WDAY Shareholder/Stockholder Letter Transcript:
Letter from our Chief Executive Officer
Stockholders,
It s been 16 months since I joined Workday and my belief in our opportunity and our value proposition has only grown stronger. With the momentum around
generative AI, a shifting talent landscape, and pressure to realize operational efficiencies, leaders are increasingly turning to Workday as the trusted
platform to manage their most critical assets their people and their money.
Fiscal 2024 was another strong year for Workday and I m incredibly proud of our team s execution, all while navigating a dynamic economic environment.
We achieved 19% year-over-year subscription revenue growth and a non-GAAP operating margin of 24%, driven by momentum across the business and
continued efficiencies as we scale.
The healthy balance of new customer relationships and expansions with existing customers in fiscal 2024 speaks to the significant opportunity we have
ahead. We now have more than 10,000 customers and 65 million users under contract who trust Workday to help them navigate huge transformations from
the cloud to AI. In fiscal 2024, we formed new relationships and expanded with organizations across geographies and industries including Advocate Health,
Dollar Tree, the Department of Energy, and Lloyds Bank.
Driving Growth at Scale
Today, International represents over half of our addressable opportunity, yet is a quarter of our revenue. We re working to change that, and we re seeing
early signs of progress. Within the fiscal year, EMEA became our first region outside of the United States to reach $1B in annual recurring revenue, driven
by new customer wins and expansions with organizations including Randstad, BBVA, and Equinor. And in the Asia Pacific region, Australia performed well
with wins such as Ramsay Healthcare and Wesley Mission Queensland.
Our partner ecosystem is a key growth driver for us, and our strategy is focused on delivering customer outcomes, growing our business through referrals
and co-selling, and building differentiated solutions. In fiscal 2024, we expanded partnerships with Accenture, ADP, and AWS, and formed new partnerships
with Alight, Insperity, and others which are opening new doors for Workday, while giving our customers greater access to innovation and choice.
Our partner ecosystem contributes to the success of our industry-first approach, where we are seeing encouraging progress. In fiscal 2024, Retail and
Hospitality became our second industry joining Financial Services to exceed $1B in annual recurring revenue.
And we re building our leadership in HCM, while focusing on Financials, where we estimate approximately 80% of the market has yet to move to the cloud.
Our go-to-market and platform investments in Financials are paying off, with healthy growth in core Financial Management customers and building
momentum for our solutions serving the office of the CFO.
While the team delivered these strong results, we also built out our leadership team. We welcomed a new CFO, CMO and CIO, as well as several strong
go-to-market leaders around the world, who bring rich enterprise experience to help us drive growth in this new chapter.
Innovating to Lead Our Customers in the Age of AI
Workday has a history of leading in innovation we led the move to the cloud in HCM and Finance nearly two decades ago, and we are now leading our
customers through the AI revolution. We ve been delivering AI capabilities to our customers for nearly a decade, and our vision is to enable productivity gains
while keeping humans and trust at the center.
By embedding AI into the core of our cloud-based platform, we can rapidly deliver new AI capabilities into our products. For example, Workday Skills Cloud
uses AI to gain insight into an organization s current skills and identify skills needed for the future, allowing for smarter talent decisions across the company.
For Finance leaders, Workday is developing contract analysis generative AI capability that compares signed contracts against contracts in Workday Financial
Management and integrated CRM data. This early analysis and correction capability will help eliminate accounting errors and saves considerable time trying
to reverse and correct downstream transactions.
Our AI innovation was on full display at our customer conference Workday Rising this year, where we showcased new generative AI innovations such as
conversational planning, generating job descriptions, knowledge base articles, and employee growth plans, to name a few. Our customers are seeing the
value of AI across Workday s products, which is leading them to go all in on the Workday platform to support both their people and their finances.
Fostering a Values-Driven Culture
What makes Workday so special is our nearly 19,000 workmates, who are guided by our core values. They are the reason we continue to be recognized
among Ethisphere s World s Most Ethical Companies for the fourth year, on JUST Capital s America s Most JUST Companies, and one of Comparably s
Best Places to Work. I am grateful to Workday s Co-Founder and Executive Chair Aneel Bhusri for the trust he s placed in me to lead the incredible company
he and Dave Duffield started 19 years ago.
We enter fiscal 2025 with a strong foundation and a clear strategy to support durable growth while at the same time continuing to drive efficiencies across
the business. We have the opportunity to be one of the largest, most enduring, and profitable software businesses of our time as we help our customers
move forever forward.
Thank you for your investment in Workday. I hope you ll join our 2024 Annual Meeting of Stockholders on June 18, 2024.
Sincerely,
Carl M. Eschenbach
Chief Executive Officer
WORKDAY, INC.
6110 STONERIDGE MALL ROAD
PLEASANTON, CALIFORNIA 94588
NOTICE OF 2024 ANNUAL MEETING OF STOCKHOLDERS
Date Tuesday, June 18, 2024
Location
Time 9:00 AM (Pacific Daylight Time)
Who Can Vote
Online at www.virtualshareholdermeeting.com/WDAY2024
Stockholders of record as of April 19, 2024
The 2024 Annual Meeting of Stockholders ( Annual Meeting ) of Workday, Inc., a Delaware corporation (referred to as Workday, we,
us, and our ) will be held via live audio webcast on Tuesday, June 18, 2024, at 9:00 a.m. PDT to consider the Items of Business listed
below and more fully described in the accompanying Proxy Statement. The Annual Meeting is being held in a virtual format to help reduce
costs, expand access, and enable improved communication.
Items of Business
1.
To elect three nominees to our Board of Directors to serve as Class III directors until the 2027 Annual Meeting of Stockholders;
2.
To ratify the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for our fiscal year ending
January 31, 2025;
3.
To approve, on an advisory basis, the compensation paid to Workday s named executive officers; and
4.
To approve an amendment to our Restated Certificate of Incorporation to reflect Delaware law provisions providing for officer
exculpation.
We will also transact any other business that may properly come before the Annual Meeting, although we are not aware of any such
business as of the date of this Proxy Statement.
All stockholders of record at the close of business on April 19, 2024 which the Board has established as the record date are entitled
to vote on the above items and to attend the Annual Meeting. Beginning on or about May 7, 2024, a Notice of Internet Availability of Proxy
Materials (the Internet Notice ) is being mailed to stockholders of record. It contains instructions on how to access the Proxy Statement for
our Annual Meeting and our Annual Report to Stockholders on Form 10-K for our fiscal year ended January 31, 2024 (together, the proxy
materials ) online at www.proxyvote.com. The Internet Notice also includes instructions on how to vote online, as well as how to receive a
paper or email copy of the proxy materials, which will include instructions on voting by telephone or mail, as applicable.
You will be able to listen to the Annual Meeting, submit your questions, and vote during the live audio webcast of the meeting by visiting
www.virtualshareholdermeeting.com/WDAY2024 and entering the 16-digit control number provided to you. Further details about voting
and attending the Annual Meeting are set forth in the Question and Answer section beginning on page 79 of the Proxy Statement.
If you have any questions regarding this information or the proxy materials, please visit our website at investor.workday.com or contact our
Investor Relations department via email at IR@workday.com.
YOUR VOTE IS IMPORTANT
Whether or not you plan to join our virtual Annual Meeting, please vote as
promptly as possible to ensure your representation at the meeting.
IMPORTANT NOTICE REGARDING THE AVAILABILITY OF PROXY MATERIALS FOR THE ANNUAL MEETING OF STOCKHOLDERS
TO BE HELD ON JUNE 18, 2024: THIS PROXY STATEMENT AND THE ANNUAL REPORT ARE AVAILABLE AT www.proxyvote.com
We appreciate your continued support of Workday and look forward to receiving your proxy.
By order of the Board of Directors,
Aneel Bhusri
Co-Founder and Executive Chair
May 7, 2024
5/7/2024 Letter Continued (Full PDF)