AUTODESK, INC. (ADSK): what the price assumes

In the published model solve dated 2026-Q2, anchored at $260.10, AUTODESK, INC. (ADSK) is priced for +29.5% growth. boothcheck publishes no house fair value, target price, or buy/sell rating; individual model outputs and user-controlled scenarios are analytical inputs, not Boothcheck targets. Narrative composed 2026-07-25.

Generated: 2026-08-30 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/ADSK

Headline

What The Price Assumes (Inversion)

The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.

The operating-margin figure is value-band context at year 9: derived from the framework's value band, a separate calculation — not part of the priced-in solve.

Solve inputs: computed at a 10.5% cost of capital with 4% terminal growth over a 5-year stage.

How unusual the bet is: within-range (limited comparison data)

Valuation X-Ray

The price is justified by relative-multiple and growth-DCF; asset-based/earnings-power land below the price.

How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.

Families that justify the price: Relative, Growth Families that call it expensive: Asset, Earnings

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 8.9%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=18)

Economic-Unit Decomposition (Sum Of The Parts)

Only one reportable economic unit is present in the current topology source. Consolidated operating lenses remain available, but there is no multi-unit decomposition.

No total common-equity value is stated. One or more material units lack a supported unit value. The displayed values are an indicative subtotal; consolidated debt and cash cannot be applied to a fraction of the company.

Solvency

Interest expense is not separately reported in the latest filings, so interest coverage cannot be computed.

Bullet Takeaways

• Most of next year's revenue is already contracted rather than sold: the FY2026 10-K states "We expect to recognize $5.48 billion or 66% of our remaining performance obligations as revenue during the next 12 months", with the balance landing after that.

• The risk is what the multiple already assumes. At about 26 times company-wide operating income the price requires operating profit to compound near 30% a year and to keep doing it across a five-year run, a pace only about 27 in 100 comparable fast growers have held that long.

• Two dated items sit ahead: the quarter ending July 31, 2026, guided to revenue of $2.005 billion to $2.015 billion, and the $3.6 billion MaintainX acquisition, to be funded with roughly $1.6 billion of existing cash plus $2 billion of new borrowing and excluded from guidance until it closes.

Bull Case

Design software gets valued on revenue rather than earnings, and for once that convention is defensible. The product is not bought, it is subscribed to, and the subscription is signed years before most of it reaches the income statement. Autodesk's FY2026 10-K puts a number on the gap: "We expect to recognize $5.48 billion or 66% of our remaining performance obligations as revenue during the next 12 months." The remainder lands after that. Roughly a year of revenue is therefore already contracted before the sales organisation opens for business in the morning, which is a different kind of asset from a pipeline.

The reported margin also understates what the business earns, and the filing says why. Management expects "the new transaction model to continue to positively impact calculated revenue growth, while being broadly neutral to calculated operating profit and free cash flow dollars, and to result in a calculated negative impact to operating margin". Under the new arrangement a reseller quotes the customer but the transaction settles directly with Autodesk, so the gross amount lands in revenue where the net amount used to. Revenue rises, profit does not move, and the margin ratio falls for reasons that have nothing to do with the economics of the business. A reader looking only at the margin line would draw the wrong conclusion.

Start with what the business actually earns: a 23.5% trailing operating margin on $7.51B of revenue. Capital efficiency is the more striking half of the picture. Return on equity runs near 45.9% and return on invested capital 13.6%, while book value is only about $15.04 a share, which is what happens when the asset is a file format and an installed habit rather than a plant. Against the cohort, that puts Autodesk in the upper middle rather than at either extreme. PTC (PTC) runs a 38.7% operating margin on $3.00B of revenue growing 27.7%; Cadence (CDNS) converts 28.3% on $5.53B; Veeva (VEEV) 28.8% on $3.32B. At the other end, ServiceNow (NOW) earns a 13.4% operating margin on $13.96B and Synopsys (SNPS) 7.0% on $8.68B while growing 39.5%. Autodesk is neither the most profitable nor the fastest, and it is the only one of them whose product sits at the point where a building or a part gets specified.

That position is the whole argument. Architecture, engineering and construction alone is half of revenue, AutoCAD another quarter, manufacturing 19%. A structural engineer's drawings, the contractor's model and the operator's asset records are the same file moving down a chain, and the firm that owns the format at the front of that chain sees the rest of it. Autodesk is now buying the far end: the announced acquisition of MaintainX extends the same data into maintenance and operations after the asset is built.

Capital allocation is unglamorous and consistent. On dividends the 10-K is flat: "We anticipate that, for the foreseeable future, we will not pay any cash or stock dividends." Cash goes back through the share base instead, with the share count down about 0.8% a year over the four years to April 2026. Operating profit covers interest roughly 21.1 times, and the business generates cash rather than consuming it. None of that is exciting. It is the condition under which a growth thesis can be wrong for a year without becoming a financing problem.

Bear Case

Sort the valuation approaches by how much they extrapolate and the disagreement stops looking like noise. The methods that reach today's level are the ones allowed to project. One grows free cash flow 18% a year for six years before settling at a 4% long-run pace. Another applies a sector earnings reference of roughly thirty-five times to today's earnings per share. The approaches that refuse to project say something else entirely: the price stands about 105% above where the earnings power methods land and about 181% above the asset value methods. The conservative readings are not obviously the wrong ones, because their assumptions are the only ones already visible in the accounts.

The sharpest of them is worth walking through. Normalise operating profit over five years, add back one-time charges, tax it and capitalise it with no growth at all, and the resulting value sits at roughly a quarter of the share price. That method assumes the company never grows again, which nobody believes. But it measures something real: how much of today's price rests on profit that has already been earned rather than profit that has been described. On that measure, three dollars in four are description.

Stock compensation is where the description gets expensive. Free cash flow over the trailing year was 2.73 billion dollars, and stock-based compensation over the same stretch was 0.71 billion, roughly a quarter of it. Capitalise the free cash flow net of that compensation at the return an equity holder requires and the answer lands at less than half of today's share price. Stock compensation is a real transfer from existing holders to employees, and a company offsetting it with buybacks is running quite hard to keep the share base roughly flat, which is what a 0.8% annual decline in the share count actually represents next to a growing employee population.

What the price needs from here is specific. At about 26 times company-wide operating income, it requires operating profit to compound near 30% a year and to hold that pace over a five-year stretch. The rate itself is within Autodesk's recent experience; the persistence is not commonplace, and only around 27 in 100 comparable fast growers managed it for that long. The multiple already sits at the very top of the peer distribution, well past the upper quartile, so there is no cohort argument that the market has simply mispriced the whole group. The arithmetic is delicate as well: each additional percentage point of required return moves what the price needs by about 5.7 points, which means the assumption doing the heaviest lifting is the discount rate rather than anything Autodesk controls.

The competitive backdrop is not slow-moving, and the 10-K does not pretend otherwise. It describes the platform shift from the personal computer to cloud and mobile computing and adds that "This shift further lowers barriers to entry and poses a disruptive challenge to established software companies." The risk factors go further, noting that "The software industry has limited barriers to entry, and the availability of computing devices with continually expanding performance at progressively lower prices contributes to the ease of market ent"ry. That is a company describing the erosion of the position its own valuation assumes will hold for years. Meanwhile PTC (PTC) is compounding revenue 27.7% at a 38.7% operating margin and Synopsys (SNPS) at 39.5%, both faster than Autodesk in adjacent design markets.

Two self-inflicted variables sit on top of all that. A restructuring plan initiated in the first quarter of fiscal 2026 reorganised the go-to-market organisation, another began in the fourth quarter, and the risk factors warn that the company "may not successfully execute or achieve the expected benefits of our restructuring plan". The balance sheet is also about to change shape. MaintainX is a $3.6 billion purchase to be funded with roughly $1.6 billion of cash and $2 billion of new borrowing. Autodesk can absorb that comfortably; the narrower point is that a valuation already asking for years of near-30% profit growth has just added integration risk and interest expense to the list of things that must go right.

Valuation

At $209.81 the market pays about 26 times company-wide operating income. Work that backwards and it requires operating profit to compound near 30% a year through a five-year stage before fading to a 4% long-run pace, discounted at a cost of capital around 10.6%. The rate is inside what Autodesk has recently delivered. What is unusual is being asked to deliver it without a pause, and only about 27 in 100 comparable fast growers have managed that over a stretch of that length.

The methods disagree along a clean line, and the line is whether a method is allowed to look forward. The peer multiple methods land about 18% above the price and the forward cash-flow methods about 31% above it, so on both of those readings today's price is unremarkable. The earnings power methods sit far the other way, with the price about 105% above where they land, and the asset value methods further still at about 181%. Nothing here is broken. The two groups are measuring different things: one asks what the market pays for software companies with this trajectory, the other asks what the profit already booked is worth if nothing improves.

That split is the analytical question rather than an answer. The relative reading leans on a static sector earnings reference of roughly thirty-five times, which is a statement about software as a category. The cohort itself says something less comfortable, placing Autodesk's multiple at the very top of the peer distribution and well past the upper quartile. Both can be true at once: priced normally against an abstraction of the sector, priced richly against the actual companies in it. A reader who wants one number to settle it will not get one, and the disagreement is the more useful information.

Two filing-reported inputs sit under the whole calculation and both deserve reading carefully. The first is the contracted base: "We expect to recognize $5.48 billion or 66% of our remaining performance obligations as revenue during the next 12 months." The second is a warning about the revenue line itself. Management expects "the new transaction model to continue to positively impact calculated revenue growth, while being broadly neutral to calculated operating profit and free cash flow dollars, and to result in a calculated negative impact to operating margin". Revenue growth is therefore flattered and the margin ratio depressed by an accounting presentation, which matters when the multiple being paid is set against revenue growth in the first place.

Cohort position mostly confirms the middle placement. PTC (PTC) earns 38.7% operating margins on $3.00B of revenue growing 27.7%, and Cadence (CDNS) 28.3% on $5.53B growing 13.4%, both more profitable than Autodesk's 23.5%. ServiceNow (NOW), at $13.96B of revenue and a 13.4% operating margin, and Synopsys (SNPS), at $8.68B and 7.0% while growing 39.5%, show the other trade. Autodesk sits between the profitable-and-steady group and the fast-and-thin group, which is a fair description of a business converting a mature installed base into subscriptions.

The balance sheet has not been the constraint and is about to become more interesting. Funded debt is small against a single year's operating profit, operating profit covers interest about 21.1 times, the business generates cash, and the share count has edged down roughly 0.8% a year over the four years to April 2026. The MaintainX purchase adds $2 billion of new borrowing to that picture once it closes. Coverage of that order absorbs it easily. The reason it belongs here is narrower: the price is already carrying a growth assumption, and the balance sheet was the part of the story that was not.

Catalysts

The May report reset the terms of the argument. First-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue grew 18% as reported and 16% in constant currency, to $1.93 billion, and management raised the full-year outlook to revenue of $8.16 billion to $8.22 billion. The gap between the reported and constant-currency growth rates is worth holding onto, because currency does not compound.

The larger news that day was strategic. Autodesk agreed to acquire MaintainX for $3.6 billion, funded with roughly $1.6 billion of existing cash and about $2 billion of new debt, subject to regulatory approval and expected to close during fiscal 2027. The deal is not in current guidance. That is the honest way to present it and it also means the guidance a reader compares the next print against does not include the acquisition's revenue or its costs. MaintainX extends Autodesk's data from design and construction into maintenance and operations, which is the part of an asset's life the company has not previously owned.

The near-term test is the quarter ending July 31, 2026, guided to revenue of $2.005 billion to $2.015 billion. Two things inside it matter more than the headline. The first is whether the sales reorganisation announced in February is still causing disruption, since guidance was built assuming some. The second is the split between reported and organic growth, given that the new transaction model lifts the revenue line without changing the profit underneath it. A quarter that hits the revenue range while operating profit lags would tell a reader more than the range itself.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Autodesk (consolidated) (reported)

• PTC (PTC Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: Run Rate (ARR) and cash flow, and deliver long-term value for shareholders. We focus our resources and attention on the solutions described above, where we believe we can create the greatest customer value. Our growth is primarily driven by existing customers that continue to upgrade and expand their PTC footprint,…
• FY2025 10-K: …revenue grew across all geographic regions, primarily driven by Windchill. PLM ARR grew 10% (8% constant currency) from September 30, 2024 to September 30, 2025, primarily driven by Windchill and Codebeamer. CAD software revenue growth in FY'25 was driven by the higher total value and longer average duration of…
• BSY (BENTLEY SYSTEMS, INCORPORATED)
• FY2025 10-K: …and Seequent applications are primarily cloud-connected desktop modeling and simulation applications that support the breadth of engineering and geoprofessional disciplines. Bentley Infrastructure Cloud , provided via cloud and hybrid environments, extends enterprise collaboration during project delivery, and helps…
• FY2025 10-K: …as a component of Other comprehensive income (loss), net of taxes in the consolidated statements of comprehensive income. Reclassifications Certain reclassifications of prior period amounts have been made to conform to the current period presentation. Accounting Policies The Company's consolidated financial…
• CDNS (CADENCE DESIGN SYSTEMS, INC.)
• FY2025 10-K: …opinion on the consolidated financial statements. These procedures included testing the effectiveness of controls relating to the revenue recognition process, including controls related to the identification and evaluation of terms and conditions in contracts that impact revenue recognition. These procedures also…
• FY2025 10-K: AG ("BETA CAE"), a system analysis platform provider of multi-domain, engineering simulation solutions. Revenue associated with our acquisition of BETA CAE is primarily classified as product and maintenance revenue in our System Design and Analysis product category, and cost of revenue associated with these contracts…
• SNPS (SYNOPSYS INC)
• FY2025 10-K: …accounting guidance, the results of the Software Integrity business were presented as discontinued operations in the consolidated statements of income and, as such, have been excluded from both continuing operations and segment results for all periods presented. See Note 3. Discontinued Operations of the Notes to…
• FY2025 10-K: …statements of income. 107 Table of Contents Note 19. Segment Disclosure Segment reporting is based upon the "management approach," i.e., how management organizes our operating segments for which separate financial information is (1) available and (2) evaluated regularly by the CODM in deciding how to allocate…
• VEEV (Veeva Systems Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …The measure of segment assets is reported on the consolidated balance sheets as total assets. The following table reconciles the Company's revenues to consolidated net income and the specific items excluded from cost of revenues and operating expenses to calculate adjusted operating income (in thousands): Fiscal year…
• FY2025 10-K: …statements have been prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (GAAP) and applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding annual financial reporting and include the accounts of our wholly-owned subsidiaries after elimination of…
• GWRE (Guidewire Software, Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …about their reportable segments' significant expenses and other segment items that are regularly provided to the Chief Operating Decision Maker (the "CODM"). Public entities with a single reportable segment are required to apply the disclosure requirements in ASU No. 2023-07, as well as all existing segment…
• FY2025 10-K: Item 15. Exhibits and Financial Statement Schedules (a) The following documents are filed as part of this report: 1. Consolidated Financial Statements See Index to Consolidated Financial Statements at Item 8 herein. 2. Financial Statement Schedules Schedules have been omitted because the information required to be set…
• INTU (INTUIT INC.)
• FY2025 10-K: …August 1, 2025, we combined the Consumer, Credit Karma, and ProTax businesses into a single Consumer business. We will reflect this new organization in our fiscal 2026 segment reporting. Global Business Solutions : This segment serves small and mid-market businesses around the world, and the accounting professionals…
• FY2025 10-K: …functions are no longer included in segment operating income and are now included in other corporate expenses. For the twelve months ended July 31, 2024 and 2023, we reclassified $1.4 billion and $1.3 billion from Global Business Solutions, $573 million and $475 million from Consumer, and $33 million and $34 million…
• NOW (ServiceNow, Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …level. Accordingly, our CODM uses consolidated net income to measure segment profit or loss, allocate resources and assess performance. Further, the CODM reviews and utilizes functional expenses (cost of revenues, sales and marketing, research and development, and general and administrative) at the consolidated level…
• FY2025 10-K: …delivers solutions that help public and private organizations govern, secure and manage artificial intelligence ("AI") and digitalize and streamline workflows to drive collaboration, productivity and better experiences across the enterprise. At the core of these solutions is the ServiceNow AI Platform ("Platform"), a…

Methodology Note

• Priced-in inversion: the valuation is inverted on the current price to recover the operating-income growth, duration, and steady-state margin the price embeds (ROE for financials, FFO growth for REITs).
• Valuation x-ray: the valuation models, grouped into four families (asset, earnings, relative, growth). Each model is expressed as a price/FV ratio (distance from price), not a point fair-value estimate. The spread across families is the disagreement.
• Economic-unit decomposition (SOTP): each disclosed business unit is assigned its native valuation basis before any multiple is applied. Operating units are valued on enterprise value; funded financial units are valued on their own common equity, because their borrowings fund earning assets rather than levering the parent. A company total is stated only once every material unit carries a supported value and the parent capital bridge reconciles.
• Solvency: net cash/debt, net-debt-to-NOPAT, interest coverage, and share-count CAGR from EDGAR financials (net debt / FFO and fixed-charge coverage for REITs; regulatory-capital framing for financials).
• Peer cohorts: per-segment comparables with deep-linkable SEC filing citations.

Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.