Workday, Inc. Q2 FY2023 Earnings Call

Welcome to Workday's Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2023 Earnings Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will conduct a question-and-answer session towards the end of the call. During the Q&A please limit your questions to one. And with that, I will now hand it over to Justin Furby, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Thank you, operator. Welcome to Workday's Second Quarter Fiscal 2023 Earnings Conference Call. On the call, we have Aneel Bhusri and Chano Fernandez, our co-CEOs; Barbara Larson, our CFO; and Pete Schlampp, our Chief Strategy Officer. Following prepared remarks, we will take questions. Our press release was issued after the close of market and is posted on our website, where this call is being simultaneously webcast. Before we get started, we want to emphasize that some of our statements on this call, particularly our guidance, are based on the information we have as of today and include forward-looking statements regarding our financial results, applications, customer demand, operations, and other matters. These statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, including those related to the impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and recent macroeconomic events on our business and global economic conditions. Please refer to the press release and the Risk Factors and documents we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our 2022 Annual Report on Form 10-K and our most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q for additional information on risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that may cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in such statements. In addition, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are useful as supplemental measures of Workday's performance. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for or in isolation from GAAP results. You can find additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations with comparable GAAP results in our earnings press release, in our investor presentation, and on the Investor Relations page of our website. The webcast replay of this call will be available for the next 90 days on our company website under the Investor Relations link. Additionally, our quarterly investor presentation will be posted on our Investor Relations website following this call. Also, the customers' page of our website includes a list of selected customers and is updated monthly. Our third quarter fiscal 2023 quiet period begins on October 15, 2022. Unless otherwise stated, all financial comparisons in this call will be to our results for the comparable period of our fiscal 2022. With that, I'll hand the call over to Aneel.

Thank you, Justin, and welcome to Workday's second quarter fiscal 2023 earnings conference call. I'm pleased to report that Workday delivered a strong second quarter, thanks to healthy demand across all product areas and geographies. Additionally, we closed on two of the larger deals that had pushed from Q1, which we referenced on last quarter's call. Our results, which outperformed across our key operating metrics, underscore the continued importance of digital transformation for finance and HR. And even with the uncertainty in this environment, we remain confident in our long-term growth prospects because Workday continues to serve as a mission-critical partner to our customers with a proven track record of success. Before I turn it over to Chano, who will share more on our go-to-market success, and Barbara who will provide specifics on our Q2 financial results and outlook, I'd like to share some second quarter highlights. We had another strong quarter for Workday HCM, where the migration to the cloud continues with notable customer additions, including Electrolux, First Student, Groupe Adeo, Korean Air, and Raymond James. As always, customer success remains a key differentiator for Workday. In Q2, we had several HCM go-lives, including Cox Enterprises, Southwest Airlines, and United Overseas Bank. Turning to Workday Financial Management, we saw very strong growth in the second quarter as we added two Fortune 500 core financial management customers, and I'm very excited to share that one of those was Salesforce, the global leader in CRM. Already a longtime Workday HCM customer and partner, Salesforce's expanded use of Workday now includes Workday Financial Management along with Accounting Center, Workday Adaptive Planning, Prism Analytics, and more. Our growing partnership reinforces the opportunity we have to help support customers in the cloud. With this broad relationship, Salesforce becomes an increasing number of high-profile customers to expand from Workday HCM to both HCM and financial management. Other new financial management customers in Q2 included American Electric Power, which was the second of our Q2 Fortune 500 wins; Apex Fund Company; Dave & Busters; Express LLC; and the state of Vermont, while key go-lives in Q2 included Comerica Bank, RSM, and the University of Virginia. In addition to the strong growth from our core suite of HCM and finance applications, Q2 also saw notable momentum across our broader portfolio of solutions. Workday Adaptive Planning recently celebrated its four-year anniversary as part of Workday, and I'm happy to share that we now serve more than 6,000 planning customers, including over 20% of the Fortune 500. It was also our second full quarter with Bentley as part of Workday, and we're already seeing solid results as it's opening up new opportunities for us to expand our relationship with customers who want to embrace a more holistic workforce strategy. We also continue to see strong adoption of Workday Extend and Prism Analytics as both solutions are providing organizations, including the office of the CIO, with the ability to adapt to today's changing world. With Extend, customers build apps that are tailored for their unique use cases, which can eliminate the need for other custom development tools. Over the last year, we have more than doubled the number of customers and now have more than 750 applications that have been developed on the Workday platform. And Prism Analytics, with now more than 1,000 customers, is enabling organizations to bring operational data into Workday to drive real-time business insights. These solutions are not only critical to our customer community, but are enabling a new level of engagement with our partner community as well. And speaking of our customer community, customer service has always been one of our core values. As a result, we strive to maintain a customer satisfaction rating of over 95%, and I'm pleased to announce that in 2022, we surpassed this rating again as we have for more than a decade. This achievement is a direct testament to the amazing work of our employees and their commitment to helping our customers thrive. We look forward to sharing more about our product innovation, customer success, and market opportunity in September at Workday Rising, our Annual Customer Conference. This will mark the first time since 2019 that we're able to hold Workday Rising in person, and we are so excited to get more than 9,000 members of the Workday community together in Orlando, with thousands attending virtually for what is always a special event. In closing, we had a strong second quarter and the first half of the year. While we recognize that the current environment will likely moderate the pace of growth in the second half of the year, we firmly believe that the strong gets stronger during periods of economic uncertainty. And we will continue to manage the business with that mindset and expectation, all in support of driving enduring growth for many years to come. With that, over to you, Chano.

Thank you, Aneel, and thank you to everyone for joining today's call. I want to begin by expressing my sincere thanks to the entire global organization for an incredible Q2. Every one of our nearly 17,000 workmates really leaned in and drove this result, and I couldn't be prouder of our execution. Great job, team. Our strong Q2 results were driven by momentum across several of our key growth initiatives, including customer base, international, medium enterprise, and the office of the CFO, a testament to our strategy and the significant long-term opportunity that we have ahead. In addition, as Aneel mentioned, we closed the two largest deals that slipped out of Q1. And while the near-term market environment remains uncertain and we are not immune to it, we continue to see organizations of all sizes prioritizing their investments with Workday to continue their digital backbone transformation and drive increased agility and flexibility. From a geographic standpoint, we executed incredibly well across our global market. In the US, we saw healthy growth in the large enterprise, including five Fortune 500 core HCM or FINS wins. And in the medium enterprise, our suite approach continues to resonate, driving another quarter of very strong results. International performance was again a highlight, as our investment in key regions and the ongoing journey to the cloud are resulting in significant growth. In EMEA, we had outperformance across a number of key countries, including France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. And finally, in APA, we had very solid performance in strategic markets like Japan and Australia. As you know, we go to market with land-and-expand sales motions, and both things drove healthy growth in Q2. Aneel already mentioned several of our core HCM and FINS wins, many of which were new customers to Workday. We also closed several strategic deals across our emerging land motions, including planning first wins at ExxonMobil and major bank, and have become first-led win at a 300,000-plus employee global organization headquartered in Europe. In addition to strengthening our land motion, our customer base sales teams in Q2 once again drove very strong results, including solid renewals and meaningful acceleration in new ACV with broad-based strength across a number of solutions, including core FINS, Extend, Peakon, learning, payroll, and talent optimization. We're also seeing momentum built within our planning first customers, who are expanding their footprint by adding core HCM and financials. Carle Health is a great example of this. They started as a planning first relationship and expanded their footprint to include core FINS in Q2. Industry is another area of significant opportunity and investment, and I am pleased to share that financial services is our first industry to exceed $1 billion in annual recurring revenue. Some of our most strategic transactions and go-lives in Q2 came out of our financial services team, including new lanes that Aneel referenced at Raymond James and expansion deals at Bank of Montreal and Cushman & Wakefield and go-lives at United Overseas Bank and Comerica. Other established industries, including healthcare, education, and government also saw continued momentum and we are gaining steam in verticals such as retail, hospitality, and technology media, where wins included Salesforce, Avalara, and Gold Pass. Needless to say, we have several other industries that are on the path to $1 billion and beyond. Our expanding partner ecosystem is becoming an increasingly important driver of our growth and industry success, and the excitement we're seeing opportunity in front of us was on full display recently at Altitude, our annual partner event. Strategic system integrators such as Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG, and PwC are not only ensuring successful deployment, but also serving as an innovation engine addressing our customers' needs. Together, we're also targeting industry accelerators with specific solutions and use cases. We look forward to sharing a lot more on this at Workday Rising in a few weeks. As we move through the second half of the year, we expect the environment to remain uncertain, and we see signs that in certain deal cycles, particularly some of our more strategic opportunities, there is increased scrutiny and potentially longer sales cycles, as buyers do extra work before making investment decisions during these uncertain times. The good news is that when companies go through their due diligence, we typically come out on top, given the compelling return on investment and reduced total cost of ownership that our solutions provide. Our track record of successful deployments of scale and our reference base of thousands of customers who can speak to the meaningful business value that Workday delivers. With that, I will turn it over to our CFO, Barbara Larson. Over to you, Barbara.

Thanks, Chano, and good afternoon, everyone. As Aneel and Chano mentioned, we delivered a strong Q2 as enterprises of all sizes increasingly realize the need for flexible, modern finance and HR solutions to navigate their businesses and drive change during these uncertain times. Subscription revenue in Q2 was $1.37 billion, up 23% year-over-year, and Professional Services revenue was $168 million, up 15%. Total revenue outside of the US was $383 million, representing 25% of total revenue. 24-month backlog at the end of the second quarter was $8.37 billion, growth of 22%. The outperformance was driven by strong new ACV across both our land and expand sales motion along with solid renewals with growth in net revenue retention rates over 95% and over 100%, respectively. Total subscription revenue backlog at the end of Q2 was $13.47 billion, up 27%. Our non-GAAP operating income for the second quarter was $302 million, resulting in a non-GAAP operating margin of 19.6%. Margin overachievement was driven by a combination of topline overperformance, the timing of certain projects, and some favorable expense variances. Q2 operating cash flow was $114 million, which reflects typical seasonality from our annual merit cycle increase. In addition, with the final two days of the quarter falling over a weekend, we saw roughly $40 million of collections shipped out of Q2 into early Q3, which will have a positive impact on our third quarter cash flow. Our largest investments continue to be in our people and attracting top talent to Workday. During the quarter, we successfully added approximately 1,000 net new employees, ending Q2 with a global workforce of more than 16,900. Our hiring was focused on adding key talent across strategic growth areas of the business, notably go-to-market resources and product innovation roles. Overall, we're extremely proud of the strong company-wide execution in Q2 and remain focused on leveraging our leadership position to drive sustainable 20% plus subscription revenue growth on our path to $10 billion in revenue. Turning now to guidance, which reflects the momentum in our business and the mission-critical nature of our solutions, while also balancing an uncertain macro environment, which Aneel and Chano described. With that context, we are maintaining our guidance for FY 2023 subscription revenue of $5.537 billion to $5.557 billion, representing 22% year-over-year growth. We expect Q3 subscription revenue to be $1.418 billion to $1.420 billion, 21% year-over-year growth. We still expect professional services revenue to be $650 million in FY 2023 as we continue to tightly align with our growing partner ecosystem to help ensure our customers have successful implementations that support the highest levels of customer satisfaction and business value. For Q3, we expect professional services revenue of $164 million. We expect 24-month backlog to grow approximately 19% year-over-year in Q3. We now expect FY 2023 non-GAAP operating margin of 19%, reflecting a more measured pace of hiring in the second half of the year as we continue to monitor the macroeconomic environment. Investing for long-term growth alongside ongoing expense discipline remains our priority. We continue to have confidence in the strength of our business model and in achieving 25% non-GAAP operating margin and 35% operating cash flow margin at $10 billion in revenue. For Q3, we expect non-GAAP operating margin of 18%. GAAP margins for the third quarter and the full year are expected to be approximately 22 and 23 percentage points lower, respectively, than the non-GAAP margin. The FY 2023 non-GAAP tax rate remains at 19%. We're raising our FY 2023 guidance for operating cash flow to $1.64 billion. We now expect capital expenditures of $450 million this year to support our customer growth and continued business expansion. As a reminder, during the third quarter, we plan to pay off the principal balance of our $1.15 billion convertible debt in cash. When this occurs, our non-GAAP diluted share count will decrease by roughly eight million shares. Due to the late Q3 timing, this share reduction will not be fully reflected in our non-GAAP weighted average share count until Q4. And finally, I'll close by thanking our amazing employees, customers, and partners for their continued support and hard work. We look forward to seeing you on September 13th, either in-person or virtually, for our Financial Analyst Day, part of the broader Workday Rising program being held in Orlando, Florida, where we'll share more insights on our strategic product initiatives and long-term market opportunity. With that, I'll turn it over to the operator to begin Q&A.

Thank you. We will now conduct a question-and-answer session. Our first question comes from Kash Rangan with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.

Hi. Thank you very much. What a delightful way to spend Thursday afternoon, listening to your earnings conference call. Aneel and Chano and the rest of the team, a couple of things in my mind. One is, in the previous quarter, you were one of the first companies to talk about deal slippage, etc. And how did that end up for this July quarter? What were the certain customer behaviors you saw in the month of July? And also, a question philosophically, as we open up and you have your first in-person user conference in a few years, what are the opportunities that are afforded to Workday as you enter calendar 2023 as a result of doing all the in-person activities that couldn't do as we were all working through this pandemic, be it growth rate acceleration, new product adoption strategy, what not. Just curious to get your thoughts. Thanks and congratulations, again.

So I'll answer the first part and then hand it over to Chano. We did not see a slowdown in July, Kash. We did have a few deals slip from Q1 to Q2, but Doug Robinson and the team closed those deals. We are very cognizant of the macro environment heading into the second half of the year, and so we are taking a cautious stance on hiring, but we didn't see any slowdown in July. It was about as strong a month as we could have hoped for. Rising is a great opportunity for us. We always do better when we're in person. It’s just that simple. It’s a chance to get reconnected with customers, make sure we’re doing a good job for them. But equally importantly, as the product portfolio has grown, it’s a chance to showcase some of the newer products and have that customer base motion continue to thrive. So Chano, anything you want to add?

Hey, thank you, Aneel. Thank you, Kash. As Aneel commented, we saw strength across the whole quarter from beginning to end, but we're clearly seeing more scrutiny and excluding the pipeline going forward. Regarding Rising, we are very excited. After three years, certainly, and it's about, as you know, ensuring great relationships with the customer community and that bodes very well with Workday. And clearly, as the customer base becomes a larger part of our business, there is a greater opportunity for us to build some good pipeline.

Our next question comes from Mark Murphy with JPMorgan. Please, proceed.

Thank you very much. It's impressive to see these two big Fortune 500 core financial wins. Do you get the sense that the COVID backlog is somehow clearing up there, despite all the recession headlines, or do you see many finance teams still kind of lacking the smooth sailing they might need to do a cloud migration? And perhaps, you would have a little extra core FINS pipeline building up that might get released at some point, if that's the case. And then, Barbara, just curious if there's any sense for the magnitude of change on the hiring pace that you're contemplating for the rest of the year?

I'll ask Pete to address the first question regarding the financial aspect. I'm sure there was definitely some pent-up demand, but Pete, would you like to respond?

Hey, Mark, good to talk to you. Right now, from what we're seeing, we're not seeing any difference in demand for our HCM and financials from what we've been seeing in the past. And that's obviously good news as we saw here in Q2. But what we will say is, as we go into more uncertain economic environments, which are likely happening; then typically in those situations, buyers on the financial management side tend to delay those deals a little bit longer. So that's just based upon our experience being in this market for a while, and that's what we're expecting to have happen going forward.

And then, hey, Mark, it's Barbara. On your question on the hires, I'm not providing a specific target other than to say, we expect fewer hires compared to the first half in the second half. So we'll continue to be flexible and disciplined based on the environment we see in the second half.

Understood. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Kirk Materne with Evercore ISI. Please proceed.

Thanks very much, and I want to echo the congratulations on the quarter. This somewhat relates to Mark's question. I'm curious about your current pipeline build compared to the end of the deal cycle, which you can't control. I'm interested to know if the macro environment is affecting the early stages of the funnel. Are you still seeing the same volume of deals coming in? When Doug mentions that companies might be taking a pause, is that occurring only at the end of the cycle? Also, is there anything you can do to make your products more modular so they can progress through the sales process without getting stuck at any point? Thank you.

Chano.

Thank you, Kirk. We felt good about the new pipeline build that we saw in the quarter across solutions and across geographies and barring any meaningful changes in the macro, we feel good about the pipeline we have for the second half. Certainly, we are never satisfied and we are focused on continuing to build pipeline, particularly with some of the faster sales motions like our customer base motion and our land first motions, because we can certainly create new opportunities, and we can still close them within the fiscal.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Brad Sills with Bank of America. Please proceed.

Great. Thank you. I wanted to ask a question about a comment you made earlier, Aneel, on a couple of the FINS wins being planning first customers. Is there another set of the installed base of other modules around FINS that's brewing here that we could also see some upgrades that could come from? And then just any commentary on that planning first pipeline as a leading indicator potentially for more FINS additions? Thank you.

Yeah. Well, we're now up over 6,000 planning customers, and each one of those to me is an opportunity to sell our core financial products. And that is probably the one land product in the world of finance that we can go in with first and have it be meaningful. And it's played out that way, and it plays out the way more and more. The more we get into financial planning and we continue to workforce planning, but the more we do financial planning, it's a great way in. But that's probably the one app that's our lead into core financials.

Thanks, Aneel.

Our next question comes from Michael Turrin with Wells Fargo. Please proceed.

Hi there. Thanks and congrats on the results here from me as well. You started somewhat of an investment cycle ahead of all the uncertainty. I'm just wondering if there's anything you'd point back to that you're finding is able to provide a bit of a favorable offset. It sounds like you're not seeing as much of the shift in buying behavior as others across software pointing to? And maybe as a second part of the question, if you do see demand signals start to slow, you did have some comments suggesting second half growth could still moderate. How quickly are you able to toggle towards expense control and dial back as needed? Thank you.

In response to the first part of your question, we understand that the future is uncertain. However, one key difference between Workday and some other cloud companies is that we have a relatively low penetration within our existing client base. When I assess our revenue generation, it falls short compared to some of our peers in the cloud sector, which presents a valuable opportunity during challenging economic periods. Our clients are already committed to Workday and satisfied with our services. Therefore, our focus is less on cutting expenses and more on adjusting our sales strategy. Additionally, we're revisiting the Total Cost of Ownership analysis that we previously employed during the economic downturn in 2008 and 2009, where we needed to demonstrate our TCO to gain traction. While the current market has shifted its focus to digital transformation, we also have a strong TCO narrative to share. Chano, Pete, or Barbara, would you like to add anything? Barbara, do you want to discuss expenses?

Yes, regarding expenses, we are slowing down our hiring pace in the second half to be cautious, but we will still add resources. Additionally, we will remain adaptable based on the conditions we encounter in the latter half of the year. We are confident that if we need to reduce some hiring in the second half, we can do that.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Keith Weiss with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed.

Thank you for taking my question, and congratulations on a fantastic quarter. Many of us are curious about how you achieved this success while many of your competitors are facing challenges. You mentioned your increased penetration into the customer base, and I would appreciate it if you could elaborate on that. We often view your company as having a strong presence in HCM, especially in the US, though somewhat less so in Europe, where there's potential for growth. When you refer to being lightly penetrated in the base, do you mean that there is significant potential for upselling and offering more products to your customers? Could you explain why this is an advantage, especially in the current environment?

Well, I would just echo what I said in the previous answer. A happy customer is always an easier sale than a net new customer that doesn't have experience working with you. In terms of penetration, I'll turn that over to Chano to talk about where we are. Chano and Doug really were the drivers of our back-to-the-base motion, and it's still relatively new for us. It's only a few years old versus, I think, other companies have had it more land and expand where we don't really have that opportunity. We land expanded and then we want to add more modules.

Yes, that's correct, Keith. I would say first that our key growth drivers played out well during the quarter, both customer base, international office, the CFO, and media enterprise, they all behaved pretty well across geographies and across different solutions. In terms of penetration, as you know, we've been focusing more on the customer base because we've been heavily net new during a very long time, and we've been doing investments there that are paying off. And clearly, we've also been innovating and adding a significant number of solutions. So as Aneel is saying, when customers are happy and seeing value and we are focusing on showing the return on investment on those solutions, they tend to buy more and that is exactly what is happening across the segments. And clearly there, our penetration is lower when you compare to other peers that have been more heavily focused on the customer base for a longer period. But I would say, both of the net new logos and customers we've never done business with and customer base behave very strongly this quarter. Having said all that, as we are saying, we're starting to see a bit more scrutiny, particularly on the larger deal cycles where customers will go a little bit more to another cycle of approval or a better reassurance of the full implementation projects or whatever that most likely will involve and potentially some of the sales cycles on the larger transformational transactional deals around each financials.

Got it. And if I could just sneak in a last one for Barbara. You guys have talked about more conservatism in the back half guidance. And I'm assuming the outperformance that you guys saw in Q2, particularly in that 24-month backlog, would have normally translated into a raise of the guidance and you didn't raise the guidance. Can you give us some kind of sense of the magnitude of that conservatism in the back half now?

Yeah. I'll just say, coming off a quarter as strong as Q2, we would have liked to have been able to raise our outlook for the full year. But while we outperformed and the business remains resilient, we also see evidence of increased scrutiny in certain sales cycles. So our outlook assumes a continuation of this in the second half.

Got it. Thank you. That’s very helpful.

Our next question comes from Alex Zukin with Wolfe Research. Please proceed.

Hey guys. Since Keith asked both of the exact questions I was going to ask, I'll try to basically do it, kind of, go at it a different way. It feels like, Aneel, what you're saying is that there's a lot of surface area that you have left to go after inside of your client base. And based on the TCO analysis, I'm assuming there's also an opportunity for a lot of your customers to consolidate, particularly on the HCM side from many point solutions to a platform, how is that message resonating in your conversations? And how long before that type of a playbook can be run at the financials level? I realize, obviously, you're going in with the full suite right away. But just walk us through those dynamics, if you could?

Well, I'll just offer up a high-level view that happy customers are the most important thing that we have, right? I mean, if you have a happy customer, they're just inclined to buy from you. And what we've seen, especially in large enterprises, they typically don't tie the HR and financials decision together. There are separate decisions, and a lot of these solutions like planning are also separate decisions. So as long as we keep that base happy, when these customers look for new solutions, we do have quite a bit of surface area, especially in the HR base, where we've got over, I think, 4,000 HR customers and 1,400 finance customers so that you can just see where that gap is. But also every time we come out with a new module, that's either something we built or an acquisition, it's an opportunity to go back to that base.

One thing I'd add is that we have 22 SKUs in our HCM portfolio, and 14 of them have been made generally available in the last four years. This indicates that a significant percentage of SKUs have yet to be adopted by our customer base. We've been focusing on this for years, and as Aneel and Chano mentioned, our strategy is centered around ensuring customer satisfaction and delivering the value we commit to, which encourages them to purchase additional products from us. This remains a crucial part of our strategy.

Perfect. And then maybe just as a follow-up. I want to clarify because I want to drill in on this. Aneel, it sounds like what you're saying is that July has been really good, but then from what I think Chano and Barbara are saying is that there is more scrutiny on sales cycles. There's more conservatism in the guide. But, I guess, is that something you're actually seeing or you are preparing to see and adding a kind of heightened level of conservatism in the assumptions that you're making around close rates in pipeline generation, etc.?

I think Chano is best to answer that one.

Yes. Alex, I will reassure June, July has been very strong. But in terms of the sales cycle moving forward, particularly in some of the larger ones around HCM and FINS, we are seeing some more scrutiny or grading in those sales cycles. As you can imagine, some of those cycles are long. So we definitely have different stages that they move from one to another; we can get some milestones. And it's kind of easy for us to check on the pace that those deals are moving. And as you can see, that some things are clearly and lengthening or potentially lengthening on the sale cycle.

Got it. Perfect. Thank you, guys.

And the next question comes from Scott Berg with Needham. Please proceed.

Hi, everyone. Congrats on a good quarter, and I'll change it up from the macro questions at the moment, leave those for later. I had a question on the announcement during the quarter about your new FedRAMP status, in particular at the moderate security impact level. How should we think about that opportunity in Fed? I know you guys had some general success in the government angle as a whole throughout the domestic United States, but is that something that can be meaningful over time, or is it really just kind of a maybe a smaller incremental opportunity? Thanks.

It can be very meaningful over time, but it's going to take some time for it to develop. Those sales cycles are longer than commercial sales cycles. They always have been. And so, now that we have gotten that FedRAMP certification, now the sales cycles begin, and they can be 12, 18, or 24 month sales cycles. But it's a meaningful opportunity. There's a lot of ex-PeopleSoft customers still running PeopleSoft there. So it's one that we invested in, because we see it as a big opportunity, but also going to be patient in that it takes a while for the pipeline to develop. Pete, do you want to add anything?

I believe you expressed it perfectly. We view this as an opportunity exceeding $2 billion for the business, but it will require time before we see the benefits due to these extended sales cycles. Additionally, I believe the government can be a significant customer for us, allowing us to offer more than just core HCM solutions over time.

Our next question comes from Brent Bracelin with Piper Sandler. Please proceed.

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Obviously, with increased scrutiny around larger deals, I appreciate that. But we're also seeing belt tightening across the broader enterprise. My question here with your focus around cross-sell, what's the narrative around cost savings, vendor consolidation to bundle HCM and FINS? With some of your larger customers, you're starting to get some high-profile Fortune 500 wins there. Love to hear if there's an appetite to further consolidate vendors from a cost savings perspective to bundle HCM and FINS, specifically with some large US customers.

Well, that trend is definitely happening, and we saw it happen with a series of big financial wins in the second quarter, but I wouldn't underestimate the strength of our medium enterprise business. And I don't see the same belt tightening in the medium enterprise business, and they tend to buy the whole platform. So it's a pretty healthy market for us. It's kind of our run rate business, and they tend to want to have fewer vendors as possible because they don't want to spend all the money on best-of-breed and integration. Chano, anything you want to add?

Very well said, Aneel. I would just say that some of the larger customers, they do retire double-digit numbers of legacy systems. So what we're trying to do right now, as Aneel was mentioning before, is ensuring that they understand very well the total cost of ownership and the benefits that our solutions will provide and the return on investments. And of course, we're getting in contact with other customers that have already implemented and really seen those become intangible. So that's the playbook we are putting in play. We've gone before some of these downturn cycles. Some of us are unfortunately old, but there is an advantage of that at times. And the whole management team, and we've seen that working before, as Aneel mentioned. So we're playing that playbook.

Thanks for the color. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Brad Zelnick with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed.

Great. Thank you so much for taking my question and congrats on a great set of results. I want to follow up on Keith and Alex's line of questioning about happy customers, but also maybe from a little bit of a different angle. As you presumably still have the large renewal cohort flowing through the model that we talked about last year, is the current environment in any way impeding the magnitude of expansion that you would otherwise expect upon renewal? And in fact that factoring into what appears to be a conservative backlog guide for Q3, understandably so, just given the environment. Thanks.

Barbara?

So for the backlog guide in Q3, our guidance takes into account the best view of the business that we see it today, and that's reflected in our 24-month backlog guide for Q3. Keep in mind, the timing of renewals can fluctuate from quarter to quarter and have an impact on that backlog growth. And if you recall at the beginning of the year, we did discuss our expectation for the renewal base to return to a more normalized rate of growth for the full year, which continues to be our view.

Great. Any color, though, on just the expansion rate that you're seeing upon renewal?

Chano?

It remains very strong, Brad. I think it is a testament to the mission-critical nature of our applications and the customer satisfaction and the renewal ratios remain very, very good and very healthy across the board.

Excellent. Fantastic to hear. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Ari Terjanian with Cleveland Research. Please proceed.

Good afternoon and thank you for the question. Congratulations on the results. I wanted to follow up on some of the Fortune 500 wins in the quarter. What do you think finally prompted those to close successfully? Also, what is the timeline you have in mind for the go-lives? I'm asking this to understand if and when you expect to see a halo effect from these higher-profile wins. Thank you.

I'm assuming you're referring to the finance side because on the HR side, we've consistently secured a number of Fortune 500 wins. At this point, more than 50% of the Fortune 500 companies are using our HCM solutions. On the finance side, the factors include the aging of systems, the maturity of our product, and new offerings like the Accounting Center, which are important for our strategic customers, as well as Prism Analytics. We now offer a complete suite of products, and companies have to modernize; they really don't have an option. However, I see this as a stable business rather than a situation where it's about to skyrocket. The more data points we have from customers choosing us and going live, the better our position is. Comerica went live last quarter, which serves as a tremendous reference for us. Having a major regional bank going live is an excellent data point. Most of these projects take 12 to 18 months, depending on the scope of the work involved, which is a reasonable timeframe to achieve live status. If it's a smaller scale implementation focused on core accounting, it can be completed in 12 to 15 to 18 months, which is also quite reasonable.

Thanks.

We have time for one more question, and our final question will come from David Hynes with Canaccord. Please proceed.

Hey guys. Congrats on the quarter. Chano, when you talk about scrutiny on deals, we've heard that from a lot of companies now. For Workday, what exactly does that mean? I mean, is it haggling on price? Is it more reference checks? Is it about implementation timelines and processes? Like what's involved there? Any color would be interesting to me.

Yes. Thank you for the question, DJ. It can vary, but you can think about it sometimes. It's just more scrutiny around the implementation timeframe and the readiness they have on their side or on the partner side or on our side in terms of resources. It also means many times prioritization on projects and which usually that happens, we typically come out on top because we are mission-critical and because again, on the ROI and the TCO, but you are competing against your project. It also means an additional level of approval or two additional levels of approvals going up to the Board, depending on the level of approval. So, those are some of the things that it typically means around business case, around management approvals, around the prioritization of projects, and around reassurance in terms of success, implementations, and availability of resources, and cost of opportunities, and the impact on potentially other investments or opportunities they are managing or considering.

Yes. Okay. Makes sense. Thanks for the color.

Thank you. Thank you for the question, DJ.

I will turn the call back over to management for closing comments.

Everybody, have a good night.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This will conclude Workday's second quarter full year 2023 earnings call. Thank you again for joining us today, and have a great day.