great. And as a follow-up to Autodesk Construction Cloud, we continue to hear some positive feedback in terms of the feature set. So what competitive displacement trends are you seeing? Is it fair to say that with this new direct model transition, you'll see further axles on the ACG side, your direct sales guys can try to cross-sell .

Question: Tyler Radke - Citibank Cameroon SA - Analyst : One of the areas you highlighted was the strength in the online store and the direct business and I guess a couple of questions there. Is there any new PLG motions or marketing initiatives you're doing? And then secondly, how have you seen the evolution of the transaction model have you been able to capture a bit more of that business directly just given the changes? Obviously, you're getting a lot more data in terms of the end customer.

Question: Tyler Radke - Citibank Cameroon SA - Analyst : Great. And Janesh, just on the margins, the Analyst Day is coming up here in a little over a month. Why did that FY29 outlook now? And like was there some process you went through to get there? And how should we think about free cash flow margins in that same time frame?

Question: Koji Ikeda - Bofa Merrill Lynch Asset Holdings Inc - Analyst : Great to be back on these Autodesk calls, looking forward to it. Question here specifically within the construction industry. I wanted to hear some of your thoughts on what triggers in the industry could drive even more budget unlock for your largest global general contractor customers? I mean, more projects is the simple answer. So digging a layer beyond that, what can help drive more projects? Is there something from a regulatory standpoint or maybe a project financing standpoint? I mean, any color there on more budget unlock?

Question: Koji Ikeda - Bofa Merrill Lynch Asset Holdings Inc - Analyst : Got it. And maybe just a quick follow-up for Janesh. When I look at the NRR language in the deck, I saw that the language slightly changed to above from slightly above last quarter. And so wondering if you could talk a little bit about NRR trends, ex new transaction model. Is there any change this quarter versus last quarter? And how much of that language improvement was driven by the transaction model?

Question: Michael Turrin - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : And apologies if it's somewhat similar, but all the color you've been adding throughout the call is useful. So I'm wondering on the commentary on AEC's strength and we look at lot of the top line metrics look pretty consistently solid here. The CAD growth improvement we're seeing. I'm just wondering if you can help us at all parse whether any of that could be tied to macro settling a bit from where things sat three months ago. And this is very amplified in terms of the uncertainty around April and just having to react to that. So just maybe compare and contrast just the tone of conversation and how you know that it's not some modest line of improvement relative to what you were hearing a few months ago. And then just more color on the signals you're watching is always useful.

Question: Michael Turrin - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : I said good color with each question. So I appreciate the diversification response. Janesh, just on free cash flow, the majority of that back half weighted now in Q4. Is that a bit more pronounced to Q4 than what you were previously expecting? And just anything additional you can add as we're tuning our models for the rest of the year there?