{"id":5858,"date":"2021-10-22T12:12:53","date_gmt":"2021-10-22T10:12:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joapen.com\/blog\/?p=5858"},"modified":"2023-02-25T00:46:58","modified_gmt":"2023-02-24T23:46:58","slug":"a-review-of-autodesk-inc-maps-numbers-and-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/joapen.com\/blog\/2021\/10\/22\/a-review-of-autodesk-inc-maps-numbers-and-evolution\/","title":{"rendered":"A review of Autodesk Inc., maps, numbers and evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I am writing this review of Autodesk Inc. focusing on a major milestone of the evolution of the company in the last recent years. I’m not Autodesk employee and I have never worked for them. I used AutoCAD when I was in college (when you were required to install with 11 floppy disks).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This map was shared in the Map Camp use case edition done in November 2021 (video<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I build a report in TradingView<\/a> about the progress of the main fundamental data of the companies, and this is the one for Autodesk:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Revenue (purple), operating expenses (dark blue), gross profit (light blue), EBITDA (orange) and FCF (green)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Note that gross profit (light blue line) was negative in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So looking at debt & equity, we can notice as in the middle of 2015 Autodesk started to increase the debt projecting a decrease in the equity and cash, which really happened between 2016 and 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Total debt (red), total equity (blue), cash & equivalents (green)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In terms of returns, I consider that >20% it’s a healthy return. Autodesk increased the investments in R&D till 2018, where they slowed down. ROIC in 2020 jumped into 50%. I have not added ROE, and you will see the reason below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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R&D investments (Light green), ROIC (purple), ROA (dark green)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

ROE was bad starting in 2016 and a disaster during mid-2018 and 2021. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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ROE (blue)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In summary, some major decisions were done in middle 2015, in 2016 and they hit rock bottom in 2018 where things started to ramp up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s jump into 10k data<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I use my TradingView report to get some perspective, but when I want to dig into details I go to annual 10k reports. They are sent to the SEC (US regulator), so the amount of “bla, bla, bla” is limited. In the case of Autodesk, these are the 10k reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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10k reports available in Autodesk web site, under investor relations<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

All information that I’m adding is basically from these reports. I have started on FY16 that corresponds to 2015, and I have stopped in FY21.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some data & events<\/h2>\n\n\n\n