Earnings Call Transcript - WDAY Q3 2024

Operator, Operator

Welcome to Workday's Fiscal 2024 Third Quarter 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. I will now hand it over to Justin Furby, Vice President of Investor Relations. Justin, you may begin.

Justin Furby, Vice President of Investor Relations

Thank you, operator. Welcome to Workday's third quarter fiscal 2024 earnings conference call. On the call, we have Aneel Bhusri and Carl Eschenbach, our Co-CEOs; Zane Rowe, our CFO; and Doug Robinson, our Co-President. Following prepared remarks, we will take questions. Our press release was issued after the close of the 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 that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to the press release and the risk factors and documents we filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our fiscal 2023 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 customer's page of our website includes a list of selected customers and is updated monthly. Our fourth quarter fiscal 2024 quiet period begins on January 15th, 2024. Unless otherwise stated, all financial comparisons in this call will be to our results for the comparable period of our fiscal 2023. With that, I'll hand the call over to Carl.

Carl Eschenbach, Co-CEO

Thank you, Justin. And thank you, everyone for joining our Q3 FY 2024 earnings call. I'm pleased to share that Workday delivered another strong quarter, achieving 18% subscription revenue growth, a 22% 12-month backlog growth and non-GAAP operating margin of 25%. These results were driven by broad-based strength across net-new and customer base teams, medium and large enterprises, and across regions, notably, the U.S. and EMEA. I want to thank the more than 18,300 workmates around the globe for partnering with our customers to help drive these impressive results. There is a clear sense of momentum across our business and it was on full display at Workday Rising in September, where we unleashed new AI innovation, delivered product and partnership announcements and drew a record 28,000 attendees in-person and online. In fact, over half of our active pipeline was touched by our Rising event in San Francisco. And just a couple of weeks ago in Barcelona, we followed up with our largest ever EMEA Rising event, with over 4500 people in attendance. When speaking with customers, prospects and partners at these events, a few things stood out to me. First, talent continues to be a top C-Suite priority. In this macroenvironment, businesses are looking to scale and drive productivity. They can achieve both outcomes by simply hiring more. Leaders are turning to Workday to help them reskill and upskill their workforce, all while delivering a great employee experience that helps them reduce attrition and ultimately drives productivity. Second, leaders are continuing to consolidate their technology footprint on a true platform to realize total cost of ownership benefits while also accelerating their operations. Workday is perfectly positioned to benefit as the intelligent digital backbone businesses can rely on to manage their most precious assets, their people and their money. And finally, AI, and in particular, generative AI is becoming a business imperative. As a trusted partner and a market leader with over 65 million users under contract, we can uniquely drive efficiencies and improve the employee experience. Aneel will share more, but I will say that it is what we are doing and not just saying that is resonating with our customers. Our value proposition has never been so relevant and powerful. That's clear in the results our team delivered in Q3 and in the first half of FY 2024. At our recent Financial Analyst Day, we talked about the diversity and durability of our business and how it helps us grow during times of headwinds and times of tailwinds. This theme was evident in the wins we had this quarter. From a net-new customer perspective, we once again saw strength in full platform deals. We welcomed customers like AdventHealth, Bentley Systems, Houston Methodist and Lifespan as new full platform HCM and financials customers. New HCM customers such as Greene King Brewing, Group 1 Automotive, Minor Hotel Group and the U.S. Department of Energy helped us surpass 5,000 core HCM customers on Workday. Alongside healthy new customer activity, we had several strategic expansions and renewals in the quarter, including Magna International, Mondelez Global, Sonoco Products Company and Southwest Airlines. I'm pleased to share that our create and close business had another great quarter and it's becoming a meaningful driver of our customer base sales team's growth. Now, I want to highlight some of the key growth areas we discussed with you at our Financial Analyst Day. Starting with international, which represents over half our addressable opportunity. In EMEA, I'm pleased to say that our leadership additions are driving improved and more consistent results. The team here once again delivered strong new ACV, particularly in the UK, Germany, France and Spain, and helped us eclipse the $1 billion ARR mark in the region. Win rates were robust against our competitors, even in their backyards. We had important new wins like AXA UK, Aurelius Group and International schools along with expansions at BBVA, Carl Zeiss and TELUS Global Services among others. In the Asia Pacific region, Australia performed well with wins such as Ramsay Health Care and Wesley Mission Queensland. We still have work to do in APAC, but we're focused on it and I'm delighted Simon Tate has joined us to run the region. We're also making important investments in Japan to help expand our opportunity within one of the world's largest economies. As part of this, our leader in Japan will now report directly to Patrick Blair, our President of Global Sales. Moving to financials, we are seeing proof that our go-to-market investments are continuing to pay off with healthy growth in both core financial customers and new ACV. New full platform wins are on the rise and our industry approach is contributing to this momentum. Healthcare, for example, saw new ACV over 50% in Q3, and roughly half of the healthcare deals we landed in the quarter were full platform. State and local government also continues to outperform with strategic full platform wins at County of Kern, County of Chesterfield and the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Our back-to-base motion in financials also delivered in Q3. Wins included Clearwater Analytics, Ochsner Clinic Foundation and Concentrix, which expanded their Workday HR footprint to include core financials when it combined with Webhelp, a Workday core financials customer in EMEA. Our planning business also had a strong Q3 and we welcomed AWS as a planning customer, along with NPR and Storskogen Group. Finally, our win rates remained strong and we see a growing pipeline of opportunities to replace our legacy ERP competitors. On the partner front, we've always recognized the vital role our ecosystem plays in our customers' success, and it starts with go-lives. HCM go-lives this quarter included American Electric Power, Dave and Buster's and Iberdrola, along with financials go-lives at NorthShore University Health System, SolutionHealth and Weis Markets. Increasingly, we're leaning into our partner ecosystem in other strategic ways. Our Skills Accelerate partnership with Accenture, which we announced at EMEA Rising, is a great example. Accenture will be reselling our skill solution, providing their expertise on top of Workday's Skills Cloud. We also announced a partnership with ADP to extend the capability of Workday HCM with ADP's payroll and smart compliance solutions in key global markets. Additionally, we announced an AI marketplace at Rising, which allows us to innovate with our ecosystem of partners to deliver trusted and responsible AI solutions for our customers' most compelling use cases. Finally, we see strong momentum from our partner referral program we launched earlier this year. We've already exceeded our full year target for the number of partners that have signed on, and while it's early, we are starting to see a positive impact on our pipeline. Another key investment area is around AI, which we've been building into our platform for nearly a decade. As I mentioned at Rising, we demonstrated our leadership with new announcements and demos that illustrated how AI will shape the future of work. I won't steal Aneel's thunder; he'll be joining in just a minute to share more. In closing, we had another quarter of strong and consistent performance amidst a dynamic environment. The diversity and mission-critical nature of our business continues to fuel our success. As we move through Q4, we have a solid pipeline and clear objectives. While we are clearly focused on delivering in the near-term, we also have our sights set on delivering durable growth while expanding margins. With that, I'll turn it over to my Co-CEO and good friend Aneel, who will share more about our AI strategy and innovation highlights from the quarter. Aneel, over to you.

Aneel Bhusri, Co-CEO

Thank you, Carl, and to everyone joining today's call. As you heard Carl mention, an increasing number of organizations across all industries and geographies are continuing to place their trust in Workday, which is why we remain focused on delivering the innovation our customers need to thrive in today's environment. For the last couple of quarters, we've highlighted our longstanding and differentiated approach to AI, including generative AI. That is driven by our platform strategy, unrivalled dataset, emphasis on being human-centric and commitment to delivering responsible and trustworthy solutions. At Workday Rising in September, our leadership in this space was showcased in a big way as we unveiled a series of new AI capabilities that will help redefine the way our customers work. On the generative AI front, we announced several new capabilities that will benefit all users with an emphasis on increasing productivity, growing and retaining talent, streamlining business processes and driving better decision-making. Examples of the use cases we previewed, which we expect to be available next year, include the ability to generate job descriptions in minutes versus hours, analyzing correct contracts for faster, more accurate revenue recognition, creating employee growth plans to foster and retain talent, and providing text-to-code generation capabilities to increase productivity of app development in Workday Extend. Another way we're infusing generative AI into our platform is through our investment in conversational AI. While we are still in the exploratory phase with this technology, we believe conversational AI will fundamentally change how users interact with Workday by enabling them to easily surface information they need and interact with data through simple conversations. We're also leveraging generative AI to create a conversational experience for Workday Adaptive Planning customers. The use of conversational text will simplify the process of surfacing key planning insights, enabling users to make quicker, more strategic decisions about their businesses. Additionally, we announced enhancements to Workday Extend, which continues to be a critical solution to help bring the Workday platform to life for our customers and partners. In fact, we've seen an increase of more than 70% in the number of apps built by customers and partners with Extend in the last year alone. At Rising, we unveiled Workday AI Gateway, which is available on Workday Extend. Our AI Gateway provides developers with access to Workday's AI services to enhance our ability to build intelligent and responsible apps on the Workday platform. Turning to the office of the CHRO, we introduced several new features within Workday HCM that leverage AI, many with a focus on elevating the manager experience by providing them with the tools and insights they need to effectively lead and foster the career growth of their teams. One example is the Manager Insights hub, which leverages AI to surface personalized recommendations and make it easier for managers to identify the best opportunities for their employees based on skills and interests to improve talent mobility and employee engagement. While we will continue to deliver on the promise of AI for our customers, many of our partners and other enterprise companies are delivering on the promise of AI as well. As Carl mentioned, we announced our AI marketplace to help harness the AI innovation happening across our ecosystem. To date, we have 15 early adopters, and that number will increase over time as we expand to include tailored solutions delivered by our partner ecosystem, Workday-related capabilities in third-party products, and native AI-powered Workday Extend apps. Of course, none of these AI advancements can truly be effective without the right safeguards and regulations in place. Building on our continued efforts to advocate for smart AI policy at the federal level, Workday's Josh Lannon, Vice President of Productivity Technology, was invited to testify before Congress on AI in the future of work. Josh spoke to the potential of AI to enhance how workers collaborate and amplify human potential and the steps Workday is taking to deploy these technologies in a trustworthy and responsible manner. At the application level, Workday products continue to be recognized for the innovation that we deliver to customers. For the office of the CHRO, Workday was named a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for cloud HCM suites for 1,000-plus employee enterprises. Workday was positioned highest for ability to execute, marking the eighth consecutive year we were recognized as a leader. Additionally, Workday VNDLY was named a 2023 top HR product of the year by Human Resource Executive. The award recognized VNDLY's ability to provide organizations with the full set of capabilities for end-to-end lifecycle management of external workers and its ability to integrate with Workday HCM to support full visibility into headcount spend and more. For the Office of the CFO, Workday was named a leader in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP for service-centric enterprises based on completeness of vision and ability to execute. This is the second year in a row that Workday was recognized as a leader. In closing, I want to thank the entire Workday team for their incredible efforts in Q3. We have an amazing opportunity in front of us and I remain confident in our ability to capitalize on it, thanks in large part to our more than 18,300 workmates. They are relentlessly focused on driving innovation across the entire Workday platform to actively address our customers' finance and HR needs. With that, I'll turn it over to our CFO, Zane Rowe. Over to you, Zane.

Zane Rowe, CFO

Thanks, Aneel, and thank you to everyone for joining today's call. As Carl and Aneel mentioned, Q3 was a strong quarter, highlighting the durability of our business and ongoing market adoption for cloud financials and HCM. Turning to results, subscription revenue in Q3 was $1.69 billion, up 18% year-over-year. Professional services revenue was $175 million, leading to total revenue of $1.87 billion, growth of 17%. U.S. revenue totaled $1.4 billion, growing 17%, and international revenue totaled $462 million, also growing at the same rate. As we have highlighted, we see significant long-term international opportunities, which we expect over time will become a more meaningful driver of our growth. As discussed at our recent Financial Analyst Day, we are providing our 12-month subscription revenue backlog, or CRPO, which was $6.05 billion at the end of Q3, representing growth of 22%. This result was driven by strong new ACV bookings and healthy renewals with gross and net revenue retention rates of over 95% and over 100%, respectively. Early renewals in the quarter exceeded our expectations, adding more than a point of growth to the 12-month backlog. Early renewals from prior quarters also continued to benefit backlog growth in Q3. The 24-month subscription revenue backlog was $10.58 billion at the end of Q3, up 23%. Early renewals in the quarter added nearly 2 points of growth to the results. Total subscription revenue backlog at the end of the quarter was $18.45 billion, up 31%. Backlog benefits from increased contract duration, which speaks to our customers' continued commitment to our platform. Our non-GAAP operating income for the third quarter was $462 million, resulting in a non-GAAP operating margin of 24.8%. Margin strength relative to our guidance was driven by revenue outperformance and the timing of certain expenses and investments, which we expect to build in the fourth quarter. Q3 operating cash flow was $451 million, growing 10%. During Q3, we repurchased $148 million of our shares at an average price of $218.35 per share. We had $139 million in remaining authorization under our buyback program as of quarter-end. We intend to execute on the remaining authorization of our buyback during Q4. We ended the quarter with $6.9 billion in cash and marketable securities. We continue to invest in growth areas in the business and ended October with over 18,300 workmates around the globe. Now, turning to guidance. Following our continued momentum in Q3, we are raising our full year FY 2024 subscription revenue guidance to $6.598 billion, representing 19% year-over-year growth. We expect Q4 subscription revenue to be $1.755 billion, representing 17% year-over-year growth. Additionally, we now expect professional services revenue of $158 million in Q4 and $652 million for the full year. In Q4, we expect 12-month backlog to grow approximately 19%, which includes our current outlook for early renewals in the quarter. We plan to continue disclosing our 12-month, 24-month and total backlog, but intend to provide guidance on 12 months going forward. We are raising our FY 2024 non-GAAP operating margin guidance to 23.8%, and for Q4, we expect a non-GAAP operating margin of approximately 23.5% as we ramp up our key investment areas. GAAP operating margins for the fourth quarter and full year are expected to be approximately 20 and 22 percentage points lower than the non-GAAP margins, respectively. The FY 2024 non-GAAP tax rate remains at 19%, and we are raising our FY 2024 operating cash flow outlook to $1.975 billion, growth of 19% year-over-year. Additionally, we now expect FY 2024 capital expenditures of approximately $250 million. As discussed at our recent Financial Analyst Day, we see considerable opportunity to drive durable profitable growth over the longer term. The financial framework, which we shared in September, is further bolstered by our Q3 performance and the momentum we see building across key growth areas of our business. In light of the continued uncertain macro and incorporating our Q4 outlook, we currently expect FY 2025 subscription revenue of approximately $7.725 billion to $7.775 billion, representing growth of 17% to 18%. We also expect to expand our FY 2025 non-GAAP operating margins from FY 2024 levels. Our outlook contemplates incremental investments across our key growth initiatives while delivering continued margin expansion as we scale and optimize the business. The confidence in our outlook is supported by the advocacy and support of our customers, partners, and workmates, who are all key contributors to our success. With that, I'll turn it back over to the operator to begin Q&A.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our first question is from Mark Murphy with J.P. Morgan. Please proceed with your question.

Mark Murphy, Analyst

Thank you very much. Congrats on a great result. Thinking back on the Rising conference, the energy and enthusiasm was pretty remarkable. When you look back on that, how did you feel about the pipeline generation coming off of Rising and through November on the FINS side of the business? I noticed you mentioned an AWS planning win in that time frame, and do you see any early signs that might validate that the hiring wave you've had of these FINS dedicated sales reps can drive some bookings traction as they begin to ramp up in the next couple of quarters?

Carl Eschenbach, Co-CEO

Yeah, let me start, and then Doug, I'll ask you if you have anything to add. So thanks for the question, Mark. Let me first start by saying thank you to our workmates and partners around the world for delivering our third consecutive outstanding quarter here in FY 2024. We often talk about the diversity and durability of our business, and it was once again on full display here in Q3. Our value proposition continues to resonate more than ever with our customers, and this gives us a very resilient and durable business. Directly to answer your question, Mark, as it relates to Rising, yes, you're exactly right. There was a tremendous amount of energy and enthusiasm coming out of the conference, and there was a lot of energy around the financials solution that we're bringing to market. I will tell you, it wasn't just from our customers, but it was also from our partners who continue to invest in building out their practice around financials. As you know, for the last 10 months, we've talked multiple times about our investment in the financials business, and we are seeing early dividends, and I say early because we still have a lot of opportunity to grow the business going forward, but we see early dividends that those investments are paying off. Number one, our pipeline around FINS continues to grow. Number two, we continue to sell both to net-new logos, our financials, and back into our customer base. Number three, all of the hiring we've done on our FINS go-to-market sales reps are actually impacting not just FINS sales, but also helping us drive full platform sales. We talked about full platform sales being up again this quarter, and I think that is just the strength of our financials in conjunction with what we already have as a strong HCM business. Lastly, I would say planning continues to do quite well. We did announce, last quarter we talked about Exxon landing a large financials deal, and in this quarter we talked about AWS, which is a very significant win for us as well. Overall, we see the FINS opportunity being quite large. We talked about only 25% of financials moving to the cloud, which just represents a huge opportunity for us, and we are really pleased with our win rates against our competition there.

Mark Murphy, Analyst

Thank you very much.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Kash Rangan with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Kash Rangan, Analyst

Alright, thank you very much. Congratulations on a wonderful finish for the third quarter. Carl, you've been in the seat for a little under a year, actually close to a year. You've cycled through one full Rising conference. You've had a chance to speak with partners, check the pulse of the customer. You went through a tough year of macro. Everybody predicted the worst-case session, thankfully we didn't have one. So where does that leave you with respect to your refreshed assessment of the next three to four years versus where you started? Thank you so much and congrats to the entire team here.

Carl Eschenbach, Co-CEO

Yes. I'm still here, by the way. Aneel, do you want to answer that question?

Aneel Bhusri, Co-CEO

No.

Carl Eschenbach, Co-CEO

Of course. So first of all, Kash, thank you for your nice words. And thank you for the question. Let me start talking about Workday. I appreciate you saying almost a year; I can't wait till December hits because then it's officially a year and we no longer talk about it in terms of months. So we're almost a full year into this journey with my partner Aneel. Let me start by talking about Workday. One thing that I recognized when I was on the Board for five years is that we have an incredible culture and strong values, and that is more evident to me than ever before. That continues to excite me about Workday as a whole. Regarding, if you will, a refreshed outlook of the business and the opportunity, I see many ahead, and a number of them we're already leaning into throughout this year. First, our international opportunity. We spoke in my prepared remarks around the performance of our EMEA team growing the business significantly year-over-year and driving predictable results. We continue to see strong potential through the partner ecosystem that we're building and how we're getting leverage from them. So that's a huge opportunity for us. Second is financials. Financials represent a large opportunity for us that we're leaning into heavily. We've hired many sales reps throughout this year, and if we continue to see the early results that we're seeing, Zane and I will continue to fund additional growth in FINS and especially on the go-to-market side. Lastly, I think one thing that I've come to recognize and appreciate is Aneel's discussion about our unrivaled dataset that we have compared to our competition out there; it is paying dividends for us today, especially regarding AI and Generative AI. No one has an enterprise large language model like Workday has, and it is driving tangible and productive results for our customers through generative AI.

Kash Rangan, Analyst

Wonderful. Thank you so much.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Kirk Materne with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question.

Kirk Materne, Analyst

Yes, thanks very much. And I'll echo the congrats on the quarter. Carl or Aneel, actually, I was wondering if you guys could just talk about where Gen-AI is in the decision-making tree for your customers right now? Meaning, has it sort of sprung to the top so that your leadership in that category is having, I guess, an impact on win rates already? Is it something you sort of expect to continue to build? I was just kind of curious; everybody is sort of piloting AI right now, but I am kind of curious if your leadership is actually putting you in a position for your win rates to get stronger as we head into 2024? Thanks.

Carl Eschenbach, Co-CEO

I do think it will position us for our win rates to get stronger in 2024. At this point, I don't think people are making decisions yet purely on AI. I think it's something that every customer looks at to make sure that they're going to be covered with a new deployment or a customer knowing that Workday has them in a strong place, but they're still looking first and foremost at running their business and moving off of outdated legacy applications into the cloud. We're unmatched in that category. When we add the AI capabilities, I think it just checks that AI box. Despite all the hype, it's still in the early days of large-scale deployments of AI in HR and finance; we're ready, we’re just waiting. I don't know if Doug's with us. Doug, do you want to add anything on what's happening in the sales cycles?

Doug Robinson, Co-President

I think it does come out in the sales cycle, but in a different way. We talk talent optimization, and the entire value proposition of it is built off of AI and ML. So while they're not saying, 'show me your Gen-AI,' they are saying, 'show me how I'm going to move to a skills-based economy, how am I going to reskill my workforce?' And then, it gives us a chance to showcase the innovation that we've got.

Kirk Materne, Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Brent Thill with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Luv Sodha, Analyst

Hi, this is Luv Sodha on for Brent Thill. Thank you for taking our question. Zane, this one's for you. Early renewal activity has been fairly robust this year and it has supported backlog growth. As you look out over the next few quarters, could you just talk about your expectations for early renewals, will those continue to be a tailwind to backlog growth?

Zane Rowe, CFO

Yes, thanks for the question. As we've communicated over the last number of quarters, we've been very pleased with not only our backlog growth, but our new ACV growth and renewal activity. Both the scheduled renewal activity is growing nicely as well as the early renewal activity. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we have some of that contemplated into the upcoming quarter and candidly into next year as well. I'll point out that over the last 12 months, we have seen elevated growth rates in scheduled renewals, which has obviously helped with our backlog, but we're very pleased. I'll point out that we guide to subscription revenue, so we're focused on subscription revenue, and I've given you an indicator of subscription revenue growth heading into FY 2025. We feel good about backlog and renewals as well, and just the overall health of the business. Carl?

Carl Eschenbach, Co-CEO

The only thing I'd add, Aneel, is that we always want to reiterate that our customers are driving the early renewals based on demand. If they want to buy additional SKUs to consolidate on our best-of-breed platform, we're not going to wait until the renewal cycle to sell them additional products. We're going to do it when the customer is ready. Last quarter, we saw a nice uptick in SKUs being sold back into our customer base; those drive, if you will, these early renewals like Talent Optimization, Accounting Center, Prism, and Extend are just four examples of what customers are demanding more from us, and we're driving those early renewals more than we are. We don't incentivize our sales force to do early renewals; it's all based on customer demand.

Luv Sodha, Analyst

Got it, thank you.

Operator, Operator

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

Brad Sills, Analyst

Wonderful, thanks so much for taking my question here. One of the things that stands out to me here is the strength in financials. You called out full platform wins here as a contributor. So great execution there. I'm just wondering, with these types of deals where you're seeing big organizations commit to the full platform, both FINS and HCM, are you finding that there's just an increased comfort level with the cloud for financials such that they're willing to make that leap now versus, say, in the past? Or is this simply just a function of you focusing more on those types of deals with some of the investments you've been making? Just curious to get some color on why now for that strength in full platform deals, particularly FINS? Thank you.

Doug Robinson, Co-President

Thanks for the question. This is Doug answering. I think first and foremost, we still think 25% of the market is all that's moved financials to the cloud. So it's still early innings. But the recent quarter pipeline build suggests that it's growing and that it's more consistent performance. You look at verticals where it's really popping up. I think we even called this out, but healthcare alone grew over 50% in the quarter, and over 50% of those deals were full platform. Enterprises like AdventHealth with 80,000 employees and 46 different hospitals are making significant commitments to full transformation—human capital management, financials, and supply chain on the Workday platform.

Carl Eschenbach, Co-CEO

One other thing I'd add is that as we have really leaned into the mid-market or medium enterprise, those customers have a tendency to decide on a full platform approach between both Financials and HCM, and that business had a really good quarter for us in Q3, both in the U.S. and in Europe. Those customers are absolutely leaning into a full platform decision when they're looking at transforming their business.

Brad Sills, Analyst

Great to hear. Thank you so much.

Operator, Operator

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

Alex Zukin, Analyst

Yes. Hey guys, thanks for taking the question. And, I guess, first of all, congratulations on a really strong quarter. It looks to me like you accelerated CRPO subscription bookings, which I know is a metric we're not supposed to look at, but we do. At the same time as your incremental growth on sales and marketing, actually, you were much more efficient. I guess what I want to ask about is, as I think about the matrix for next year and you talked about the growth algorithm, how do you stack rank which of those priorities you need to hit on to get there? And then what prevents kind of like maybe what are some of the areas that you see leaning into on an incremental spending perspective that might be temporarily anchoring margins?

Carl Eschenbach, Co-CEO

Yes, you want to start Zane, then you can add color. So one of the biggest investments we've talked about a number of times already here is our investment in our financials go-to-market build-out that is paying early dividends. I think it's important to remember that many of these hires that have happened over the last three quarters of this year aren't fully ramped and don't reach full productivity until next year. As they come up to speed, right, I think we'll see continued growth in financials and overall business as we head into next year because of this build-out we're doing this year. We continue to lean into our partner organization; we're hiring numerous people to manage all of the partners we're bringing on. An example would be this year when we launched our referral program, we had a goal of signing up 100 partners in our referral program, and through three quarters, we already have 150 partners who have signed up. It has brought us hundreds of new leads and new opportunities both here and in our international business. So we'll continue to lean into that. I think Aneel and Zane will also continue to invest in the product side, as we see a great opportunity to leverage that dataset and model that we talked about to drive AI solutions in new SKUs into the market. I think it's a little bit more of the same, and we'll continue to lean into the investments we made this year as long as we continue to see the early signs that they're producing the results that we want.

Aneel Bhusri, Co-CEO

Alex, I'll just add. As Carl is alluding to, obviously there's significant sales and marketing expense ahead of this. At the same time, we're investing in other key areas just around the globe. We're also looking at the product side. We're being very disciplined about how we think about that incremental growth and that incremental investment heading into next year. This is why the outlook I gave aligns nicely with the framework that we have and we're confident that, as you've seen this year, we'll be very thoughtful on where we spend and how we spend. So as you've seen, our guidance increase from 23% earlier in the year to now 23.8%. As we look to next year, we have the benefit of expanding not only our revenue base but also our margins throughout the course of next year. We feel very good about where the business is and where those investments are. I'll point out obviously that, as you know in this business, the bookings come well ahead of the revenue, so we would expect to see revenue continue to build beyond FY 2025.

Alex Zukin, Analyst

Perfect. And then maybe just if I squeeze in another one for Aneel. Coming out of the Analyst Day, it did feel like at least on the macro front, there were kind of gathering storm clouds, whether it was a potential for government shutdown or labor strike or macro concerns. Did you feel maybe coming out of the quarter and as you look at the big selling season that some of those it has indeed ebbed, and maybe there's more of a conservative optimism that you're kind of seeing on the horizon?

Aneel Bhusri, Co-CEO

I don't perceive conservative optimism; it seems rather typical to me. We have been navigating this complicated dynamic since before COVID. I’m most proud of the team, and I will pass this question to Carl and Doug, as they have managed through this challenging period. It's very unpredictable, not in a clear way.

Carl Eschenbach, Co-CEO

Yes, Aneel, I think you said it well. I don't think we see any improvement in the macro nor do we see it getting any worse. It's pretty consistent with what we've seen all year long. I'll just echo what Aneel says. I just want to give a hat tip to Doug and Patrick and our sales teams around the world for their understanding of how to navigate some of these choppy waters. We've said in the past, we continue to see heightening scrutiny on some deals, particularly net new, but our teams have figured out how to navigate that and close a lot of business in the first three quarters of the year. Even when opportunities may slip, they don't leave our pipeline; they just move out a quarter or two. Once people make a decision to do a transformation around HCM or financials, it's not if they're going to do it, it's when. I think that was evident in this quarter and the first three quarters of the year, and I think that will continue. Our teams are very skilled and very good at closing business as they target each quarter. I couldn't be more proud of them.

Alex Zukin, Analyst

Well, definite hats-off to you guys from us here. Congratulations.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Raimo Lenschow with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Raimo Lenschow, Analyst

Yes. Perfect. Thank you. Congrats from me as well. Carl, you touched already on the partner build-out. Can we just double-click on that one as well? What's the appetite at the moment on the partner side to build out headcount around you? Obviously, economic times are tops and the SIs are usually late cycles, so they're only realizing now what's going on. Is that kind of still very much in investment mode on their side, or is there a pause from their side that could potentially be a headwind for you going forward? But congrats from me as well there. Thank you.

Carl Eschenbach, Co-CEO

Thank you, Raimo, and thank you for the question. As it relates to the investments our partners are making, I do think they're investing in Workday. They already have very well-established and mature HCM practices. If you spent time talking to our partners and the ecosystem at Rising, what you would have heard is a lot of them see the opportunity, just like we do in financials, and they're investing heavily in building out their financials practice around Workday. That was evident both at Rising here in the U.S. and just a few weeks ago at Rising in EMEA. Our partners are really leaning into us, and by the way, I mentioned it earlier, they're also bringing lots of opportunities to us because for the first time this year, we're giving them an incentive to bring us net new opportunities as part of our referral program. So, yes, the investment is happening.

Raimo Lenschow, Analyst

Okay, perfect. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Derrick Wood with TD Cowen. Please proceed with your question.

Derrick Wood, Analyst

Great. Thank you. I guess for Carl or Aneel, I wanted to ask about traction with Extend and how that plays into the AI opportunity for you. I think you've talked about how this is the platform that helps integrate Workday models into third-party AI models that help unlock a lot of private data. You'll look to maybe introduce new tiered pricing for Extend. But can you just talk about how you see Extend helping to drive AI monetization for you guys in the medium?

Carl Eschenbach, Co-CEO

Well, Extend has been one of our best-kept secrets before the AI gateway for the last several years. For the longest time, customers wanted extensibility; instead, we had to build every feature they wanted into the product, and we give them Extend. They can develop the features unique to their own business. The same story plays out with AI, where I think we've got a great strategy for embedding AI into our products. You'll see a series of new SKUs over time that are built around AI technologies. The AI Gateway around Extend unleashes partners and customers to do AI things that may be very unique to their business that we would never build into our core products. It's been huge. You'll see ISVs leverage the AI Extend gateway to continue building products using that technology, which will extend our ecosystem and make our customers even happier with the offerings that they have in front of them. Extend is kind of a secret weapon for us, especially now with the AI gateway. We are monetizing it, and I think we'll continue to monetize it. Maybe Doug wants to talk about how we're monetizing it and how much more we can do.

Doug Robinson, Co-President

I think the best example of that is the Accenture Skills Cloud that we announced this quarter. Essentially, they've taken Extend and built IP on top of it, and then they are also taking Workday Journeys, Workday Skills Cloud, Workday Learning, and reselling it on behalf of Workday to different customers. They're packaging it with a set of services around it and driving revenue on our behalf, so there are lots of exciting opportunities like that, and that's just one example.

Derrick Wood, Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Karl Keirstead with UBS. Please proceed with your question.

Karl Keirstead, Analyst

Okay, great. Maybe I'll direct this one to Zane. Zane, out-of-the Investor Day, there was some degree of investor angst about the margin outlook, and yet, here tonight, you've raised your full year margins, and you're guiding to up margins next year. Just curious, has your thought process changed at all in terms of the OpEx trajectory over the next several years? Perhaps it's not quite as front-loaded as you were thinking. Does this imply maybe you feel a little bit better about the revenue outlook, and that's flowing through to perhaps a better-than-expected margin outlook next year? I'd love to get a little bit more color and contrast it to the Investor Day commentary.

Zane Rowe, CFO

Sure, Karl. Yeah, happy to answer that. I thought you were going to ask me about my first five months here, but I'll go ahead with the margin question instead. I'd say there is no change from the framework that we discussed, but as you point out, we've been pleased with the revenue we've seen through the course of the year, obviously increasing our margin outlook for the year and leaning into the margin increasing into next year as well. It's a little bit of all the above. We feel confident with our strategy, with the revenue growth we've seen. We're always going to be thoughtful, as we articulated at our Financial Analyst Day, around those investments that we're making, but we want to have the capacity to make those investments where we believe it makes sense and we expect to do that into FY 2025 and well beyond that. I've also pointed out previously, where we see opportunities to increase that operating margin, we'll continue to do that and let it drop to the bottom line as well. Broadly speaking, no change in our outlook. But you're right in pointing out that when we have those opportunities, we'll let it drop to the bottom line.

Karl Keirstead, Analyst

Okay, thank you, Zane.

Zane Rowe, CFO

Thanks.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Pat Walravens with JMP Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Pat Walravens, Analyst

Great. Thank you. Aneel and Carl. I'm wondering how you see your partnership evolving when Aneel takes the Executive Chair role in January. Aneel, any lessons from Dave's transition to chair back in 2014?

Aneel Bhusri, Co-CEO

Wow, okay, so. The second one cut me off guard a little bit. I'll just answer the second one first. You know everything is a continuum, and I still talk to Dave almost weekly; he is still the touchstone for a lot of things that happen at Workday. What he said to me when I became the CEO was, 'There can only be one captain of the ship.' I'd say the same thing about Carl—I'm excited about Carl being the captain of the ship. Frankly, what I've seen over the last almost a year, we're just nine days away from the year. December 10th was the date. Carl's amazing, and he is driving the business in ways that I never could have. I'm very happy transitioning back to a product and innovation and strategy role, which is really how Workday got started with Dave and me. Those are my roots. I'm very excited, and our working relationship has been great, but I think more importantly, and I would say the same with Dave and I. Workday is a company built on friendship. It was first Dave and me, now it's Carl and me, and I think that's really powerful and makes me very confident and optimistic about the future.

Carl Eschenbach, Co-CEO

Yes. I want to emphasize that Aneel will be staying with us. He is genuinely a standout in the software industry. Over the past few months, his enthusiasm for AI and his leadership in shaping our product and technology strategy have been remarkable. I'm eager to see him continue in this role as he takes on new responsibilities. He has a true talent for product and strategy. He's not going anywhere. Although he serves as my boss in his role as Executive Chair, I sometimes feel like I want to take on a supervisory role and assert that he will remain here.

Pat Walravens, Analyst

Okay, great, thank you both.

Operator, Operator

We will now take two more questions. Our next question is from Scott Berg with Needham & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Scott Berg, Analyst

Hi everyone. Congrats on the really nice quarter here. My question is probably for Doug. I know it's early and I know that Workday has had AI interwoven into the platform for a couple of years, but with a renewed sense of kind of customer interest in the space the last six months, I guess, what are you seeing now for an appetite to actually pay for some advanced or incremental functionality around some of the Gen-AI technologies out there? I think a lot of the questions we get is around— from investors—is will customers actually pay for this? Now that you have maybe three to six months under your hat, any viewpoint there would be helpful. Thank you.

Doug Robinson, Co-President

I'll answer it from a broader AI perspective, and I think the answer is yes. Customers will pay for where they see business value. If you remember at Analyst Day, we highlighted that in the previous 12 months, talent optimization increased attachment to 45% from 35% in just 12 months. I look at the top three SKUs that sold in Q3, and talent optimization was right in that top three. I think they're willing to pay for business value, and we're seeing a lot of energy. In some ways, it feels like the early days of Workday, where our customers come with great energy to co-innovate with us and share some of the things they’re experimenting with, while we share some of the things we’re experimenting with. We've talked about this for several quarters; there is a desire to consolidate vendors and to consolidate onto a platform and leverage that platform. There is a willingness to pay, and I do think it shows up in the results.

Carl Eschenbach, Co-CEO

If I could add one other thing, I would just say that the point solutions being created by startups are proving that customers are willing to pay for AI. Only the AI-native equivalent of co-pilots. These companies are closing substantial deals and adding value. They're part of our ecosystem. It's a good proof point that customers are willing to pay for it if they see the value.

Scott Berg, Analyst

Great. Thank you for taking my question.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our final question is from Brian Schwartz with Oppenheimer and Company. Please proceed with your question.

Brian Schwartz, Analyst

Thank you very much. This question is for Carl or Doug. Just wanted to tap into what you're hearing in the C-Suite in terms of prioritizing IT spend for next year. If we think about this year, clearly, there was a prioritization on technologies that drove efficiency and business cost optimization. Do you have any early read on how the C-Suite at large enterprises are thinking about prioritizing IT spending for next year? Thank you.

Carl Eschenbach, Co-CEO

Yes, thanks, Brian. For the question. Doug, you want me to start and then you go?

Doug Robinson, Co-President

Yes.

Carl Eschenbach, Co-CEO

I think there are probably three demands we're seeing right now out of the C-Suite. Number one, talent. Talent is clearly a C-Suite priority, and companies are all focused right now on reskilling and upskilling their workforces. They're also really focused on driving a better employee experience to keep employees around longer and thereby drive better productivity. So I would say talent is a C-Suite priority. The other thing I would say is leaning into something you mentioned: they are looking to consolidate, and they're looking to consolidate their IT spend. In doing so, they're driving more of a platform approach. We have a platform where people are consolidating on top. When you do that, you have a better total cost of ownership. I know we've talked a little about AI on this call and will continue to do so for many years to come, but I think AI is really becoming a business imperative, and they're all trying to figure out how to leverage it. I think as they do so, they'll lean towards trusted vendors like Workday to deliver those AI solutions and really drive impact to their employees and their overall productivity gains they're seeking as a company. That's what we're seeing, but Doug, you're out there touching even more customers than I, so I'd like you to respond too.

Doug Robinson, Co-President

Well, you covered mine, but I'd say I agree with you. Best of suite versus best of breed. There's a desire for that, which is that consolidation play. You touched on the other one I was going to hit, which is a renewed energy around efficiency and productivity with business applications. So get employees in and out, drive great efficiency. That, by the way, has the side effect of driving a better employee experience. CIOs come into our corporate visit center and say, 'How do I get more productivity? How do I get more efficiencies?' That's where the Gen-AI conversations get really interesting.

Brian Schwartz, Analyst

Thanks, Doug.

Doug Robinson, Co-President

Thank you.

Carl Eschenbach, Co-CEO

Thank you, operator, that works too. No problem. Thank you for everyone for joining today's call. A special thanks to our workmates, customers, and partners around the globe that continue to fuel Workday's success. Q3 was another strong quarter, highlighted by the durable, mission-critical nature of our platform. It reinforces the excitement we have both in Q4 and the opportunities ahead. We are all well-positioned here at Workday, and we're focused on executing in Q4 and laying the foundation for durable growth in FY 2025 and beyond. With that, I'll hand it back over to the operator to close today's call, and I hope everyone has a great evening and a happy holiday season.

Operator, Operator

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.