SAN
FRANCISCO, June 17, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Autodesk,
Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) today issued the following statement in
response to a letter from Starboard Value LP to its
shareholders:
Autodesk's Board of Directors maintains an open dialogue with
our shareholders and welcomes input on our business, including from
Starboard, with whom we have sought to engage constructively since
they first reached out in early June. The Autodesk Board and
management team regularly evaluate opportunities to enhance
long-term value and will carefully review Starboard's letter.
Consistent with market practice, Autodesk's bylaws include a
customary period, in advance of each year's annual meeting, during
which all shareholders have the opportunity to submit proposals and
make director nominations. That period closed on March 23, 2024, and Autodesk did not receive any
proposals or director nominations. Starboard is seeking to leverage
a now-completed internal investigation that resulted in no
financial restatement as a pretext for re-opening the advance
notice period. Autodesk's Board considered the request from
Starboard and determined that re-opening the advance notice period
would not be in the best interests of Autodesk or its shareholders.
Autodesk is confident in this decision and the process followed by
the Board, and is looking forward to holding the annual meeting as
scheduled on July 16, 2024.
Autodesk has a clear strategy that is working. We are providing
our customers with ever more valuable and connected solutions
through our investments in cloud, platform, and AI. We are
modernizing our go-to-market approach to create more durable and
direct relationships with our customers and to serve them more
efficiently. And we are transforming our platform to enable greater
engineering velocity and efficiency to support a much broader
customer and developer ecosystem and marketplace. We are deploying
capital with discipline to support these initiatives and to
maximize shareholder returns over the long term. We are confident
that the improvements to our capabilities and data will drive even
greater operational velocity and efficiency within Autodesk and
deliver sustainable shareholder value over many years.
Autodesk recently reported a strong start to fiscal 2025, with
revenues up 13% year-over-year at constant currency driven by
robust demand for our products and services. Our performance was
supported by continued solid renewal rates and momentum in new
business growth and key performance indicators. We are well
positioned to achieve our targets for the year, and we continue to
manage our business to balance compounding revenue growth and
strong free cash flow margins using a rule-of-40 framework and
reaching 45% or more over time.
About Autodesk
The world's designers, engineers, builders, and creators trust
Autodesk to help them design and make anything. From the buildings
we live and work in, to the cars we drive and the bridges we drive
over. From the products we use and rely on, to the movies and games
that inspire us. Autodesk's Design and Make Platform unlocks the
power of data to accelerate insights and automate processes,
empowering our customers with the technology to create the world
around us and deliver better outcomes for their business and the
planet. For more information, visit autodesk.com or follow
@autodesk. #MakeAnything
Autodesk is a registered trademark of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its
subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand
names, product names or trademarks belong to their respective
holders. Autodesk reserves the right to alter product and services
offerings, and specifications and pricing at any time without
notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical
errors that may appear in this document.
Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that
involve risks and uncertainties, including quotations from
management, statements about our short-term and long-term goals,
statements regarding our strategies, market and product positions,
performance and results, and all statements that are not historical
facts. There are a significant number of factors that could cause
actual results to differ materially from statements made in this
press release, including: our strategy to develop and introduce new
products and services and to move to platforms and capabilities,
exposing us to risks such as limited customer acceptance (both new
and existing customers), costs related to product defects, and
large expenditures; global economic and political conditions,
including changes in monetary and fiscal policy, foreign exchange
headwinds, recessionary fears, supply chain disruptions, resulting
inflationary pressures and hiring conditions; geopolitical tension
and armed conflicts, extreme weather events, and the COVID-19
pandemic; costs and challenges associated with strategic
acquisitions and investments; our ability to successfully implement
and expand our transaction model; dependency on international
revenue and operations, exposing us to significant international
regulatory, economic, intellectual property, collections, currency
exchange rate, taxation, political, and other risks, including
risks related to the war against Ukraine launched by Russia and our exit from Russia and the current conflict between
Israel and Hamas; inability to
predict subscription renewal rates and their impact on our future
revenue and operating results; existing and increased competition
and rapidly evolving technological changes; fluctuation of our
financial results, key metrics and other operating metrics; our
transition from up front to annual billings for multi-year
contracts; deriving a substantial portion of our net revenue from a
small number of solutions, including our AutoCAD-based software
products and collections; any failure to successfully execute and
manage initiatives to realign or introduce new business and sales
initiatives, including our new transaction model for Flex; net
revenue, billings, earnings, cash flow, or new or existing
subscriptions shortfalls; social and ethical issues relating to the
use of artificial intelligence in our offerings; our ability to
maintain security levels and service performance meeting the
expectations of our customers, and the resources and costs required
to avoid unanticipated downtime and prevent, detect and remediate
performance degradation and security breaches; security incidents
or other incidents compromising the integrity of our or our
customers' offerings, services, data, or intellectual property;
reliance on third parties to provide us with a number of
operational and technical services as well as software; our highly
complex software, which may contain undetected errors, defects, or
vulnerabilities; increasing regulatory focus on privacy issues and
expanding laws; governmental export and import controls that could
impair our ability to compete in international markets or subject
us to liability if we violate the controls; protection of our
intellectual property rights and intellectual property infringement
claims from others; the government procurement process;
fluctuations in currency exchange rates; our debt service
obligations; and our investment portfolio consisting of a variety
of investment vehicles that are subject to interest rate trends,
market volatility, and other economic factors. Our estimates as to
tax rate are based on current tax law, including current
interpretations of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and could be affected
by changing interpretations of that Act, as well as additional
legislation and guidance around that Act.
Further information on potential factors that could affect the
financial results of Autodesk are included in Autodesk's Form 10-K
and subsequent Forms 10-Q, which are on file with the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission. Autodesk disclaims any
obligation to update the forward-looking statements provided to
reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the
date on which they were made.
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SOURCE Autodesk, Inc.
