Autodesk (NASDAQ:ADSK) held its second-quarter earnings conference call on Thursday. Below is the complete transcript from the call.
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Summary
Autodesk reported a strong second quarter with revenue and earnings per share surpassing guidance, leading to an increase in full-year billings and revenue outlook.
The acquisition of MaintainX has been completed, which will contribute approximately $60 million to revenue and $70 million to billings in the second half of fiscal 2027.
The company's strategy focuses on creating project intelligence across the asset life cycle by converging design, make, and operate workflows, which is expected to enhance efficiency and resilience.
Financial highlights include a 16% revenue increase, a 29% GAAP operating margin, and a 41% non-GAAP operating margin, with a free cash flow of $561 million.
Management expressed confidence in achieving a 41% non-GAAP operating margin by fiscal 2029, despite temporary margin dilution from the MaintainX acquisition.
Autodesk is advancing its AI strategy to enhance project intelligence, focusing on accuracy, speed, and affordability, and aims to integrate AI features into its platform and industry clouds.
The company remains focused on enhancing sales productivity, particularly in Western Europe, and has seen improved renewal rates and new business productivity.
Autodesk plans to continue its share buyback program with approximately 50% of free cash flow allocated to reducing share count.
The construction business continues to perform well, growing over 20%, driven by strong technology adoption across diversified markets.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Thank you for standing by and welcome to Autodesk second quarter fiscal year 2027 earnings conference call. Currently all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. To remove yourself from the queue, you may press star 11 again. I would now like to hand the call over to Simon Mays Smith, Vice President, Investor Relations.
Please go ahead.
Simon Mays Smith, Vice President, Investor Relations
Thanks, operator, and good afternoon. Thank you for joining our conference call to discuss Autodesk's fiscal 2027 second quarter results. Andrew Anagnost, our CEO, and Janesh Moorjani, our CFO, are on the line with me. During this call we will make forward-looking statements, including outlook and related assumptions on products, artificial intelligence, sales and marketing optimization, go-to-market strategies, and trends. 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 and supplemental materials available on our Investor Relations website. And now I will turn the call over to Andrew.
Andrew Anagnost, CEO
Thank you, Simon, and welcome, everyone, to the call. We delivered another strong quarter with revenue and earnings per share above the high end of our guidance ranges. We've raised our full-year billings and revenue outlook to reflect the second quarter outperformance and stronger expectations for the second half. Our guidance now also includes MaintainX following completion of the acquisition on August 3rd. Our strategy, strong execution, and the compounding benefits from the business model changes we have made over the years continue to be reflected in the performance of the business.
Autodesk's strategy is to build project intelligence across the asset life cycle by converging design, make, and operate through a continuous flow of data, context, and experience. While owners have long invested in better design, manufacturing, and construction, the opportunity lies in extending the value of that information into decades of operations and then bringing real-world performance back to inform the next generation of projects. This project intelligence across the life cycle enables smarter decisions, greater resilience, and continuous optimization.
An enterprise deal we signed during the second quarter brings that strategy to life with a vision of every project becoming a complete, data-rich digital twin. One of the world's largest retailers selected Autodesk Forma as the common data environment, connecting planning, design, construction, and operations across its portfolio in North America. Rather than optimizing individual phases, it is creating a connected digital thread that carries trusted project information from concept, through construction, and into operations.
This strategy has led the customer to select Autodesk Tandem as its digital twin platform. While deployment is still in its early stages, the customer is investing in improving the fidelity of its asset data by capturing and validating as-built conditions, ensuring every facility has the trusted digital foundation required to support long-term operational value. Forma helps create the continuous flow of project intelligence between design intent and operational reality.
Combining design and construction data in Tandem creates a digital twin that evolves alongside the physical assets it represents. Looking ahead, solutions like MaintainX extend that digital thread from systems of record to systems of action, connecting digital twins with day-to-day operational workflows and real-world performance. This is not an isolated deployment; it's a reflection of a broader shift we're seeing as owners move beyond digitizing projects to generating project intelligence across the entire asset life cycle.
As design, manufacturing, construction, and operations converge around a shared digital foundation, project intelligence doesn't stop at improving today's assets. It creates a continuous feedback loop that informs how the next generation of assets is designed, built, and operated. Before I hand over to Janesh to discuss our quarterly financial performance and guidance, I'd like to say a few words about Amy Bunzel, our EVP of Architecture, Engineering and Construction solutions, who plans to retire after an extraordinary 23 years with Autodesk.
Amy has helped shape Autodesk into the company we are today. Her vision, deep commitment to our customers and leadership through some of our most important transformations have built a world-class AEC business and an enduring legacy. I've spent much of my career working alongside Amy, and I'm going to miss her as a colleague and as a collaborator in solving the built world's capacity challenges. She will remain with us as we search for her successor and through the transition, and she leaves behind an exceptional team and an AEC business in a position of strength.
On behalf of all of us, I wish Amy the very best in her well-earned retirement. Janesh, over to you to discuss our quarterly financial performance and guidance.
Janesh Moorjani, CFO
Thanks, Andrew. Q2 was another strong quarter overall. The underlying momentum of the business was consistent with prior quarters, with strength coming from similar industry segments in AEC, particularly in construction, and emerging markets. Overall, the impact from our sales reorganization was in line with the range of outcomes we had expected. The Americas, APAC, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East are normalizing a little earlier than Western Europe.
The overall impact to new subscription growth was once again within the range of our expectations. While the linearity of billings during the quarter was better than we expected, renewal rates remained strong. Total revenue in the second quarter grew 16% as reported and 14% in constant currency. As expected, the new transaction model provided a tailwind of roughly 2 percentage points to revenue growth in the second quarter. Please see the tables in our press release, earnings deck, and Excel financials for details.
By product and region, billings increased 10% as reported and 12% in constant currency. The impact of the new transaction model on billings growth was not significant in the second quarter. During the second quarter we sustained our program of reducing multi-year discounts established over the last few years, including winding down multi-year renewals for the maintenance-to-subscription program. We continue to expect the reduction of discounting for multi-year contracts to benefit price realization over time while also temporarily weighing on unbilled deferred revenue and RPO growth.
Turning to margins, second quarter GAAP and non-GAAP operating margins were 29% and 41%, respectively. GAAP operating margin increased approximately 4 percentage points primarily due to underlying margin improvements and a further reduction in stock-based compensation as a percent of revenue. Non-GAAP operating margin was up approximately 2 percentage points. This primarily reflected operating leverage and the benefits from our sales optimization.
Second quarter free cash flow was $561 million, reflecting the timing of billings and collections during the quarter. Moving on to capital allocation, we repurchased approximately 2.1 million shares during the quarter for $453 million. We continue to expect our share buyback in fiscal 2027 to be similar to fiscal 2026 in total dollars. We expect to maintain a healthy buyback program that continues to apply approximately 50% of free cash flow to further reduce share count over time.
Before I turn to guidance, a quick update on a few minor changes we are making to simplify our revenue presentation and reflect the acquisition of MaintainX. There are no changes to our income statement revenue presentation. We are making some minor changes to our product family revenue presentation to reflect the acquisition of MaintainX, and going forward we will stop disclosing Design and Make revenue, consistent with our strategy of converging workflows end to end and expanding our business into operations.
We will continue to provide regular commentary on Construction, Fusion, and Operations, and will also disclose MaintainX revenue for four quarters to help you track the performance of those businesses. The slide deck on our website summarizes these changes. Let me finish with guidance. Our guidance philosophy is unchanged. Our guidance continues to be based on the range of possible outcomes in our bottom-up sales forecast, which is grounded in the momentum of the business and embeds some prudence against our expectations of sales productivity normalization.
We've assumed the macroeconomic environment will remain broadly stable through the year. Our guidance now includes the billings, revenue, and operating and net financing costs from MaintainX for approximately six months of fiscal 2027. We expect MaintainX to contribute approximately $60 million to second half fiscal 2027 revenue and approximately $70 million to second half fiscal 2027 billings, both weighted slightly towards the fourth quarter given the growth profile of the business.
As we have now largely concluded the new transaction model implementation, we will focus our commentary on as-reported numbers in future earnings calls. As a reminder, the tailwind to revenue growth from the new transaction model in the first half of the year translates to approximately a 1.5 percentage point tailwind to revenue growth for the full year. For billings, we've raised our fiscal 27 billings guidance to a range of $8.575 billion to $8.65 billion to reflect the contribution from maintenance and an underlying improvement in our expectations, partly offset by mixed assumptions on the contribution from the new transaction model and foreign exchange. For revenue, we've raised our fiscal 27 revenue guidance to a range of $8.295 billion to $8.345 billion to reflect the contribution from maintenance. Our strong results in the second quarter and an underlying improvement in our expectations for GAAP operating margin. We've revised our fiscal 27 guidance to a range of 25% to 27%, primarily to reflect the GAAP accounting effects of the MaintainX acquisition. For non-GAAP operating margin, our fiscal 27 guidance is unchanged, reflecting higher underlying margin from operating leverage and benefits from our go-to-market optimization offset by the margin dilution from the maintenance acquisition.
We expect fiscal 28 non-GAAP margins to improve modestly from 39% in fiscal 27, with underlying improvement partly offset by the annualization of maintenance operating costs. We remain on track to achieve 41% non-GAAP operating margin in fiscal 29. And for free cash flow, we've narrowed our fiscal 27 expectation to a range of $2.725 billion to $2.75 billion, reflecting stronger underlying expectations offset by the operating and net financing costs for MaintainX and approximately $45 million of transaction expenses related to the acquisition of MaintainX.
We continue to manage our stock-based compensation with discipline. We expect stock-based compensation as a percent of revenue to be about 9% in fiscal 27, which is within our targeted range and down from about 11% in fiscal 26. In summary, we remain disciplined and focused on the controllable factors that drive our revenue, operating margin, earnings per share, and capital allocation, which are the key building blocks of free cash flow per share.
The slide deck on our website has modeling assumptions for the third quarter and full year fiscal 27. Andrew, back to you.
Andrew Anagnost, CEO
Thank you, Janesh. Autodesk is focused on creating project intelligence powered by the convergence of our platform, industry clouds, and AI for our customers. Convergence increases efficiency and resilience and reduces risk and downtime so they can deploy fewer resources to every project and bid on and win more projects with the resources they have. Let me give you some examples of our progress in the quarter that demonstrate how this differentiated strategy works.
An ENR Top 400 U.S. general contractor selected Forma for construction over a competitive solution for cost management, preconstruction, and model coordination, driven by our differentiated platform value. Similarly, Rudolph Libbe Group, another ENR Top 400 general contractor, selected the Forma Operations bundle in a competitive new-logo win to standardize workflows from preconstruction through project delivery, supported by an ERP integration. In Europe, a leading infrastructure and construction company renewed and expanded its enterprise agreement with Autodesk to accelerate digital transformation and low-carbon and energy-efficient delivery, including using Autodesk Platform Services to build custom applications for a major transit infrastructure program. In India, a large municipal corporation replaced disconnected solutions with Autodesk AEC water infrastructure and Forma offerings to connect civil design, hydraulic modeling, and project delivery for a new water treatment plant. These stories have a common theme: creating project intelligence by converging people, processes, and data across the project life cycle to increase efficiency and resilience, decrease risk, and prepare for an agentic AI world.
It also extends Autodesk's growth potential, as the continued strong performance of our construction business demonstrates. We see even greater potential in operations and in manufacturing customers demanding convergence as they invest in their digital transformation to leverage granular and unified data and embrace the AI-driven automation capable of industry transformation. By consolidating on our platform, customers have the flexibility and connectivity across workflows to increase agility, innovation, and resilience.
For example, a leading German manufacturer standardized on the Product Design & Manufacturing Collection and Vault to unify fragmented engineering data and streamline proposal and project delivery. U.S.-based Central States Industrial expanded its use of Autodesk Vault and Fusion to connect critical data and workflows, improving access to project information, streamlining operations, and creating a scalable foundation to manage rapidly growing job volumes and support continued growth.
Another German manufacturer selected Fusion to replace a legacy CAD/CAM solution with an integrated design and manufacturing environment, including 5-axis machining. And the Williams Company, an American precision machine shop, is using nearly the full breadth of Fusion's manufacturing capabilities, from cloud tool libraries to simultaneous multi-axis machining and automated probing, to modernize and standardize CNC programming across its shop floor.
As you can see from these examples, our customers are using more of Fusion's functional breadth with larger installations and design-through-make convergence to drive strong growth. Let me finish by talking about AI. AI is what increasingly turns this connected data and context into actionable project intelligence. It promises to ease endemic capacity constraints, raise the bar on what's possible in the physical world, and help our customers do more with scarce resources.
To realize that promise, our customers need AI that becomes an active participant in their workflows. They don't want AI that is merely impressive. They want AI that is accurate, fast enough to stay in the flow of work, and affordable enough to use every day. Delivering all three at enterprise scale is hard. Accuracy, speed, and affordability are often competing constraints. We believe trust is earned by how those trade-offs are managed. The future of AI won't belong to the company with the best single model.
It will belong to the platform that combines the richest context with the right models to deliver the best outcomes for customers. That's where Autodesk is uniquely positioned. We bring together decades of industry experience, rich lifecycle data spanning design, make, and operate, and context that connects that information into a shared understanding of our customers' workflows. We combine probabilistic AI with deterministic engineering, grounding intelligence in the realities of the physical world.
We complement those advantages with a common AI platform that can leverage the right model for the right task, from trusted third-party and frontier models to Autodesk-built models like NeuralCAD, purpose-built to reason directly about geometry and design data. And we're building that platform to be open, allowing customers and partners to bring their own intelligence into Autodesk workflows. We complement all of this with commercial innovations that make AI practical and affordable for customers of every size.
Those capabilities reinforce one another. Richer context improves accuracy. Intelligent model orchestration improves speed. Platform scale and vertical-specific models improve affordability. Together, they earn the trust our customers place in us to deploy AI in their most critical workflows. As more of that intelligence—ours, our customers', and our partners'—connects to the platform, those advantages continue to compound. Every project now leverages historical project data and creates more knowledge.
Every asset generates more operational intelligence. Every operational insight improves the next generation of design, engineering, and operations. That continuous feedback loop of project intelligence is creating a durable competitive advantage for Autodesk and, more importantly, an enduring advantage for our customers. That's why we believe AI is more than a feature or a product cycle. It's a fundamental transformation in how the world's infrastructure, buildings, products, and factories will be imagined, built, operated, and continuously improved.
And because Autodesk sits at the intersection of these workflows with the data, context, and experience to bring them together, we believe we're building the platform and ecosystem that will define the next generation of AI for the built world. Autodesk's advantage is that we can create project intelligence across the asset life cycle by converging design, make, and operate through a continuous flow of data, context, and experience. We're excited to tell you more about our plans at Autodesk University in a few weeks' time.
Operator, we would like to open the call up for questions.
OPERATOR
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star-1-1 on your telephone to remove yourself from the queue. You may press star-1-1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Saket Kalia at Barclays. Your line is open.
Saket Kalia, Analyst at Barclays
Okay, great. Hey guys, thanks for taking my questions here. Andrew, I want to pick up on your last line of commentary there at the end, which I thought was interesting. And really, through your prepared remarks, you talked about project intelligence a bit. And I want to loop that into some of your product families a bit. And maybe the specific question is how does the operational data for maintenance create what kind of seems like a data advantage for Autodesk AI when you combine it with the design, the build data that you have.
So, sorry, there's a lot there, but does that make sense?
Andrew Anagnost, CEO
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. So first off, let me kind of just elaborate on project intelligence a little bit. There's a lot of decisions that happen in context of a progress of a project, from design into make, in construction or into manufacturing. All of these decisions have reasons; they have intent associated with them. Project intelligence captures all this in a continuous way. And what we're doing with MaintainX is we're actually extending that intelligence into the asset's life cycle, which means we're going to be able to capture information and data about how the asset functions in the real world.
That is incredibly valuable data because the assets that we're talking about here—buildings, airports, conveyor belts, machines—they're all built by our customers. So that actually closes the loop on the asset cycle and on the context associated with that. So that's going to allow us to not only train on data about design processes and building processes and manufacturing processes, but also how assets are used and feed that back into the larger cycle.
It just increases the value of the cycle overall for our customers.
Saket Kalia, Analyst at Barclays
Got it. Very helpful. Janesh, maybe for my follow-up for you. You talked a little bit about guidance philosophy in your prepared remarks. I was just wondering if you'd talk a little bit about maybe how we should think about the levels of prudence built into the Q3 and full-year guide.
Janesh Moorjani, CFO
Hey Saket, I'm happy to do that. So broadly speaking, our guidance philosophy remains unchanged. And just to recap that briefly, the guidance is grounded in the momentum of the business and what we know today. We reflect the opportunities we see and then we incorporate some level of prudence around the areas where there may still be some variability. So at the start of the year, Our guidance had to contemplate a much wider range of outcomes, particularly around the impact of the sales reorganization on new business productivity. And six months into the year, the impact from the reorg has largely remained within the range we expected. Renewals have been very strong. The business has performed much better than our initial assumptions in many areas. And so we've reflected all of that in the outlook. We flowed through the first half revenue outperformance and we've also raised our expectations for the back half in both billings and revenue.
Based on what we've seen so far, there is naturally less uncertainty today compared to the past because we're only forecasting the remaining six months of the year. But at the same time, we've also got work ahead of us in the second half. We have our largest EBA renewal cohort, as you know, with a concentration in Q4. And we're also focused on the pace of new business productivity normalization, particularly in Western Europe. So the guide reflects that.
It reflects the better visibility we have and the remaining work in the back half. But importantly, we've had a terrific first half. We're very pleased with the progress we've made so far and we are very confident in our fiscal 27 outlook.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Joshua Tilton of Wolfe Research. Your line is open, Joshua.
Joshua Tilton, Analyst at Wolfe Research
Hey guys, can you hear me? Awesome. How are you guys? Maybe I'll stick with Janesh since he was on the line prior. First one is just give us a little bit of clarification. I think we're getting some inbounds on, you know, how much exactly was the revenue and the billings raised for the full year inorganically versus the organic contribution? I know that you gave us the inorganic contribution dollars in the press release, but can you just help us fully clarify the math on just by how much organically you raised revenue and billings for the full year?
Janesh Moorjani, CFO
Yeah, I'm happy to, Josh. So maybe I'll just start with billings. The underlying billings outlook improved by about 2 percentage points. One point of that comes from MaintainX, which was approximately $70 million. And roughly one point comes from just stronger underlying performance that we had in the business. There's an offset on that, which is we had a little bit of headwind from currency and transactional model mix and so that offsets about one point.
So netting those two translates to about a one percentage point improvement. So said another way, when you think about our prior guidance excluding the new transaction model and excluding currency, that prior guide was 8 to 9% year-over-year growth. Now that has increased to 9 to 10% year-over-year growth on an organic basis. And tack on a point for MaintainX. So that's 10 to 11% year-over-year growth. So that's the underlying increase in terms of the billings.
And then in terms of the revenue, you saw that we had a pretty healthy outperformance in Q2, which we've then flowed through to the rest of the year. And the specific contribution from MaintainX on billings is only $60 million. And we've raised our organic revenue number by much more than that, as you can see from the direct math there.
Joshua Tilton, Analyst at Wolfe Research
Super helpful. And then maybe one for Andrew. And I preface the question with you can't answer along the lines of we can't pick between our favorite children type answers. But I couldn't help but notice that M and E is getting put into a bucket called Other. And all the other segments seem to have a very nice representative name. Is there any reason investors should take that as a signal of maybe less strategic focus on that area of the business than you might have previously had?
Andrew Anagnost, CEO
No, you shouldn't. Look, the M and E business is definitely going under a lot of changes. It's going through a lot of transformations here. But the structure of the M and E business, the high-end studios, what they need from us, that work is continuing, extended our product portfolio in very interesting ways for this segment. They are embracing Flow, capturing some of the tools in Flow Studio. So our higher-end business is definitely embracing the new technologies we're going, and we're also expanding the business to grab the new creator economy.
That's kind of building around that. That's where Flow Studio leads. So there's nothing you should read into that other than it's just a smaller business and it's easier to capture it in another bucket with the operations solution. That's all you should read.
Joshua Tilton, Analyst at Wolfe Research
Super helpful, guys. Congrats on a great quarter.
Andrew Anagnost, CEO
Thanks, Josh.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Adam Borg of Stifel. Please go ahead, Adam.
Adam Borg, Analyst at Stifel
Awesome. And thanks so much for taking the questions. Maybe the first question, Andrew, just on MaintainX, obviously the deal now closed. What's been really customer feedback on your move to go deeper into operations and maybe talk about the top R and D and sales and marketing priorities now that it closed. And I have a follow-up after.
Andrew Anagnost, CEO
Yeah. So let me talk about customer reaction in general. When you look at a lot of our customers, especially in the general contracting space and even in the architecture space and certainly in the manufacturing space, they're all very interested in either improving operations internally for themselves or extending their businesses into operations in some way. Having Autodesk help them do that and having Autodesk do it in such a way that we've closed the loop around design, make and operate is very attractive to a certain segment of our customer base and they're looking into this and engaging with us on some of these things.
We're also seeing lots of synergies with our enterprise accounts and I think you'll continue to see that. Just like we did with construction. In terms of where we're at with the integration, it's very early. We just closed the acquisition early in August. Our main focus right now is on integrating the back office and maintaining the momentum in the business. And that's where our goals are right now. As you look forward, we're certainly going to have synergies in the business.
Like I said, around the enterprise accounts, we're going to be able to bring MaintainX into those accounts very much like we did in construction. Again, similar to construction, we're going to be able to bring the MaintainX business to Europe. Another thing that's also a significant opportunity here is MaintainX has been primarily focused on the manufacturing sector, we can bring them more robustly into the AEC sector. And all of that is on top of the new virtuous cycle we're going to be building around design, make and operate.
That gives you a sense for where we're at and some of the reactions. And at the end of your prepared remarks, when you talked about kind of the AI platform, the platform you're building and the AI advantages, you did also talk about, you know, you're building your own AI models, which I'm sure we'll hear more about today in a couple weeks. Yeah. So what our customers need, Adam, is they need fast answers that are accurate. By accurate I mean precise, especially in our world.
It's a built world. I've often said that, you know, probably right is wrong in our world, but they also need cost-effective solutions. So what we're looking to do is we're looking to use the right model for the job and that's going to include a full breadth of different types of models. We're not locked into any one type of model. We'll use a frontier model where it's appropriate for a particular type of answer the customer may need. We'll use one of our models when a precise kind of data-driven answer associated with direct context into what they're designing and making is appropriate.
And we'll use other models where we see appropriate in order to drive the right kind of cost-effective behavior for our customers. And we'll do this in such a way that we're always leveraging the data we have, the context we have about the customer and we're packaging it in an experience that actually makes sense for design and make. When you bring all those things together, you get a sense for what we're doing. We're going to bring the right tools to the right problem at the right time to the customer.
But it's always, always about using our data, our context and the experience we deliver to our customer to give fast, accurate and cost-effective answers.
Adam Borg, Analyst at Stifel
Thanks again. Really helpful.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jay Valischauer of Griffin Securities. Please go ahead, Jay.
Jay Valischauer, Analyst at Griffin Securities
Thank you. Good evening, Andrew. For you first, your comments about Project Intelligence were exactly what I had in mind to ask you about, based on your recent article on LinkedIn. The question there is actually twofold. One part of that is it's a very AEC-biased oriented comment thus far. How do you see taking that technology or that concept into manufacturing? And does the fact that you have much lower market share in manufacturing than you do in AEC perhaps influence how you're thinking about that?
And then the other Project Intelligence part of that question before I turn to Janesh is does this whole concept in any way have any implications for product packaging? You've been very bundles- and collections-oriented to date. I mean, does that necessarily have to change?
Andrew Anagnost, CEO
First off, let me address the question around Project Intelligence and AEC. Projects exist everywhere. Every manufactured product is a project inside of the company. They'll call it a project, have a project code name, right? So project is a generic term for capturing the entire life cycle of information flow from design through either construction or manufacturing, all the way into the operations of the asset. So this is not something that is reserved to the AEC space, nor is it intended to be reserved to the AEC space in our framing.
In fact, frankly, some of the deepest usage we're seeing with some of our AI is in our manufacturing product set in Fusion. In particular, Fusion's continuing to enjoy robust growth partly because we've closed the loop for an entire project from design to manufacturing and now engaging into operations, especially in the factory world. So this is not something targeted at AEC in any way, shape or form and it certainly is relevant to what's going on in manufacturing.
On our product packaging, you know, we've said many times over time that you're going to see us evolving from task-based automations to workflow-based automations, all the way up to system-level automations for our customers. Ultimately what you're seeing us move to is the industry clouds. Fusion, Forma and Flow is the main way we deliver capabilities to our customers. Subscriptions are still going to be highly relevant for those of those customers.
But over time as we move into deeper workflow automations, deeper automations around systems, you're going to see us get involved in more and more consumptive efforts. That obviously changes the way people consume the functionality within Fusion, Forma and Flow in the future. And you should expect as this evolution progresses, customers are more exposed to the functionality and the capabilities from Autodesk bringing to bear what they need and what they need to accomplish to the table and bringing the right functionality there at the right time.
You probably hear a little bit more about this at AU.
Jay Valischauer, Analyst at Griffin Securities
Okay. For Janesh, any meaningful update with regard to usage telemetry, that is in terms of geos or verticals, collection versus standalone? Any sort of metrics around that set of data?
Andrew Anagnost, CEO
Jay, I'd say overall we are seeing pretty healthy engagement across the board that is very consistent with the strength that we delivered across the business. We see that across geos, verticals, as well as the individual products. But I would be a little bit careful not to over-interpret any one signal just because usage can be influenced by things like project timing and seasonality and mix and so forth. But the broad patterns that we are seeing are very consistent and similar to what we've seen earlier.
And the uplift dynamic suggests that customers are continuing to deepen their adoption over time. So we're very pleased with that.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Joe Vruwink of Baird. Your line is open, Joe.
Joe Vruwink, Analyst at Baird
Great, thank you, and congrats, Amy, on a great career. I think by now I've lost count of all the Fable one-shotting CAD videos I've watched. They're all fun, but I think most often when I look at the CAD environment it tends to be Fusion, which is the one actually doing the magic. So I guess my question is whether you've seen evidence of user growth accelerating for applications like Fusion that have MCP connections into an LLM environment.
Andrew Anagnost, CEO
What I will say is the Fusion business is doing quite well. We're very happy with the results for Fusion. We're seeing not only continued growth in user acquisition, continued growth in ACV and revenue, but we're also seeing continued growth in multi-seat purchases, which is exactly what we want to see. The reasons for this are very clear. We've been very deliberate in leading with some of the new automations, leading with MCP connectors. All of these things you're seeing in the ecosystem, people using various tools with Fusion, are quite deliberate and quite intentional on our part in terms of driving the strategy.
We've been very AI-forward with Fusion not only with regards to the ecosystem but also with regards to the functionality. And like I said earlier, our customers on the Fusion side are some of the most deeply engaged with our assistant and the AI features inside the product. This is absolutely a tailwind to Fusion growth and we expect that tailwind to continue.
Joe Vruwink, Analyst at Baird
All right, great. Thank you for that. And then hoping you can comment on your approach to API pricing and how thinking has evolved. I think there were some tweaks recently here in August where you listened to customer feedback and maybe changed some of the timing. Just curious what the feedback has been and how you're thinking about this going forward.
Andrew Anagnost, CEO
Yeah, I think that's a great question. You know, customers are very much aware that we're going to be charging for APIs and machine-based usage. We've actually already charged for some of that usage. We do listen to customers, we do adjust some of our timelines and our intents to make sure that we're matching with customer expectations and customer ramp-up times. But continue to look for us to charge for access to machine-driven usage to our capabilities, our IP, and our products.
That's not going to change.
Joe Vruwink, Analyst at Baird
Thank you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brent Thill of Jefferies. Your line is open, Brent.
Brent Thill, Analyst at Jefferies
Thanks, Andrew. Many of your software peers are unveiling AI revenue. I don't know if it's important to you—maybe it's found in other ways—but how do you think about the impact, and is this something you expect that you want to talk about going forward?
Andrew Anagnost, CEO
Yeah, I want to go back to the framework for AI monetization that we rolled out last year around task-based automation, workflow automation, and systems-level automation. Right now what we're doing is we're enabling lots of task-based automation in the product, lots of AI-driven automation. It's basically built into some of the subscription offerings we have. And like I've said, it's actually a tailwind to Fusion growth right now. People notice what we're doing and they like it, and it's a very active point of conversation in the Fusion community.
I think you should look at the task-based automations as not only a lubricant but an accelerant to some of the subscription-based businesses as we move forward, and we'll treat it as such. But as time goes on and we move deeper into workflow automation, systems-level automation, you're going to see us start to express more consumptive revenue that'll show up through Flex business and other things that are also embedded in how we're reporting in our industries.
So look for us to evolve these things over time. We're not trying to do one-off presentations on some of these things. We're trying to drive real value in our business with our customers through our work on Project Intelligence. Janesh, do you want to add anything?
Janesh Moorjani, CFO
No, I think that's a good summary.
Brent Thill, Analyst at Jefferies
And for Janesh, I know you're calling for gross margins to be flat. Many of the other companies we all follow are seeing some compression because of AI. I guess what you're saying is you can embrace some of these tasks and still keep GMs flat.
Janesh Moorjani, CFO
We can this year, Brent. And that's what we've factored into the model. Over time, as the AI-based workloads and offerings continue to grow, those will be gross profit dollars accretive, but they will put a little bit of compression on gross margin. But that's one of the things that we had also factored into our long-term operating margin target when we rolled that out. So that is embedded in the 41% margin target for FY29.
Brent Thill, Analyst at Jefferies
Great, thanks.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Elizabeth Porter of Morgan Stanley. Your question please, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Porter, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
Great. Thank you so much for the question. First, I wanted to continue on the line of some of the pricing dynamics, and I believe in early June you lowered the Flex minimum purchase from $399 to make it more accessible for SMBs. So while it's still early, I'd love to better understand what you're seeing thus far, whether any changes in new logo activation, repeat token purchases, or lower checkout abandonment, how the change can be economically accretive.
Thank you.
Andrew Anagnost, CEO
So we are actually seeing down-market changes in adoption based on those Flex changes. The customers really wanted access—that was a customer-driven change. Customers wanted access to tokens in smaller bundles that matched how they were going to work. We view this as part of the long-term strategy around Flex, integrating Flex deeper into our business, allowing customers to access all the capabilities in the portfolio, and also allowing them to mix and match how they drive occasional use of one product versus deep usage of their other products.
So yes, we have seen some acceleration in adoption of Flex, and it has been net accretive to the business, which is great. That will be something we continue to do on an ongoing basis. So watch that space over time.
Elizabeth Porter, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
Great. And then just as a follow-up on the sales reorganization, what are some of the leading indicators that you're seeing now in terms of rep productivity, pipeline creation, or some of the time to ramp that improved in Q2? And maybe what are some of the ones that you're still looking to turn the corner on, and how are you looking at signs just to confirm that the disruption has peaked and more of that risk is actually behind us now? Thank you.
Andrew Anagnost, CEO
Yeah. So, Elizabeth, I'll kind of echo what Janesh said in his opening commentary. One of the places we've seen actual real productivity increases—and it was one of the places we were targeting—is in renewal business. Our renewals are much more productive now, both internally and through the channel partners, and that was a major goal of what we were trying to do: increase productivity of the renewal business, shift more effort into expansion business, new business generation in both the channel and internally inside the company.
We've also seen all the green shoots associated with the expansion business internally and with the channel. The one area that Janesh highlighted is—and this is because of consultation periods and all the things associated with mature Europe—it's been a little slower to ramp up on the expansion business. We're seeing the signs, we're seeing continued growth in pipeline associated with kind of forward-looking indicators that tell us we're moving in the right direction.
But that's the dynamics right now: we're seeing exactly what we expected with a slower buildup in mature Europe.
Janesh Moorjani, CFO
And maybe, Elizabeth, the one thing I would add to that is, in terms of the specific measures that you look for with respect to new business productivity, are sellers able to make their plan and how are they ramping against their plan? And we saw strength in that in Q2 in most of the areas around the world, where they were much closer to plan, and it's a lot better than it was in Q1.
Elizabeth Porter, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
Great. Thank you so much.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jason Salino of KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead, Jason.
Jason Salino, Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets
Great. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to ask about your EBA visibility. I think in prepared remarks, Janesh said that this was kind of a factor of maybe varying scenarios of what you could see this year. I'm curious, as we approach the second half, what types of renewal activity or expansion activity you're seeing with some of your cohorts?
Janesh Moorjani, CFO
Jason, fiscal 27 includes our largest EBA renewal cohort, and there's a big concentration of those EBAs in Q4. And if I think about that in terms of just cohort dynamics, you'll recall that last year we had the biggest product subscription renewal cohort and we also had our second-largest EBA cohort. So it does create a little bit of a tough year-on-year comp in terms of the size of the renewal cohorts in the back half of the year. What I'd say is the prior full-year outlook already reflected all of these cohort dynamics, and we've executed really well so far in terms of business that we closed in Q2 and preparation for the back half, and that gave us the confidence to raise the outlook for the year on billings, even on an underlying basis.
Jason Salino, Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets
I see. Okay. And then maybe it's more of an irrelevant point. I know you reiterated your operating margin guide, but now that MaintainX has closed, curious what might be the operating margin impact in the quarter or the year, or maybe historically what the margin profile looked like before you acquired it. Thank you.
Janesh Moorjani, CFO
MaintainX was a high-growth business when we acquired it and still is, and consistent with many high-growth businesses, as you might imagine, the business was not profitable. And so as we bring MaintainX into Autodesk, our main focus is to ensure that we do everything that we can to continue to preserve the strong growth rate and continue to fuel the engine. So MaintainX does present a drag on operating margin in fiscal 27. And then next year we'll have the full-year annual costs of MaintainX from an operating perspective and also in terms of the net financing cost.
But despite that, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, as I think about next year, we do expect that we will increase the operating margin next year from the 39% that we have this year.
OPERATOR
Thanks, Jason. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Taylor McInnis of UBS. Please go ahead, Taylor.
Taylor McInnis, Analyst at UBS
Yeah, hi. Thanks so much for taking my question. So you've done a nice job sustaining a consistent level of growth, but as we look beyond FY27, Autodesk is going to start to lap a few tailwinds related to the model change and the transition to annual billings and a couple of the larger renewal cohorts that you talked about, which have all been beneficial to underlying growth. So as we think about that, is it possible that at some point that starts to become a headwind to billings growth?
And if not, maybe you could just talk about the incremental growth drivers that you're excited about that could help support the growth durability that we've seen. Thanks.
Janesh Moorjani, CFO
Hey Taylor, this is Janesh. Maybe I'll take that question. So, you know, as we think about fiscal 28, there's a number of different moving parts, as you mentioned, and it's a little bit early to talk about 28, but I'll at least just highlight some of those moving parts for you. You know, first off, as you know, fiscal 27 has some benefit from the new transaction model that will not recur in fiscal 28. So that's one factor to consider. And 28 will also include the full-year contribution from MaintainX, as I just mentioned, both in terms of the top line as well as the expenses.
We'll also have the continued normalization of new business productivity where, as we continue to get better in Western Europe and the rest of the world, that will ultimately be a driver of the business for us. But underneath all of those moving pieces, the core drivers of the business remain strong. Renewals are strong, EBAs are strong. We are seeing sustained demand across areas like construction and infrastructure and industrial. We're excited about the opportunities in operations, both in terms of organic as well as continuing to build on the MaintainX acquisition.
So all of those factors, the consistent execution that we've had as a company for a while now for the past few years and that we're delivering here in fiscal 27, I think all of those underlying drivers will help us continue to sustain strength into 28 as well. We'll obviously give you a more full picture of all of the moving parts and timing and mix impacts and so forth when we get to that point. But the important piece for now is that fiscal 27 is playing out nicely.
We have raised our guidance on both billings and on revenue, and we feel very good about the underlying momentum of the business.
Taylor McInnis, Analyst at UBS
Perfect. Thank you so much.
Janesh Moorjani, CFO
Thank you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ken Wong of Oppenheimer and Company. Please go ahead. Ken.
Ken Wong, Analyst at Oppenheimer
Great. Thanks for taking my question, Andrew. I wanted to circle back to MaintainX. So now that you guys are integrating it into the business, how should we think about some of the go-to-market motions that might need to be tweaked? How much of the direct sales force will be impacted? Is this something that you guys will be able to push through to your partner network? Any color there and the possibility of any disruptions from the integration that you guys are baking into the guidance?
Andrew Anagnost, CEO
Yeah, we certainly bake lots of things into the guidance to make sure that we're prudent in terms of what we tell you. At a high level, short-term goal is maintain the momentum of the business. Very clear. Okay. We want to make sure that we maintain the momentum of this. It's a good business. It's adding customers at a nice clip. We want to maintain some of that. Like I said earlier, just like what we did in construction, the enterprise account business is immediate opportunity for synergies with regards to engaging deeper with some of those customers and getting MaintainX into some of those accounts.
Frankly, they're not in those accounts. So I think there's a big opportunity there and we want MaintainX to be able to exploit that avenue in terms of getting to our customers. They've also built a great product-led machine that's targeting customers and new account acquisition. We want to maintain and leverage that machine for Autodesk, not only for MaintainX but, broadly, across the Autodesk portfolio. And look for us to do that because that expertise is valuable and their product-led growth motion works incredibly well.
Partners are absolutely going to be an opportunity here. Partners are going to be interested in this, especially as we start expanding the business into Europe. We'll probably be looking at motions with regards to engaging our partners, again very similar to what we did with construction. So look for us to basically copy some of the motions we did in the early days of construction when we bought PlanGrid and we bought BuildingConnected, but also learn from some of those motions and actually accelerate them faster than we did back in the days of construction.
Ken Wong, Analyst at Oppenheimer
Got it. Super helpful. Janesh, I wanted to touch on that prior point you made about slight margin improvement in fiscal — I recall you guys had embedded, not necessarily MaintainX specifically, but the possibility of M&A into the guidance kind of this year. And longer term, should we think something similar for 28 that, should you guys kind of bundle on something on top of MaintainX after the fact, that that slight margin improvement has some cushion?
Janesh Moorjani, CFO
Ken, the way I would think about future acquisitions and the impact of those is just to go back to our overall approach in terms of operations. We are following the same playbook as we did in construction where we laid down a cornerstone acquisition and then built around that with smaller tuck-in acquisitions, and for us in operations, MaintainX was that cornerstone acquisition and future acquisitions will probably be smaller in size and we'll just build around that.
So I would look at the fiscal 28 guidance on operating margin more specifically when we get to that point. But I would expect at this point that it will be an improvement over the 39% that we've laid out here for you today.
Ken Wong, Analyst at Oppenheimer
Okay, perfect.
Janesh Moorjani, CFO
Thank you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Martino of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Matt.
Matt Martino, Analyst at Goldman Sachs
Yeah, thanks for taking the questions. Andrew, maybe to start with you, as Autodesk moves from task-level AI towards broader workflow automation, what in your mind are the key technology and data unlocks still, and where do you believe the platform is furthest along today?
Andrew Anagnost, CEO
Yeah, the key thing that drives the workflow automations is what we're building into the Assistant. The Assistant is kind of the integration layer that allows us to bring the context we have about what the customer is doing at each spot and also bring the right models to bear. So the more the users engage with the Assistant, the deeper the engagement with the Assistant, the more workflow-driven automations we introduce in. You'll see some indications of that at AU, but the front door for these things is the Assistant and its agentic layers that we built out there.
The deeper the usage there, the more you're going to see us extending into the workflow side of the expansion there. And what was the second part of your question? I'm sorry, could you repeat that, Matt?
Matt Martino, Analyst at Goldman Sachs
Where the platform is furthest along today.
Andrew Anagnost, CEO
Okay. Fusion is definitely one of the areas where we've invested quite a bit of effort to get the platform integrating various capabilities. The Assistant obviously is part of the core platform that's built horizontally across Autodesk. But Fusion has definitely moved aggressively to deliver value through the Assistant so that the customers can start to look at workflow-type automations and actually engage in workflow-type transactions. I think you'll see some of those showing up first in Fusion.
Matt Martino, Analyst at Goldman Sachs
Great. If I could just slip in a quick one on the macro, Andrew. The broader construction backdrop has been fairly uneven, but format for construction seems to be showing pretty good momentum here. So maybe just unpack sort of what's driving that resilience and where you're beginning to see maybe even early signs of improvement across some of these pockets of the end market. Thank you.
Andrew Anagnost, CEO
So we're super happy with our construction business. It's growing north of 20%. We like what we see. I want to be super clear about a few things here. We're very diversified, we're diversified globally, we're diversified across all the segments of construction — that diversification is an absolute strength. The other thing is construction is kind of reverting back to the mean in terms of backlogs. We're completely fine with that because the real underlying driver of growth is not the oscillations and the various metrics you're seeing.
It's the fact that the penetration of technology in construction is so low right now. What's driving our business right now is people like what we're doing. They like what they're getting from design-and-make integration. They like what we're doing with preconstruction. They're adopting technology at higher rates because technology allows them to deal with their backlog, to unlock their capacity, and be able to build things more sustainably across the whole spectrum of customer types that we serve.
That's the underlying thing here — it's the technology adoption cycle. It's not the ups and downs of what you see with various metrics in the construction space.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tyler Radke of Citi. Your line is open. Tyler.
Tyler Radke, Analyst at Citi
Yeah, thanks for taking the question. Maybe just at a high level, like with these disclosure changes, Janesh. I guess why now? Why sort of midway through the year? And I think there's a lot of good momentum in the construction business. You talked about a leading organization choosing Autodesk Construction this quarter. So can you just be a little bit more specific on how you'll be updating us on the progress of that and the metrics that you'll share?
Janesh Moorjani, CFO
Tyler, I'm happy to. In terms of the why now, it's really got to do with the launch of the operations business. With closing of MaintainX, we needed to revisit our product family reporting. So that's the short answer on the why now. But as I think about that, design and make — you know, ultimately our focus is on driving convergence across design, make, and operate. And the more successful we are with that strategy, the less sense it makes to have discrete buckets on design and make or anything else.
So construction is reported today under the make business, but even that doesn't entirely capture all the construction business. And so it's really important for us to make sure that as we move forward we are providing you with a view on how the underlying businesses are performing. So we will provide you with regular updates on that business. It will be regular commentary just like we have today. We will tell you how the business has been growing.
It's growing north of 20% and has done for some time. And then specific to Fusion and Operations, we'll also provide you with regular commentary on those. And then as I said, we'll provide MaintainX revenue for four quarters to give you visibility into how that business is doing.
Tyler Radke, Analyst at Citi
Great. And on the MaintainX front, just sort of thinking about your goals from a financial perspective and synergies. I think at the time of the acquisition you talked about 50% plus growth, 135 million or so of ARR, if I'm not mistaken. Is your goal to meaningfully re-accelerate that? Obviously you don't want to disrupt a lot of the momentum they have, but at the same time you have massive distribution and probably a lot of customers that could get value by deploying MaintainX.
So how should we just think about those revenue synergy goals over the next couple years?
Andrew Anagnost, CEO
Yeah, Maintenance already has very strong standalone growth momentum, Tyler. And, you know, for us the strategic value that it gives us is the new operational entry point into teams that are responsible for maintaining and operating assets every day. I think there's multiple vectors in terms of revenue synergy opportunities. The first is extending Maintenance through our global reach across customers of all sizes. So there are significant geographic opportunities in terms of expansion.
There's also opportunity with many of our larger enterprise customers and elevating Maintenance's presence in those accounts. We also see the ability to extend across different industries. A lot of Maintenance's customers today are more manufacturing-centric, but there's a massive opportunity across AEC as well, and then ultimately connecting operations workflows through the Design and Make platform into Operate and closing that full lifecycle so customers can manage across the entire lifecycle.
And all of those things help us. In addition to that, we talked about the benefits in terms of how that accelerates our overall AI strategy as well. So there are all of those revenue synergy vectors. But as you mentioned, I think the most important piece for us is to make sure that we first preserve the existing growth rate and that we very thoughtfully and deliberately expand over time across these vectors to continue to deliver greater growth in that business.
Tyler Radke, Analyst at Citi
Thank you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. That is all the time we have for Q and A today. I would now like to turn the conference.
Simon Mays Smith, Vice President, Investor Relations
Thanks, Latif, and thanks, everyone, for joining us. We'll look forward to seeing many of you on the road or at conferences over the coming weeks. If you have any questions in the meantime, please contact me or my team. Thanks very much.
OPERATOR
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
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