All right. Good morning, everyone. My name is Alex Sklar. I'm one of the application software analysts here at Raymond James. Very pleased to have Workiva back with us again this year. We have President and Chief Executive Officer, Julie Iskow, and SVP, Corporate Development and IR, Mike Rost. Thanks again for joining us.
Happy to be here.
Thanks for having us, sure. So, yeah, Julie, you know, maybe just as an intro for those less familiar with Workiva, I want to ask about kind of the vision you've laid out recently about Assured Integrated Reporting. So I think that's kind of been the heritage of the company. It's been a little bit different, kind of go forward, how you're actually selling the vision now. But can you just kind of talk about-
Sure
- that for Workiva?
Absolutely. It's been an evolution. When we started Workiva, it was actually founded by engineers and accountants, and the first solution, capabilities, and offering was around transparency and financial reporting. Today, we think about it as SEC reporting. But over the last 15 years, we've evolved, we have expanded our portfolio and offerings and enhanced our platform, and today we offer financial reporting, we offer ESG or non-financial reporting or sustainability, and we also have governance risk and compliance suite, which includes audit and risk management and controls and policies and procedures and so forth. So, a broad offering. And what we find in the market today, it is resonating with our customers, is it's integrated reporting with assurance or Assured Integrated Aeporting. So that's financial, non-financial or ESG, having assurance in our GRC firm.
So that is who we are today. We're the company with Assured Integrated Reporting solutions and, again, resonating with customers. It's all built on our platform that becomes ever more intuitive, ever more, you know, open and ever more intelligent. And that's, again, who we are today. And we really have a truly competitive offering in this space, and it's based on not just those capabilities, but it's also our experience doing investor-grade reporting for well over a decade now. We have a team and a company that is very at ease with regulatory changes. We can take a regulatory change, and the moment it comes out and it becomes law, those capabilities are in our platform, and our customers will not miss a beat in terms of compliance.
And again, with capabilities, with experience, and with our very large ecosystem of partners and our customer base of thousands and thousands of customers, we're able to go to market with a competitive advantage.
Yeah, you, you hit on one thing I definitely want to hit on later, but the product velocity, the ability to spin up new solutions really quickly in changing regulatory environments, definitely want to come back there. So, you're about to kind of wrap up your first year as Chief Executive Officer. I'm curious, kind of, where have been your biggest focus areas this first year, and where are we today in terms of kind of executing against kind of what you want to put in place, as CEO?
Sure. I mean, continue to execute on our growth strategy, which is really four growth vectors. It's around our best-of-breed leading solutions. It's our platform that, as I mentioned, becomes ever more intelligent and intuitive and open, and it's about being excellent everywhere we play, and that's beyond North America. That's global footprint. And of course, it is around continuing to strengthen and leverage our high-performing partner ecosystem. So those are the four areas of the growth strategy that we continue to move forward and focus of everything we do. Where we've gotten specific in terms of execution is really focusing on multi-solution and account expansion. It's that platform, and we're doing that intentionally and tactically. And of course, that's where partners come in. We absolutely expand with partners.
We sell more, we sell faster, we sell broader, we sell higher everywhere where digital and financial transformation is.
Well, that, that's a good segue. Let's maybe stay there on kind of the, the platform and multi-solution adoption. How, how would you characterize kind of the, the customer buy-in in terms of embracing that full platform approach? So, right, a lot of these things they're doing maybe in siloed places today, you offer, the ability for them to kind of do it all in one place. Can you talk about kind of how customers have embraced that?
Yeah, sure. I mean, the concept of Assured Integrated Reporting is resonating, and customers who have had us for many, many years will recognize the value of the platform, particularly in these times, around consolidating with vendors. But we talked on our investor Investor Day about some of the customers that have been with us since the early days. I think I highlighted a Fortune 500 and a Fortune 50 company. Been with us since early days in 2011, 2013. They had our SEC reporting solution, and they've expanded over the years, sometimes 1 or 2 solutions a year, and they're at 10, 11, 12 solutions with us, and they're multimillion-dollar customers, going from, say, $200,000 to, you know, well over $2 million in some of these customers.
So, the concept of expansion with us is absolutely resonating with customers. And today, when you buy financial reporting, having assurance with it, or ESG reporting and having controls around it, they go together, which is why the concept of assured integrated reporting-
Yeah
- again, is so important.
I am curious to hear more about kind of some of the product, the solution groupings that do go together. 62% of subscription revenue now, I think, is now coming from multi-solution customers. I think that was-
Yeah
... that's up, pretty notably over the last three years.
Yes.
Can you, can you talk about, like, the commonality within those multi-solution customers? Are they coming from some of those solution groups that do really fit together nicely? Do they skew more towards kind of public company, Global 2000 type companies? Any commonality of the kind of multi-solution customers?
It really varies quarter to quarter. Sometimes we'll sell a suite of our GRC solution, governance, risk, and compliance, and you'll have audit and SOX and risk management together. Sometimes it's in financial services. You'll have a client who buys some of our financial services-specific regulatory solutions. But then again, ESG and GRC go very well together, and where we're seeing the clearest success for ESG is in our current client base, who have, you know, financial reporting with us because they are so closely linked, because integrated reporting is so important, the integrated report with financial and non-financial. So for a myriad of reasons, of course, and knowing who we are, that solution, the solution combination goes well together.
I actually want to dig into that combo. You called out the ESG plus GRC. That was something as we talked to partners at Amplify this year, was something that was almost universally spoken about by your partner community. So what is it about kind of the controls plus the ESG that's such a powerful combination?
Well, it's regulatory. Just like financial reporting, when you submit to the SEC, you need to have assurance and controls around your financial data. The same is now becoming the trend, both regulatory and, and other, for companies who are reporting their non-financial or ESG data. So there is that, that synergy. So yes, again, it's why we have the assured integrated reportings get, become, critically important.
Perfect. So maybe go and kind of go-to-market focus. We talked about the percentage coming from multi, multi-solution customers. You still have a good deal of customers that are kind of single solution. Clearly, there's more applicable to those customers. How have you kind of set up the go-to-market organization to really target those single solution customers, get them on that expansion motion like we laid out with some of your successful multi ones today?
We have been more intentional about that, and you're seeing the results, of course, as the number that you laid out earlier. We are doing multiple. We're approaching it from multiple ways, but we are importantly thinking about our go-to-market teams and the way they go to market, right? We have, we have some sellers that have been here for a long time, and it's about enabling them to be able to go to the market and show the value of a platform of multi-solutions, of Assured Integrated Reporting. And we've been, again, successful in that. Our ESG, on top of the financial reporting, is one of the segments we sell on a multi-solution. And so it's the way we move as a company, it's the way we market, it's the way we promote our brand.
We're evolving and transitioning as a company to a platform company and a company that, again, sells Assured Integrated Reporting.
Yeah. And so with that move to the platform company, I think one of the things that's been very notable during your time broadly, not just as CEO, but the leadership team that you've brought in, I think there's some new executives, heads of sales in your different regions, new executives on the product side, that have a lot of that platform experience. So maybe just talk about kind of the evolution of the leadership team over the last couple of years.
Sure. We have an incredible team. Our current team has expertise around our platform, around our products, around our customers, around the industry, a lot of experience within Workiva. We have a great culture, and our high-performing talent, fortunately, stays with us. As we think about, though, going to $1 billion and beyond, in the $2 billion range, we're looking for leadership that has been there and done that in terms of growth and scale. Leaders that have been at multiple SaaS companies, that have been at companies that have scaled well beyond $1 billion, and we're bringing those in to complement our existing leadership. And that blend is, in our minds, critically important for us as we grow and scale.
So we've recently hired a new Chief Accounting Officer who's been at multiple SaaS companies and has been a Chief Accounting Officer before and has been at larger companies and scaled. We hired our first CIO for Workiva, who has been at multiple SaaS companies and scaled well beyond $1 billion. We hired our new SVP or head of sales for Americas. He has been at, you know, ServiceNow from 2,000 to 20,000 people, scaled beyond. And we've hired a new Chief Product Officer. Again, been at Amazon, been at Smartsheet, scaled companies, and been within the leadership team as those companies have put processes in place, have done automation, have done go-to-market, and have really scaled their companies. And we'll continue to do that to level up the team.
Our growth in terms of leadership will be a combination of both those that have been here for a long time, again, that have expertise with Workiva and our, and our base and market, but then, you know, pairing them with leadership from external that have been there and done that.
I'm curious, as you've brought in some of these new leaders, and just given when you started, I think in 2019 with Workiva to today, has where you think Workiva's platform can ultimately go, like, changed, like, materially in terms of thinking it's actually a much bigger opportunity that we can address than when maybe when you started up?
Sure. I mean, today, we're talking about assured integrated reporting, and while we've been building best-of-breed capabilities and a platform to be able to go to the market and win in that area, we've also been building a platform that's incredibly well suited to handle transparent reporting in general and regulatory disclosure. And I'll give you the example of the private equity regulation that just came out not long ago, a couple months ago, and it's requiring now private equity companies to report on funds, right? And it's quarterly reporting with annual assurance. We need to do nothing to our platform to be able to handle that regulation. It's there, and not one line of code needed to be written, and we're able to handle that in that market. And we can think of other regulations coming out.
I mean, there were a recent change for cybersecurity. You need to report, you know, 4 days within a material breach, and this is all about controls, and it's all about disclosure, and that is what Workiva does, controls and disclosure. And we find ourselves, you know, fast becoming this platform again for transparent reporting and regulatory disclosure, not just, you know, financial reporting and non-financial and GRC. So that's our vision, and that's what we believe will propel us into the next few years and well beyond $1 billion.
Got it. Perfect. So we, we've hit on a lot of things from kind of a, company execution side. On the other side, obviously, we're in a tougher demand kinda backdrop for enterprise software broadly, probably much beyond just enterprise software. You've kind of alluded to some of the things you're seeing on the demand side, but how would you kinda characterize the kind of the, the macro impact on the business right now, and any changes kind of that you've taken in the last couple quarters, just in terms of trying to combat some of those crosscurrents,
Sure. We've, you know, made it no secret that we continue to operate in a challenging environment, just like our peer SaaS companies. We are seeing in the macro, you know, much more stringent activity with respect to procurement. They're scrutinizing deals a lot more. We're not seeing deals drop. We're seeing them, you know, push out a bit, just a lot more thoughtfulness in the purchasing decision and, and how to spend that share of wallet devoted to digital and financial transformation. I find myself on a lot more calls, helping deals, you know, get over the line. So there is a lot, a lot out there in terms of scrutiny around, around buying. But again, we have a broad-based platform where we tend to be resilient simply because of the regulatory nature.
But we have changed a little bit of the way we operate. I mean, we've been doing some tactical things around takeaways. We've been going hard on the capital market side, on secondary offerings while we, you know, you know, patiently wait for a capital market change and so forth. And we're, you know, again, enabling our selling organization, our go-to-market team, to be able to go in and market and explain to customers, in a refined way, you know, our value proposition. So we're doubling down and working through, but, again, the macro's having an impact on almost every SaaS company.
Well, it's, it's the beauty of the platform. There are so many different places-
It is the beauty.
... you can land. So maybe just taken all together and kind of macro, maybe macro-agnostic here, but with the kind of go-to-market changes, with the kind of expanding platform, like, what's the right way to think about growth for Workiva over a medium or long term? I know you have the path to kind of a billion that you've laid out, but how should investors think about growth, kind of as we build all that up?
I mean, when you look at the markets that we play in, long, durable growth, and it's not about the quarter to quarter, it's the, the multi-year journey for us, and we'll continue to to execute. It's not, you know, ESG is gonna be a hockey stick, anything like that. It's a long, durable growth market. The regulations, evolve and happen over the course of, of several years. So we continue to execute. You know, challenges in the market or not, we'll continue to go after those large, you know, our large, unaddressed TAM, essentially, and do what we can to expedite the growth, leveraging those growth vectors, like our partner ecosystem and so forth.
So we're going after it, and we feel very confident about the market in front of us, and we're making the changes necessary internally to begin to execute. Lots of room for improvement, and we'll continue to do that.
Perfect. Maybe let's dig in a little bit into some of those growth drivers specifically. So you, you alluded to ESG. ESG, I think, is one of the most exciting ones, just given your installed base and kind of where the hype- where it seems like the ESG rules are trending towards kinda annual reports. We have the CSRD in Europe. We have some initial proposed rules in the U.S., maybe some more coming, but how should we... Can you just talk about kind of your success in ESG to date without the formal rules in the U.S.? 'Cause I think it's mostly been U.S. success to date, and, and how you see that opportunity on the ESG side playing out?
Sure, and you're right. We've seen our growth. ESG has been a top booking solution for us over the last several quarters, absolutely within the top three, sometimes higher over the quarters. So we see a lot of strong, healthy pipeline and demand. We are seeing success, as I mentioned earlier, where we have enterprise customers who are doing ESG not just because there's a regulation. We segment the market into leaders in ESG, some builders. On the back end, we've got compliers and learners. There are some that are not gonna be buying this until regulation is right in front of them, and there's a consequence, and they're gonna be - we call them box checkers, right? Or compliers. And then there are the other end that are buying anyway. They know it's coming.
It's not going away. They want to be able to reply to all stakeholders and satisfy demand for all stakeholders, not just a regulator. So we are seeing success in that area. We again think of it, and when I answered your question prior around, you know, our growth opportunity and how we see it, this is one of those, again, long, durable-demand markets. No hockey stick. We're gonna continue as the regulations come. And you mentioned CSRD, and there will be U.S. companies that are going to need to comply there. Just had California roll out some regulation, regardless of the SEC regulation, whether that comes in December, next year, or the following year. You've seen California come out with the requirement for Scope 1, 2, 3, and on companies.
You know, with $1 billion in revenue or more in California, so that will apply to a number of companies. So, you know, regulation, no regulation, we're seeing the trends and, again, long, durable growth market.
I'm curious, when you just boxed out the ESG buckets, the leaders, the compliers, the check-the-boxers, like, is the right way to think about them pretty balanced, kind of within your- or is some, like, are some of those higher weighting, like, there's more folks that are looking to take a leading, a leading role in kind of disclosing and reporting around ESG?
I think the bigger companies understand the importance of ESG and sustainability or non-financial factors, and disclosing those regardless of the regulation. So we absolutely see greater success in those markets, in particular today, where we have some budget constraints in the mid-market. They see it, but you know, there are other factors at play there in mid-market with the macro. And CSRD just—I mean, the regulations were just defined very, very recently to the point where execution is going to happen in those companies. And it's to be seen whether we see a growth year in 2024 versus 2025. But I would say in the upmarket, you see more understanding of the necessity of it and the importance of it, the disclosure of these non-financial factors.
If California might force their hand, so, so-
Absolutely, it's right there.
So one of the other ones you alluded to on capital markets, I think the audience here is obviously familiar with the capital markets activity we've had over the past year. So I think people are excited because it's almost all incremental when it does come back for Workiva. How should we think about... And I guess I'll start, you've been involved with some of the higher-profile deals that have gone this year. How should we think about kind of your positioning as you've moved earlier into the private company life cycle for when capital markets does, activity does return?
Yeah, I mean, we think about 2021. I mean, we were successful in 2021, one of our best years for capital markets, and we had very little sales resource behind that, a small team going after capital markets. We never really have been beyond, you know, 5% of our revenue or 10% of the market there. But we have since built out a stronger team, still not hugely significant, but we're ramped and poised and ready to go when capital markets comes back. And we love capital markets because it's part of our private to public journey.
We might sell a customer or a potential IPO company 1-2 years in advance, our private company reporting and controls, internal controls, and then the S-1 when it comes, and they go public. And then they'll buy SEC, and then, you know, SOX capability and management reporting and ESG somewhere along the continuum there. So these are really important customers for us. And when the market does come back, even if we don't get the S-1, we will have the ability to go on and get the solutions following it. So we're poised for when it comes back, though we've not baked any, you know, significant comeback at all into our guidance at this point.
And I think one of the... You talked about in the last quarter call, one of the recent IPOs you did start working with on the private side a handful of years ago, if I'm not mistaken on that. So it shows some of the efforts in moving earlier into the life cycle.
Absolutely, yes.
Switching gears, profitability has been something that I think you've spoken to, having more of a focus on in your current role today. We've already seen a lot of leverage this year. You have a target for kind of the operating margins in 2027, I think, or five years from now. You have a really high incremental margin business. Help us walk through kind of how investors should think about the leverage in the model over the next couple of years.
Yeah, we have laid out our long-term operating, you know, targets, and 2027, as you said. It's not going to be linear as we go there. I mean, again, I'll say it, we have a large and a relatively unaddressed TAM, and wherever we can invest to go after that TAM in a more expedited way, in a more effective way, we will invest. And we think of it primarily as, you know, our sales organization, go-to-market organization, and around innovation. Those two things we will continue to drive investment towards. Certainly, we could be more profitable. It's mostly headcount. We have a high margin business and so forth.
We could get higher margins if we needed to or wanted to, but in the life cycle and where we are as a company, investment is important, growth is important. So I think we're focusing more on productivity and efficiency as opposed to managing to a margin, if that makes sense. We're focused on growth and getting that growth in a sustainable way and in an efficient way-
Uh
... and in a productive way, and that's the way we look at it.
That makes all, that makes all sense in the world. I was gonna, I was gonna ask, and it sounds like the, you already kind of alluded to the answer, but, the operating expenses have been fairly stable the last couple of quarters on the headcount side as well. But it does sound like there are some areas of pockets of, of kind of green shoot or areas you do want to invest more behind.
Sure.
What, maybe, what are some of the big investment priorities for us?
Think about the regulation as we talked about earlier. If some regulations came in and SEC suddenly comes on with some stringent regulation, it might be an area we go after. On the go-to-market side, we want more, you know, on the street to go after it. We're gonna continue to bring in, you know, more leadership where we can to improve our productivity, not be a drag on our operating margin and so forth. So, lots of areas where we can see again, where we can make headway on going after that, you know, large unaddressed TAM, we will go do that.
... Perfect. I'll open it to the audience if there's anyone with questions. All right, so I wanna hit on kind of international and Europe, in particular. You've, you've already invested pretty significantly in Europe, ahead of some of those regulatory drivers. It's some of the XBRL rules, some of the regulatory rules around ESG are much broader than Europe. Partners is a big piece of it. How, how do you feel about kind of what you have built in place on the go-to-market side to capture some of that international demand? And, and how should we think about international growth relative to kind of the growth in North America the next few years?
Well, we're actually pleased with the momentum that we're seeing in Europe, and we talked about it in our last earnings call. We had a very solid quarter, one of the best quarters we've had in Europe, and we're seeing some traction there. But we've been the first to there. It's an evolution for us, and we're working on improving our go-to-market capabilities around Europe. It's also not a single, you know, country like it is here in the U.S., so there's differences across regions and so forth that we need to make sure that we are addressing and able to go after. But it's a long, again, durable market. Regulation just became solidified there, and it's over the course of the next couple of years.
We do expect to, you know, make more significant headway, and we're going to go after that. Would also say that this concept of this, the CSRD, Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, it essentially is assured integrated reporting, right? It's financial and non-financial data, sustainability data in one report, and then assurance comes in. Demand for that'll, that regulation happens in 2026 through 2028. So we expect, again, demand to increase there, and we are, you know, improving our sales organization. We hired new leadership there, and strengthening the team and enabling the team. So lots more room for opportunity there for us to go after our market opportunity.
Yeah, that, that assurance piece in particular is such a big catalyst for adoption.
Really.
Once they can't just... The idea of greenwashing some of these things, once you actually have to get assurance behind it, certainly is a catalyst for bringing a platform.
Yeah.
Well, maybe just to wrap up, you know, we've talked about kind of some of the longer term focus for the company, your targets. As we enter kind of 2024, what are the maybe one or two things you're most focused on getting right, kind of as we think about the longer term vision for Workiva?
I think it's execution again on those growth vectors, and it's multi-solution account expansion, it's executing on the platform play and having our customers and potential customers really understand the value of the platform. And it's continuing on with innovation and remaining, you know, the leader in the field, best of breed, keeping our moat around us. But again, it's our team execution on execute and, you know, those growth vectors for the company.
Perfect. All right. Well, Julie, Mike, Yogi, thank you for joining us today, and thanks everyone in the audience.
Thank you. Appreciated being here.
Yep.