In release of third-quarter financial results for its fiscal 2025 late last month, software firm Autodesk reported an 11% rise in total revenue to $1.57 billion over the same period last year results. Total billings increased by 28% to $1.54 billion, and design software revenue tallied $1.3 billion, a 9% boost. 

The company's generally accepted accounting principle (GAAP) operating margin was 22%, down 2 percentage points, and non-GAAP operating margin was 36%, a decline of 3 percentage points, it said, but the margin continues to recover from a Q1 delay in release of earnings Autodesk says was caused by a change in pandemic-era policy that allowed enterprise customers such as large AEC firms to pay up-front and lock in prices for long-term subscriptions to both software and cloud products.

  • "Autodesk is leading the industry in modernizing its go-to-market motion," said Andrew Anagnost, Autodesk president and CEO. "These initiatives enable us to build larger and more durable direct relationships with our customers and to serve them more efficiently. We have already seen significant benefits from these optimization initiatives and there's more to come in the next phase."

  • Anagnost noted at the annual October Autodesk University user conference in San Diego in that delay in release of the Q1 earnings and the firm's subsequent demotion of then-Chief Financial Officer Deborah Clifford had been fully addressed.

  • "Total billings for the company, and the amount of billings that we were talking about was actually less than 2% of the total, so nothing was fundamentally different with our accounting," Anagnost told media Oct. 17 at the event. "We clarified where some of the billings came from, which was already in our disclosures, in terms of what's called an RPO."

  • Anagnost said the delayed filing drew attention because it interrupted Autodesk's Q1 filing. "We didn't file because we didn't finish the investigation." he said. "We wanted to do the investigation right, so we took the time to do it right."

    • Autodesk also announced that Janesh Moorjani, former CFO and chief operating officer of Elastic NV, will be the company's new CFO, effective Dec. 16, succeeding Elizabeth Rafael, who took over for Clifford in June in an interim role. Rafael continues as an advisor to the company through the end of fiscal 2025 and will remains on Autodesk’s board of directors.