WORKIVA INC — Call Transcript 2026

All right. I think we can go ahead and get started. My name is Chris Quintero. I am the Office of the CFO Software Analyst here at Morgan Stanley, and really excited to be joined here by Julie Iskow, CEO and President of Workiva. Thank you very much. Happy to be here, and thank you all for, choosing the session. Appreciate it. Yeah. Before we get into the interesting stuff, for important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. Julie, maybe to kick things off, for investors who maybe are not as familiar with Workiva you know give us a quick overview of what you do, what your key products are, who some of your customers are. Sure. Workiva has become the trusted platform for the Office of the CFO. What I mean by that is we have come to manage the data that matters most in the Office of the CFO. We have an AI-powered platform, and the focus areas are on financial reporting, non-financial reporting, regulatory disclosure, data accuracy and governance. We have over 6,600 customers today. We are a horizontal SaaS platform. Every company in the world is a potential customer, but we've also gone deeper into a number of the verticals. You can imagine, given what we do, that we go into those verticals where there is you know regulatory environment is high and intense and, of course, complex for companies to implement. That's who we are today and where we go. We manage the data that matters most, in the Office of the CFO. Got it. Definitely wanna dig into some of those verticals a little bit later, but maybe just to kick things off, let's jump right into AI. Clearly a lot of investors are worried about displacement risk from AI startups, large language models. From the Workiva perspective, what's your key competitive modes that makes you differentiated in the space? Thank you for the question, of course, on everyone's mind. we step back a little bit and look at who our customer is and who we serve, again, CFO, Office of the CFO. Nowhere else in the company is it a necessity to have data that is accurate. Marketing and sales, I mean, you can go around every function in the company, and where it is an imperative, where it is non-negotiable, where it is table stakes to have accurate data, not just data accuracy, data integrity, data consistency. You need to be able to justify your numbers, defend those numbers. You need data traceability. You need data lineage for any data, any narrative, any change in the system at any point in time, you need to have that defensibility and traceability, and that's really where Workiva plays. It's not... Yes, a system of record, yes, a trusted and essential system of record. It truly is that the CFO, whether they're doing their quarterly or annual reports at a point in time like that, or whether at any point in time they wanna even perhaps apply AI onto the data, they can be assured that data, again, is data accuracy, data integrity, data consistency, and full data lineage, and is traceable back to source systems and the moment it entered the system. Full audit trail. You know your auditors can go in at any time and look into the system as well. That is very, very different than other buyer persona in the rest of the company. Workiva, our platform ensures that a CFO and the team can have confidence in that data, which is critically important today as we're talking about AI, that you wanna know when you apply AI, again, that data, those results you're gonna get from the AI applications are, again, going to give you confidence that they are from a trusted platform, and that's why we talk about it as the platform of trust in the Office of the CFO. Yeah. Your buyer needs that absolute certainty about your accuracy, the compliance, the risk mitigation, all those good things. I will make the comment that we do have all the advantages. We have an incredible customer base, 95% of the Fortune 100, 85% of the Fortune 1000 that trust us already, that have had their financial data with us for the last 10-15 years. We have, we have that. We have a lot of the what some people like to think of a moat, but really buys you time rather than being the moat, like the trusted data. We have a lot of those advantages still you know the system of record and the enviable and trusted customer base. Really what it comes down to when it is that moat is that data, again, data accuracy, data integrity, and data traceability. Let's talk about the opportunity side of AI. You all shared that 30% of your customers have now enabled AI on the platform. Give us a sneak peek into what are some of those use cases, capabilities that they're using. Sure. Yes, we have almost 30% of our customers using AI, meaning they've activated it, and they've enabled it, and they're using it to some extent. The thing about Workiva AI is I can talk to you about use cases all day long. I can tell you know, for each solution, some of the capabilities that customers are using. We continue to roll the capabilities out as new technology comes, as we think about new use cases. Quarter after quarter, you will see in our roadmaps as well that we have new use cases coming out to streamline work, to improve processes, to actually help customers work differently. I think the real unique part of the Workiva AI or the differentiator, if you will, is really that it's built into our platform. It's not bolted on, it's part of the platform, embedded in the core of the platform for all users across every work stream and across every solution in the portfolio. I think when I think about our differentiation, happy to share roadmaps and show you specifically what customers are using to work faster, better, and in fact, differently across the portfolio. What patterns are you maybe seeing with that adoption when a customer first adopts, turns on some of those AI features? How does that kind of ramp or look like? Yeah, interestingly, not all of our customers are able to use AI. Some of their companies are still holding back on that. What we find when we explain with Workiva that your data and your AI will remain in our controlled environment, in our platform where you've held all your financial data and for years, that they do give in and are able to use it. In particular, of course, their data will not be used to train any of the models, and we offer multiple models. We offer customers choices of the models from three of the large language model providers, so they get to choose the model they want, and they can be assured that their data will not be used to train any of those models. Once they're in, we do see the pattern of using it and then increasing usage. You know, we're close to 30%, not quite there, 27+% are using it, and we're continuing to see increasing patterns of usage once they get in and feel comfortable. We love it because we get to see what they're doing, we get to see what's valuable for them, where they spend their time, and it helps us, it helps inform us on where we wanna build out more capability and provide more value for the customer. Yeah. You've introduced a good, better, best kind of new pricing model, with some of the AI capabilities featured in the higher tier. Could you maybe walk us through how that model's performing and what are you learning from customers' willingness to pay for AI features? Sure. This good, better, best model is just one way that we can kind of go after the opportunity we have for account expansion at Workiva, which is one of our most significant growth levers. I will say before we even go into that form of pricing, I wanna remind everyone that Workiva is not seat-based. We are not a seat-based SaaS platform. We do price with you know, on usage and value, and we've been doing that for 6+ years now, so we're not a seat-based. As I mentioned, we can extract value and provide value with this good, better, best model as one way to capture growth and expansion. The other way, of course, is selling more solutions across the portfolio or a customer can increase the use of within one solution. We rolled this out about one year or so ago, we are seeing traction. At renewal time, we come to the customers and offer one of our more premium tiers if they're not already using some of that or all of that capability for that matter. Again, we've been seeing an uptick in it. We've saved... An example is our SEC Reporting, which is our flagship product. We have put in that premium tier some of our advanced features, whether it's advanced AI, which is in there, capabilities that isn't in the core of the platform and offered to every customer. We might put in... We have Designed Reporting there. We have Financial Statement Automation, so we really pack the tiers with feature and functionality, again, to be able to provide more value to customers and of course then extract that value. Yes, we're seeing an uptick in that in early days of course, and then we're doing that in other areas of the platform as well. Again, it's a mechanism for us to be able to provide and extract more value for customers and really get their willingness to pay for the high features. It also allows us to meet a customer where they are. If you have a customer that isn't ready to take on the full expanse of the feature and functionalities that we offer, we don't need to discount. We offer them a you know a more, bare bones model if you will, an essential capabilities package. One of the most interesting things you guys have talked about, at least from my perspective, has been AI is now kind of serving as a competitive differentiator for you in your RFPs. I think you mentioned there was a defense contractor that you won because of your AI powered. Yes ... GRC capabilities. You know, how often is AI now a deciding factor for you all in those competitive situations? I think it is becoming one of those table stakes, items that we're seeing in RFPs, and we get asked, "Do you have AI?" They're mostly interested in do we have it, are we innovative, when they sign up with us, are we going to be one of those vendors that's gonna continue to innovate and ensure that they can be doing their work, with you know the state-of-the-art technology. It's that. Listen, a lot of our customers come from, companies with legacy tech stacks, and one of the reasons they wanna move and modernize is because they wanna leverage AI. Today, their data is siloed in different modules, in point solutions or legacy modules. They wanna move over where their data is unified and they want to apply AI. They too want to ensure it's done in a controlled environment and be able to be assured of the trust that our platform offers. It's become, yes, can we use a certain feature functionality, but it's also does your system have it? Can I use it when I get there? Is this the company that's going to be able to unify my data so that I can have it all in one place and get better insights leveraging AI, again, with unified data, which is one of our core differentiators from any of those point solutions and many of our competitors. Okay. We take a step back. One of the things that I really like about the Workiva story over the past few years is just your durability of growth, especially in the context of you know broader software, kind of you know having a more meaningful slowdown. You all have been pretty durable over the past few years. I think a lot of that has to do with the breadth and the platform that you now have. Curious from your perspective, what do you think has been really driving that durability of growth over the past few years? Sure. You, you are spot on. I mean, at this point, we have you know two dozen solutions or so across the portfolio, right across the platform. Every one of those is built on the platform. Every one of those is at least 80% the platform. They're all connected. The data's connected. It's a unified platform. That in it of itself, that the broad offerings that we have, is really where a lot of that growth is coming from. It's a, it's a benefit. It's not just that we solve a lot of problems, but we solve them at the same time together. Again, the unification of the solutions, the better together of the solutions, the unified data, it's really core. When you, of course, put on the fact that all of that data is trusted and are controlled, secure, again, audit-ready environment with traceability, that's really a benefit. We've also expanded and grown because we've been going out more broadly, geographically, right? We've moved into you know other geographies outside of the U.S. We're now around 27% of revenue outside of the U.S. We've been growing there. We've been increasing our TAM and offering more capabilities. That's another area. We have a lot of untapped TAM to go after. We've got a lot to offer customers. New logos is another area we've been pushing, even though in the U.S., in the hot market, in the top 1,000, we have a lot of that customer. There is still a lot to grow in enterprise, and there's still, again, geographically. It's geographic, it's more customers, it's expanding our TAM, it's the multiple solutions. We're just going everywhere, pushing, and there's a lot of opportunity. We have a lot to sell. We have a good value proposition when it comes to, again, unifying that data and offering the Office of the CFO the trusted data and becoming, in fact, more relevant you know in the era of AI, not less. Yeah. I think you all have also gotten better at just selling the platform from a go-to-market perspective too, right? We have our own execution, certainly, as you move towards the $1 billion. Barring anything catastrophic, we will be at $1 billion of ARR this year. I mean, you just have to execute differently. You've got to be more productive. You've got to be more efficient because you wanna use those resources in the best way possible for innovation, for speed, for continuing to expand your TAM. We've been elevating the profile of person all across the company, and we'll probably talk about go-to-market at some point, particularly on the go-to-market side. We're leveraging our partners, of course, a lot more. Another reason why we're able to go you know expand and get larger deal sizes and so forth. They are a huge growth lever for us. I mean, it's our strategy, right? It's our solutions on our connected, open, intuitive, intelligent platform. It's expanding globally. Of course, it's you know that strong, high-performing partner ecosystem. Those are all reasons. Yes, we're just getting better as we grow and scale. We're becoming that company that can execute more effectively in all areas of the company, particularly on the go-to-market side. Yeah. I said we would come back to some of those verticals that you mentioned earlier. Let's go into one of them, financial services. You all have been doing really well there. Where are we in terms of, like, the penetration within that vertical? How do you think about the opportunity set ahead of you, especially with some of your newer products like Fund Reporting? Yeah. Thank you for calling out this vertical because it's one we've been incredibly enthusiastic about because we have seen so much traction. As I mentioned earlier in the verticals that we like to go after, it's those with you know a lot of regulation where there's complex regulations. If you think about banking and the regulation around that and insurance and investment, we're in all of those verticals because there's so much complexity, and we shine around regulatory disclosure and helping our customers you know report with when there is that environment of complexity. We've seen a lot of traction there. It's where most of our multimillion-dollar deals are with large deal sizes. We have a lot of vertical specific solutions, but of course, they also buy our horizontal solutions. It's an area where we continue to put emphasis. There's a lot of room for growth there. Even though we have the top banks, as our customers, we continue to grow in those accounts. A lot more to offer. Globally, they've got a lot of the top banks have entities all over the world, so the multi-entity reporting in additional to financial reporting, and we've got Fund Reporting and you know non-financial or sustainability reporting. All of those horizontals play really well, but they also are very much interested in having their Corporate Regulatory Reporting across those you know specific verticals on the Workiva platform, again, with unified data, not siloed in different vendors or different systems. Again, here comes AI. When you do all that, you can apply your AI in our controlled environment. The auditors can go in you know at any point in time through the quarter, not just at the end, that you can go in and get data that you can feel confident about. It's you know kind of a sacred place for the Office of the CFO to go think about their data with all that noise out there, with data here, data there, this system, this agent. Workiva, they know what's in that system, and that it is again trusted data, and they can justify any number coming out of that system all the way to when that data entered the system from a source. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about GRC. The growth there accelerating meaningfully, 19%-30% ARR growth this past year. What's going on there? What has been some of the unlocks to drive that kind of growth inflection? Sure. I'll go back to your comment. You're getting better, right? Yes, we are getting better at execution. Again, get towards the $1 billion, you have to be good, you have to be productive, you have to have those sellers that can sell your capabilities, but also sell a platform, also embrace partners because partners help us you know go up higher in the organization, sell more broadly, higher win rate, et cetera. We've got better execution. We're also seeing trends in the market that lead us to have better outcomes with when we talk with our customers about GRC. One I mentioned a little earlier, which is we've got this trend in the market around legacy systems. Again, AI is you know kind of spurring this on. You don't wanna have your legacy systems and apply AI when your data isn't in the format and the shape that it should be to go action those insights. You've got siloed systems besides which. If you're gonna modernize, Workiva is an incredible platform to modernize on because you're not just getting modern technology, but you're also getting it that data again in one unified platform. This is why, again, I go back to when we talk about our moat. We're getting more relevant, not less in the era of AI because they want to have their data in one place and modernize their technology. We're seeing that. Again, just better execution, good market trends for us. Governance is becoming even more important to companies. That you know our audit and controls and risk management solutions, just absolutely play into that trend. Again, not being a point solution, it's working in our favor for sure. Let's hit on sustainability. Gets a lot of investor attention. Remind us again how much of that is actually part of your business, how much of it is part of your TAM, and how do you think about the evolving regulatory landscape that we're seeing and how you think about that business going forward? Sure. I think important to recognize that sustainability, even with the changing regulatory landscape, it is alive and well, and it's a good growth factor for Workiva, right? Our tailwind has dissipated some. We've talked about that. You know, we've had a moderation in the surge that we saw in 2024. 2025, much more steady state for the market. There is still regulation out there. You look at CSRD, sure, the regulatory landscape changed a bit, and there was a de-scoping in that regulation, but alive and well for the wave one customers who had to report in 2025. This is the second year we're going around having conversations with those that did not leverage Workiva, that had muscled through and/or used some inferior technology platform. That's a good area of growth for us. The wave two, nothing's changed substantially. Sure, it's out a year or two, but that's alive and well. There are other areas across the world. Think of Australia, they still talk about ESG. They haven't even changed the name to non-financial reporting or sustainability yet. There's a lot of areas. A lot of companies are doing this for business reasons still. It is Risk Management. It's surfacing those risks, identifying those risks, managing and tracking those risks. That's what non-financial you know data is all about, and those non-financial risks. You've got to track them, and you've got to be transparent about them. Companies are doing that. They also know when they put their financial data and their non-financial sustainability data together in one system, and they look at those and apply AI, get insights from them, they get much more holistic view of their business than not looking at those capabilities and that data. You know, we're seeing a myriad of reasons why, but we are seeing customers understanding that it's an important component of their business. Even if it's just the box checkers and the compliers, we still get a large portion of that market because there is still regulation alive and well in the market. SEC. What are you seeing in capital markets right now? How are you evolving that product? I think you launched SEC Intelligence. Tell us a little bit about that as well? Sure. On the capital markets side, I think everyone in this room probably understands that capital markets had a few years of you know I'll say lackluster performance. IPOs weren't booming. We saw that post-pandemic. We did see more activity over 2025, particularly toward in Q3. It was probably our strongest quarter, which we talked about. Q4 saw some improved activity as well. Of course, we had a shutdown. There's a lot of macro factors that are you know affecting IPOs and our capital markets business. We always have the secondary markets, and we are getting our fair share and have over the last several years, our fair share of IPOs. We're optimistic about the IPO market and our capital markets business rolling into 2026. We're not overshooting there. We're not over our skis with it, we have baked in some growth over 2026. We're waiting to see, again, new Fed chair economy is what it is. Of course you know we're looking at tech valuation, so that will probably be moderated too in terms of IPO activity. We're being very thoughtful about how we've put it into our guide, but we're you know we're optimistic about it. On the SEC Intelligence, again, just more offerings for our flagship product to bring more capabilities to those who are wanting to have advanced capability, who are you know more enthusiastic about using our AI. We've put that in the top premium tier of our good, better, best model. We're again seeing uptick on it today. It's around at renewal time. We'll come and see if you're interested in leveraging more capability. Let's shift over to go-to-market. You talked a little bit about this earlier, but you all have been really focused on making some changes there. Can you remind us again, what are some of those key changes, and how have you progressed against your initial expectations there? Sure. We are working to improve our productivity on our sales and marketing. It's one of the areas where we believe we can improve the most. I've been pretty open about some of the activities that we're doing in sales and marketing, so the actions we're taking. We have a very expensive sales model, or we have had this historically. We're moving away from that towards a more efficient, more productive, more effective sales model. What we're doing is we're becoming less reliant on sales specialists for some of our solutions. We're leaning more on solution engineers and we're improving the capabilities of our account execs. We're doing that, and that's sort of on the structure side. We also rolled out new logo teams that are more hunters and dedicated to hunting for those new logos. We're doing a lot of on structure. We're also doing staffing, making some changes in staff, and that might be elevating profiles of sellers, those that can embrace and understand the value of partners, that will bring partners earlier in when we identify deals and when we want to expand accounts. They understand how to sell a platform and what that means and the value of the platform. They understand it's different than a transaction sell, just selling a solution or two solutions, right? We're just getting more mature across you know both the structure and the staffing in the organization. We're also you know leaning into our strategy, whether it is in the new logo play, whether account expansion enable. We're just getting better. Again, when you start crossing that line of $1 billion you know your productivity is important. Your efficiency and your effectiveness is important. It's getting better at execution. We're growing up, and we're scaling, and that applies heavily into the sales and marketing area. Yeah. Clearly a big focus on efficiency, and you've seen that on the, on the margin front too, going from, I think, 4%-10% in a year. Your guidance for 26-. Yep. 15% plus. The 27% target of 18%. What gives you the confidence to be able to continue to drive this continued margin expansion here? I mean, nothing better than looking at numbers, right? You can see the expanding margins and the work we've been doing. We exited last year at 10%, as you say, at 560 basis points greater than the prior year, 2024. We feel very confident on the trajectory. We have plans in place. This is not we're trying to do things ad hoc. We have plans in place. We feel very confident. We put those medium and long-term targets out there, we are making you know very reasonable progress towards those that you should all be able to see, as you look at our numbers. Again, on the sales and marketing side, as you can see, we hired someone who's been there and done that, knows how to build a marketing machine, brought a new CRO in, Michael Pinto, who's spent the last couple years at Databricks. Prior to that, he spent you know six, seven years at AWS growing and scaling from a few hundred million to multi-billion in both of those companies for the areas that he's had responsibility for. Transforming and scaling our go-to-market organization is really why he's here and just building that machine. We feel very confident in those numbers and the guide. We've reiterated our guide and reiterated those targets. Let's talk about delivering shareholder value. How do you guys think about the balance between organic investments, M&A, capital returns? Sure. We are here. I know my job is here for you know shareholder value. That is what it's all about. We do it with, of course, a number of different vehicles. The thing we focus on the most, of course, is growth. Today, I am happy to say profitable growth. That is what we're focusing on. It really is about ensuring we are productive. Part of that productivity drive for us, yes, it's about expanding margin and make sure we are being thoughtful for shareholders, but it's also to make sure we are being productive to invest in the right places. We're going to be investing in innovation, going to be investing in that marketing and sales machine that I just talked about. We want the resources going to the right places where we believe we can win, where it's proven we can win. We're gonna continue to invest, but we're also gonna do it in a productive way. We're going to be efficient where we add. Of course, we're going to be leveraging AI where we can. We are going around the company to ensure that we are working productively. We still have room for improvement. I will be the first to say there's room for operating efficiency and effectiveness, and we're going after it. As I said, we have a plan. We will continue, of course, to be thoughtful about stock-based compensation and dilution. You saw that we increased you know our ability to buy back our stock, got authorized for another $250 million on top of the $100 million that we already were authorized to spend. We'll continue to, again, be thoughtful about that. We wanna make sure that we are actively you know thinking about dilution and taking action toward. Yeah. I wanted to go a little bit deeper on stock-based compensation. It's not just you all, but the entire software- Sure. industry stocks are down a bunch over the past year, six months. How does that kind of inform what you're doing in terms of, like, issuing units? Are you gonna be issuing more units? Are you shifting more of your compensation to cash? How do you think about that? Sure. We are acutely aware that this is a conversation going on these days, given valuations and so forth. Of course, again, we're being pretty thoughtful about it. You can see in our mid and long-term models that we're looking at the 12% and feel very confident we can stay within that range. We have been on the you know below average side on the stock-based compensation. Look, we're a tech company. We retain talent and strive for that in this market like everyone else. We understand what's important. We understand the visibility of a. We understand you know, retention. Again, we just authorized the $250 million, and we will be taking action on that as appropriate. Yeah. taking a very thoughtful approach. Got it. We're well aware of that and, we'll act accordingly and responsibly. Got it. Before I open it up to the audience here, we've coined this term the ERP super cycle to kind of talk about that large upcoming deadline of companies moving off of on-premise ERP systems to the cloud. Yeah, I think 2024 was really strong for those migrations. 2025, a bit slower. I'm curious if that's also kind of your takeaway, and how do you think about those deals over the next you know 12, 24 months? thank you for bringing that up. We love the ERP system upgrades or transitions. It's a great trigger for a buying moment for Workiva. I mean, usually when you move off of an ERP system, you evaluate. If I was a CIO, when I did something big like that, I'd be looking at the full stack. You wanna modernize your stack. You don't wanna bring your new ERP system to a legacy stack. It's a great opportunity to think through you know your disclosure system, your reporting system. Also a lot of these companies that are moving onto a new ERP or upgrading, they've got all these large companies. They've got ERP systems in country that they've developed a whole you know a whole stack of them. They wanna get away from those. We have something called Multi-Entity Reporting, Global Statutory Reporting, that allows them to do in-country reporting, and align with their larger new ERP system. It's a great opportunity for Workiva, and more and more we're working to get in with our consulting and advisory partners, get into their playbooks for when they go in and help them. You know, these enterprise customers, they've got you know the Big Four in there continually in these consulting advisories. We love to align with our Big Four and consulting advisory partners to help go in as early as possible in the ERP transition cycle so that we can provide disclosure management you know transparent reporting, but also things like Multi-Entity Reporting too. We fit very nicely into the ERP super cycle. Thank you for highlighting that. Yeah. When you work with partners, it's higher win rates. The deal sizes are larger too. You said it, higher win rates. We sell higher, we sell broader, we sell more, higher prices. Yes, twice the win rate. I mean, it is a beautiful match. They sell everything that we do. They sell the services around it, we sell the tech. It's a beautiful relationship, and we have dedicated alliances that continue to get even more high performing across all of the Big Four consulting advisory, and then of course the next tier with regional partners as well. Any questions from the audience here? Talked a lot and covered a lot. All right. Maybe last one, Julie. As we reflect back on 2025 you know what are some of the key lessons you can draw from that in terms of what worked really well, and what are some areas you're still looking to improve upon? You know, I look back on 2025, it was so different to where we are today. I'm not sure any of those lessons apply other than just resilience, speed, innovation, lean into your relevancy. I think those are the things that I think about as a CEO, is continue to build a resilient organization. Leadership has got to be resilient. We need to be ready for anything. We need to respond in the market. We've got to remain innovative for ourselves, for our customers, this relevancy of becoming even you know more important in the era of AI, not less. We've got to lean into this, we've got to lean into you know what we do for our customers. We serve the office as a CFO. We manage the data that matters for them, and we will ensure that we keep true to our mission, which is ensuring they have a trusted platform to leverage in all of this noise, in all of the agents floating around, and all the data floating around. We are that place where a CFO knows they can go and their data is, again, accurate, has data integrity and data consistency and is traceable and justifiable. Awesome. Think we can end it there. Thank you so much, Julie. Thank you. Appreciate all the questions. Thank you all for attending.

Speaker 1: All right. I think we can go ahead and get started. My name is Chris Quintero. I am the Office of the CFO Software Analyst here at Morgan Stanley, and really excited to be joined here by Julie Iskow, CEO and President of Workiva. All right. all right I think we can go ahead and get started. i think we can go ahead and get started My name is Chris Quintero. my name is chris quintero I am the Office of the CFO Software Analyst here at Morgan Stanley, and really excited to be joined here by Julie Iskow, CEO and President of Workiva. i am the office of the cfo software analyst here at morgan stanley and really excited to be joined here by julie iskow ceo and president of workiva

Speaker 2: Thank you very much. Happy to be here, and thank you all for, choosing the session. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. thank you very much Happy to be here, and thank you all for, choosing the session. happy to be here and thank you all for choosing the session Appreciate it. appreciate it

Speaker 1: Yeah. Before we get into the interesting stuff, for important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. Julie, maybe to kick things off, for investors who maybe are not as familiar with Workiva you know give us a quick overview of what you do, what your key products are, who some of your customers are. Yeah. yeah Before we get into the interesting stuff, for important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. before we get into the interesting stuff for important disclosures please see the morgan stanley research disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. if you have any questions please feel free to reach out to your morgan stanley sales representative Julie, maybe to kick things off, for investors who maybe are not as familiar with Workiva you know give us a quick overview of what you do, what your key products are, who some of your customers are. julie maybe to kick things off for investors who maybe are not as familiar with workiva you know give us a quick overview of what you do what your key products are who some of your customers are

Speaker 2: Sure. Workiva has become the trusted platform for the Office of the CFO. What I mean by that is we have come to manage the data that matters most in the Office of the CFO. We have an AI-powered platform, and the focus areas are on financial reporting, non-financial reporting, regulatory disclosure, data accuracy and governance. We have over 6,600 customers today. We are a horizontal SaaS platform. Every company in the world is a potential customer, but we've also gone deeper into a number of the verticals. You can imagine, given what we do, that we go into those verticals where there is you know regulatory environment is high and intense and, of course, complex for companies to implement. That's who we are today and where we go. Sure. sure Workiva has become the trusted platform for the Office of the CFO. workiva has become the trusted platform for the office of the cfo What I mean by that is we have come to manage the data that matters most in the Office of the CFO. what i mean by that is we have come to manage the data that matters most in the office of the cfo We have an AI-powered platform, and the focus areas are on financial reporting, non-financial reporting, regulatory disclosure, data accuracy and governance. we have an ai-powered platform and the focus areas are on financial reporting non-financial reporting regulatory disclosure data accuracy and governance We have over 6,600 customers today. we have over 6,600 customers today We are a horizontal SaaS platform. we are a horizontal saas platform Every company in the world is a potential customer, but we've also gone deeper into a number of the verticals. every company in the world is a potential customer but we've also gone deeper into a number of the verticals You can imagine, given what we do, that we go into those verticals where there is you know regulatory environment is high and intense and, of course, complex for companies to implement. you can imagine given what we do that we go into those verticals where there is you know regulatory environment is high and intense and of course complex for companies to implement That's who we are today and where we go. that's who we are today and where we go We manage the data that matters most, in the Office of the CFO. We manage the data that matters most, in the Office of the CFO. we manage the data that matters most in the office of the cfo

Speaker 1: Got it. Definitely wanna dig into some of those verticals a little bit later, but maybe just to kick things off, let's jump right into AI. Clearly a lot of investors are worried about displacement risk from AI startups, large language models. From the Workiva perspective, what's your key competitive modes that makes you differentiated in the space? Got it. got it Definitely wanna dig into some of those verticals a little bit later, but maybe just to kick things off, let's jump right into AI. definitely wanna dig into some of those verticals a little bit later but maybe just to kick things off let's jump right into ai Clearly a lot of investors are worried about displacement risk from AI startups, large language models. clearly a lot of investors are worried about displacement risk from ai startups large language models From the Workiva perspective, what's your key competitive modes that makes you differentiated in the space? from the workiva perspective what's your key competitive modes that makes you differentiated in the space

Speaker 2: Thank you for the question, of course, on everyone's mind. we step back a little bit and look at who our customer is and who we serve, again, CFO, Office of the CFO. Nowhere else in the company is it a necessity to have data that is accurate. Marketing and sales, I mean, you can go around every function in the company, and where it is an imperative, where it is non-negotiable, where it is table stakes to have accurate data, not just data accuracy, data integrity, data consistency. You need to be able to justify your numbers, defend those numbers. You need data traceability. You need data lineage for any data, any narrative, any change in the system at any point in time, you need to have that defensibility and traceability, and that's really where Workiva plays. It's not... Thank you for the question, of course, on everyone's mind. we step back a little bit and look at who our customer is and who we serve, again, CFO, Office of the CFO. thank you for the question of course on everyone's mind we step back a little bit and look at who our customer is and who we serve again cfo office of the cfo Nowhere else in the company is it a necessity to have data that is accurate. nowhere else in the company is it a necessity to have data that is accurate Marketing and sales, I mean, you can go around every function in the company, and where it is an imperative, where it is non-negotiable, where it is table stakes to have accurate data, not just data accuracy, data integrity, data consistency. marketing and sales i mean you can go around every function in the company and where it is an imperative where it is non-negotiable where it is table stakes to have accurate data not just data accuracy data integrity data consistency You need to be able to justify your numbers, defend those numbers. you need to be able to justify your numbers defend those numbers You need data traceability. you need data traceability You need data lineage for any data, any narrative, any change in the system at any point in time, you need to have that defensibility and traceability, and that's really where Workiva plays. you need data lineage for any data any narrative any change in the system at any point in time you need to have that defensibility and traceability and that's really where workiva plays It's not... it's not Yes, a system of record, yes, a trusted and essential system of record. It truly is that the CFO, whether they're doing their quarterly or annual reports at a point in time like that, or whether at any point in time they wanna even perhaps apply AI onto the data, they can be assured that data, again, is data accuracy, data integrity, data consistency, and full data lineage, and is traceable back to source systems and the moment it entered the system. Full audit trail. You know your auditors can go in at any time and look into the system as well. That is very, very different than other buyer persona in the rest of the company. Yes, a system of record, yes, a trusted and essential system of record. yes a system of record yes a trusted and essential system of record It truly is that the CFO, whether they're doing their quarterly or annual reports at a point in time like that, or whether at any point in time they wanna even perhaps apply AI onto the data, they can be assured that data, again, is data accuracy, data integrity, data consistency, and full data lineage, and is traceable back to source systems and the moment it entered the system. it truly is that the cfo whether they're doing their quarterly or annual reports at a point in time like that or whether at any point in time they wanna even perhaps apply ai onto the data they can be assured that data again is data accuracy data integrity data consistency and full data lineage and is traceable back to source systems and the moment it entered the system Full audit trail. full audit trail You know your auditors can go in at any time and look into the system as well. you know your auditors can go in at any time and look into the system as well That is very, very different than other buyer persona in the rest of the company. that is very very different than other buyer persona in the rest of the company Workiva, our platform ensures that a CFO and the team can have confidence in that data, which is critically important today as we're talking about AI, that you wanna know when you apply AI, again, that data, those results you're gonna get from the AI applications are, again, going to give you confidence that they are from a trusted platform, and that's why we talk about it as the platform of trust in the Office of the CFO. Workiva, our platform ensures that a CFO and the team can have confidence in that data, which is critically important today as we're talking about AI, that you wanna know when you apply AI, again, that data, those results you're gonna get from the AI applications are, again, going to give you confidence that they are from a trusted platform, and that's why we talk about it as the platform of trust in the Office of the CFO. workiva our platform ensures that a cfo and the team can have confidence in that data which is critically important today as we're talking about ai that you wanna know when you apply ai again that data those results you're gonna get from the ai applications are again going to give you confidence that they are from a trusted platform and that's why we talk about it as the platform of trust in the office of the cfo

Speaker 1: Yeah. Your buyer needs that absolute certainty about your accuracy, the compliance, the risk mitigation, all those good things. Yeah. yeah Your buyer needs that absolute certainty about your accuracy, the compliance, the risk mitigation, all those good things. your buyer needs that absolute certainty about your accuracy the compliance the risk mitigation all those good things

Speaker 2: I will make the comment that we do have all the advantages. We have an incredible customer base, 95% of the Fortune 100, 85% of the Fortune 1000 that trust us already, that have had their financial data with us for the last 10-15 years. We have, we have that. We have a lot of the what some people like to think of a moat, but really buys you time rather than being the moat, like the trusted data. We have a lot of those advantages still you know the system of record and the enviable and trusted customer base. Really what it comes down to when it is that moat is that data, again, data accuracy, data integrity, and data traceability. I will make the comment that we do have all the advantages. i will make the comment that we do have all the advantages We have an incredible customer base, 95% of the Fortune 100, 85% of the Fortune 1000 that trust us already, that have had their financial data with us for the last 10-15 years. we have an incredible customer base 95% of the fortune 100 85% of the fortune 1000 that trust us already that have had their financial data with us for the last 10-15 years We have, we have that. we have we have that We have a lot of the what some people like to think of a moat, but really buys you time rather than being the moat, like the trusted data. we have a lot of the what some people like to think of a moat but really buys you time rather than being the moat like the trusted data We have a lot of those advantages still you know the system of record and the enviable and trusted customer base. we have a lot of those advantages still you know the system of record and the enviable and trusted customer base Really what it comes down to when it is that moat is that data, again, data accuracy, data integrity, and data traceability. really what it comes down to when it is that moat is that data again data accuracy data integrity and data traceability

Speaker 1: Let's talk about the opportunity side of AI. You all shared that 30% of your customers have now enabled AI on the platform. Give us a sneak peek into what are some of those use cases, capabilities that they're using. Let's talk about the opportunity side of AI. let's talk about the opportunity side of ai You all shared that 30% of your customers have now enabled AI on the platform. you all shared that 30% of your customers have now enabled ai on the platform Give us a sneak peek into what are some of those use cases, capabilities that they're using. give us a sneak peek into what are some of those use cases capabilities that they're using

Speaker 2: Sure. Yes, we have almost 30% of our customers using AI, meaning they've activated it, and they've enabled it, and they're using it to some extent. The thing about Workiva AI is I can talk to you about use cases all day long. I can tell you know, for each solution, some of the capabilities that customers are using. We continue to roll the capabilities out as new technology comes, as we think about new use cases. Quarter after quarter, you will see in our roadmaps as well that we have new use cases coming out to streamline work, to improve processes, to actually help customers work differently. I think the real unique part of the Workiva AI or the differentiator, if you will, is really that it's built into our platform. Sure. sure Yes, we have almost 30% of our customers using AI, meaning they've activated it, and they've enabled it, and they're using it to some extent. yes we have almost 30% of our customers using ai meaning they've activated it and they've enabled it and they're using it to some extent The thing about Workiva AI is I can talk to you about use cases all day long. the thing about workiva ai is i can talk to you about use cases all day long I can tell you know, for each solution, some of the capabilities that customers are using. i can tell you know for each solution some of the capabilities that customers are using We continue to roll the capabilities out as new technology comes, as we think about new use cases. we continue to roll the capabilities out as new technology comes as we think about new use cases Quarter after quarter, you will see in our roadmaps as well that we have new use cases coming out to streamline work, to improve processes, to actually help customers work differently. quarter after quarter you will see in our roadmaps as well that we have new use cases coming out to streamline work to improve processes to actually help customers work differently I think the real unique part of the Workiva AI or the differentiator, if you will, is really that it's built into our platform. i think the real unique part of the workiva ai or the differentiator if you will is really that it's built into our platform It's not bolted on, it's part of the platform, embedded in the core of the platform for all users across every work stream and across every solution in the portfolio. I think when I think about our differentiation, happy to share roadmaps and show you specifically what customers are using to work faster, better, and in fact, differently across the portfolio. It's not bolted on, it's part of the platform, embedded in the core of the platform for all users across every work stream and across every solution in the portfolio. it's not bolted on it's part of the platform embedded in the core of the platform for all users across every work stream and across every solution in the portfolio I think when I think about our differentiation, happy to share roadmaps and show you specifically what customers are using to work faster, better, and in fact, differently across the portfolio. i think when i think about our differentiation happy to share roadmaps and show you specifically what customers are using to work faster better and in fact differently across the portfolio

Speaker 1: What patterns are you maybe seeing with that adoption when a customer first adopts, turns on some of those AI features? How does that kind of ramp or look like? What patterns are you maybe seeing with that adoption when a customer first adopts, turns on some of those AI features? what patterns are you maybe seeing with that adoption when a customer first adopts turns on some of those ai features How does that kind of ramp or look like? how does that kind of ramp or look like

Speaker 2: Yeah, interestingly, not all of our customers are able to use AI. Some of their companies are still holding back on that. What we find when we explain with Workiva that your data and your AI will remain in our controlled environment, in our platform where you've held all your financial data and for years, that they do give in and are able to use it. In particular, of course, their data will not be used to train any of the models, and we offer multiple models. We offer customers choices of the models from three of the large language model providers, so they get to choose the model they want, and they can be assured that their data will not be used to train any of those models. Yeah, interestingly, not all of our customers are able to use AI. yeah interestingly not all of our customers are able to use ai Some of their companies are still holding back on that. some of their companies are still holding back on that What we find when we explain with Workiva that your data and your AI will remain in our controlled environment, in our platform where you've held all your financial data and for years, that they do give in and are able to use it. what we find when we explain with workiva that your data and your ai will remain in our controlled environment in our platform where you've held all your financial data and for years that they do give in and are able to use it In particular, of course, their data will not be used to train any of the models, and we offer multiple models. in particular of course their data will not be used to train any of the models and we offer multiple models We offer customers choices of the models from three of the large language model providers, so they get to choose the model they want, and they can be assured that their data will not be used to train any of those models. we offer customers choices of the models from three of the large language model providers so they get to choose the model they want and they can be assured that their data will not be used to train any of those models Once they're in, we do see the pattern of using it and then increasing usage. You know, we're close to 30%, not quite there, 27+% are using it, and we're continuing to see increasing patterns of usage once they get in and feel comfortable. We love it because we get to see what they're doing, we get to see what's valuable for them, where they spend their time, and it helps us, it helps inform us on where we wanna build out more capability and provide more value for the customer. Once they're in, we do see the pattern of using it and then increasing usage. once they're in we do see the pattern of using it and then increasing usage You know, we're close to 30%, not quite there, 27+% are using it, and we're continuing to see increasing patterns of usage once they get in and feel comfortable. you know we're close to 30% not quite there 27+% are using it and we're continuing to see increasing patterns of usage once they get in and feel comfortable We love it because we get to see what they're doing, we get to see what's valuable for them, where they spend their time, and it helps us, it helps inform us on where we wanna build out more capability and provide more value for the customer. we love it because we get to see what they're doing we get to see what's valuable for them where they spend their time and it helps us it helps inform us on where we wanna build out more capability and provide more value for the customer

Speaker 1: Yeah. You've introduced a good, better, best kind of new pricing model, with some of the AI capabilities featured in the higher tier. Could you maybe walk us through how that model's performing and what are you learning from customers' willingness to pay for AI features? Yeah. yeah You've introduced a good, better, best kind of new pricing model, with some of the AI capabilities featured in the higher tier. you've introduced a good better best kind of new pricing model with some of the ai capabilities featured in the higher tier Could you maybe walk us through how that model's performing and what are you learning from customers' willingness to pay for AI features? could you maybe walk us through how that model's performing and what are you learning from customers' willingness to pay for ai features

Speaker 2: Sure. This good, better, best model is just one way that we can kind of go after the opportunity we have for account expansion at Workiva, which is one of our most significant growth levers. I will say before we even go into that form of pricing, I wanna remind everyone that Workiva is not seat-based. We are not a seat-based SaaS platform. We do price with you know, on usage and value, and we've been doing that for 6+ years now, so we're not a seat-based. As I mentioned, we can extract value and provide value with this good, better, best model as one way to capture growth and expansion. Sure. sure This good, better, best model is just one way that we can kind of go after the opportunity we have for account expansion at Workiva, which is one of our most significant growth levers. this good better best model is just one way that we can kind of go after the opportunity we have for account expansion at workiva which is one of our most significant growth levers I will say before we even go into that form of pricing, I wanna remind everyone that Workiva is not seat-based. i will say before we even go into that form of pricing i wanna remind everyone that workiva is not seat-based We are not a seat-based SaaS platform. we are not a seat-based saas platform We do price with you know, on usage and value, and we've been doing that for 6+ years now, so we're not a seat-based. we do price with you know on usage and value and we've been doing that for 6+ years now so we're not a seat-based As I mentioned, we can extract value and provide value with this good, better, best model as one way to capture growth and expansion. as i mentioned we can extract value and provide value with this good better best model as one way to capture growth and expansion The other way, of course, is selling more solutions across the portfolio or a customer can increase the use of within one solution. We rolled this out about one year or so ago, we are seeing traction. At renewal time, we come to the customers and offer one of our more premium tiers if they're not already using some of that or all of that capability for that matter. Again, we've been seeing an uptick in it. We've saved... An example is our SEC Reporting, which is our flagship product. We have put in that premium tier some of our advanced features, whether it's advanced AI, which is in there, capabilities that isn't in the core of the platform and offered to every customer. We might put in... We have Designed Reporting there. The other way, of course, is selling more solutions across the portfolio or a customer can increase the use of within one solution. the other way of course is selling more solutions across the portfolio or a customer can increase the use of within one solution We rolled this out about one year or so ago, we are seeing traction. we rolled this out about one year or so ago we are seeing traction At renewal time, we come to the customers and offer one of our more premium tiers if they're not already using some of that or all of that capability for that matter. at renewal time we come to the customers and offer one of our more premium tiers if they're not already using some of that or all of that capability for that matter Again, we've been seeing an uptick in it. again we've been seeing an uptick in it We've saved... we've saved An example is our SEC Reporting, which is our flagship product. an example is our sec reporting which is our flagship product We have put in that premium tier some of our advanced features, whether it's advanced AI, which is in there, capabilities that isn't in the core of the platform and offered to every customer. we have put in that premium tier some of our advanced features whether it's advanced ai which is in there capabilities that isn't in the core of the platform and offered to every customer We might put in... we might put in We have Designed Reporting there. we have designed reporting there We have Financial Statement Automation, so we really pack the tiers with feature and functionality, again, to be able to provide more value to customers and of course then extract that value. Yes, we're seeing an uptick in that in early days of course, and then we're doing that in other areas of the platform as well. Again, it's a mechanism for us to be able to provide and extract more value for customers and really get their willingness to pay for the high features. It also allows us to meet a customer where they are. If you have a customer that isn't ready to take on the full expanse of the feature and functionalities that we offer, we don't need to discount. We have Financial Statement Automation, so we really pack the tiers with feature and functionality, again, to be able to provide more value to customers and of course then extract that value. we have financial statement automation so we really pack the tiers with feature and functionality again to be able to provide more value to customers and of course then extract that value Yes, we're seeing an uptick in that in early days of course, and then we're doing that in other areas of the platform as well. yes we're seeing an uptick in that in early days of course and then we're doing that in other areas of the platform as well Again, it's a mechanism for us to be able to provide and extract more value for customers and really get their willingness to pay for the high features. again it's a mechanism for us to be able to provide and extract more value for customers and really get their willingness to pay for the high features It also allows us to meet a customer where they are. it also allows us to meet a customer where they are If you have a customer that isn't ready to take on the full expanse of the feature and functionalities that we offer, we don't need to discount. if you have a customer that isn't ready to take on the full expanse of the feature and functionalities that we offer we don't need to discount We offer them a you know a more, bare bones model if you will, an essential capabilities package. We offer them a you know a more, bare bones model if you will, an essential capabilities package. we offer them a you know a more bare bones model if you will an essential capabilities package

Speaker 1: One of the most interesting things you guys have talked about, at least from my perspective, has been AI is now kind of serving as a competitive differentiator for you in your RFPs. I think you mentioned there was a defense contractor that you won because of your AI powered. One of the most interesting things you guys have talked about, at least from my perspective, has been AI is now kind of serving as a competitive differentiator for you in your RFPs. one of the most interesting things you guys have talked about at least from my perspective has been ai is now kind of serving as a competitive differentiator for you in your rfps I think you mentioned there was a defense contractor that you won because of your AI powered. i think you mentioned there was a defense contractor that you won because of your ai powered

Speaker 2: Yes Yes yes

Speaker 1: ... GRC capabilities. You know, how often is AI now a deciding factor for you all in those competitive situations? ... GRC capabilities. grc capabilities You know, how often is AI now a deciding factor for you all in those competitive situations? you know how often is ai now a deciding factor for you all in those competitive situations

Speaker 2: I think it is becoming one of those table stakes, items that we're seeing in RFPs, and we get asked, "Do you have AI?" They're mostly interested in do we have it, are we innovative, when they sign up with us, are we going to be one of those vendors that's gonna continue to innovate and ensure that they can be doing their work, with you know the state-of-the-art technology. It's that. Listen, a lot of our customers come from, companies with legacy tech stacks, and one of the reasons they wanna move and modernize is because they wanna leverage AI. I think it is becoming one of those table stakes, items that we're seeing in RFPs, and we get asked, "Do you have AI?" They're mostly interested in do we have it, are we innovative, when they sign up with us, are we going to be one of those vendors that's gonna continue to innovate and ensure that they can be doing their work, with you know the state-of-the-art technology. i think it is becoming one of those table stakes items that we're seeing in rfps and we get asked "do you have ai?" they're mostly interested in do we have it are we innovative when they sign up with us are we going to be one of those vendors that's gonna continue to innovate and ensure that they can be doing their work with you know the state-of-the-art technology It's that. it's that Listen, a lot of our customers come from, companies with legacy tech stacks, and one of the reasons they wanna move and modernize is because they wanna leverage AI. listen a lot of our customers come from companies with legacy tech stacks and one of the reasons they wanna move and modernize is because they wanna leverage ai Today, their data is siloed in different modules, in point solutions or legacy modules. They wanna move over where their data is unified and they want to apply AI. They too want to ensure it's done in a controlled environment and be able to be assured of the trust that our platform offers. It's become, yes, can we use a certain feature functionality, but it's also does your system have it? Can I use it when I get there? Is this the company that's going to be able to unify my data so that I can have it all in one place and get better insights leveraging AI, again, with unified data, which is one of our core differentiators from any of those point solutions and many of our competitors. Today, their data is siloed in different modules, in point solutions or legacy modules. today their data is siloed in different modules in point solutions or legacy modules They wanna move over where their data is unified and they want to apply AI. they wanna move over where their data is unified and they want to apply ai They too want to ensure it's done in a controlled environment and be able to be assured of the trust that our platform offers. they too want to ensure it's done in a controlled environment and be able to be assured of the trust that our platform offers It's become, yes, can we use a certain feature functionality, but it's also does your system have it? it's become yes can we use a certain feature functionality but it's also does your system have it Can I use it when I get there? can i use it when i get there Is this the company that's going to be able to unify my data so that I can have it all in one place and get better insights leveraging AI, again, with unified data, which is one of our core differentiators from any of those point solutions and many of our competitors. is this the company that's going to be able to unify my data so that i can have it all in one place and get better insights leveraging ai again with unified data which is one of our core differentiators from any of those point solutions and many of our competitors

Speaker 1: Okay. We take a step back. One of the things that I really like about the Workiva story over the past few years is just your durability of growth, especially in the context of you know broader software, kind of you know having a more meaningful slowdown. You all have been pretty durable over the past few years. I think a lot of that has to do with the breadth and the platform that you now have. Curious from your perspective, what do you think has been really driving that durability of growth over the past few years? Okay. okay We take a step back. we take a step back One of the things that I really like about the Workiva story over the past few years is just your durability of growth, especially in the context of you know broader software, kind of you know having a more meaningful slowdown. one of the things that i really like about the workiva story over the past few years is just your durability of growth especially in the context of you know broader software kind of you know having a more meaningful slowdown You all have been pretty durable over the past few years. you all have been pretty durable over the past few years I think a lot of that has to do with the breadth and the platform that you now have. i think a lot of that has to do with the breadth and the platform that you now have Curious from your perspective, what do you think has been really driving that durability of growth over the past few years? curious from your perspective what do you think has been really driving that durability of growth over the past few years

Speaker 2: Sure. You, you are spot on. I mean, at this point, we have you know two dozen solutions or so across the portfolio, right across the platform. Every one of those is built on the platform. Every one of those is at least 80% the platform. They're all connected. The data's connected. It's a unified platform. That in it of itself, that the broad offerings that we have, is really where a lot of that growth is coming from. It's a, it's a benefit. It's not just that we solve a lot of problems, but we solve them at the same time together. Again, the unification of the solutions, the better together of the solutions, the unified data, it's really core. Sure. sure You, you are spot on. you you are spot on I mean, at this point, we have you know two dozen solutions or so across the portfolio, right across the platform. i mean at this point we have you know two dozen solutions or so across the portfolio right across the platform Every one of those is built on the platform. every one of those is built on the platform Every one of those is at least 80% the platform. every one of those is at least 80% the platform They're all connected. they're all connected The data's connected. the data's connected It's a unified platform. it's a unified platform That in it of itself, that the broad offerings that we have, is really where a lot of that growth is coming from. that in it of itself that the broad offerings that we have is really where a lot of that growth is coming from It's a, it's a benefit. it's a it's a benefit It's not just that we solve a lot of problems, but we solve them at the same time together. it's not just that we solve a lot of problems but we solve them at the same time together Again, the unification of the solutions, the better together of the solutions, the unified data, it's really core. again the unification of the solutions the better together of the solutions the unified data it's really core When you, of course, put on the fact that all of that data is trusted and are controlled, secure, again, audit-ready environment with traceability, that's really a benefit. We've also expanded and grown because we've been going out more broadly, geographically, right? We've moved into you know other geographies outside of the U.S. We're now around 27% of revenue outside of the U.S. We've been growing there. We've been increasing our TAM and offering more capabilities. That's another area. We have a lot of untapped TAM to go after. We've got a lot to offer customers. New logos is another area we've been pushing, even though in the U.S., in the hot market, in the top 1,000, we have a lot of that customer. When you, of course, put on the fact that all of that data is trusted and are controlled, secure, again, audit-ready environment with traceability, that's really a benefit. when you of course put on the fact that all of that data is trusted and are controlled secure again audit-ready environment with traceability that's really a benefit We've also expanded and grown because we've been going out more broadly, geographically, right? we've also expanded and grown because we've been going out more broadly geographically right We've moved into you know other geographies outside of the U.S. we've moved into you know other geographies outside of the u.s We're now around 27% of revenue outside of the U.S. we're now around 27% of revenue outside of the u.s We've been growing there. we've been growing there We've been increasing our TAM and offering more capabilities. we've been increasing our tam and offering more capabilities That's another area. that's another area We have a lot of untapped TAM to go after. we have a lot of untapped tam to go after We've got a lot to offer customers. we've got a lot to offer customers New logos is another area we've been pushing, even though in the U.S., in the hot market, in the top 1,000, we have a lot of that customer. new logos is another area we've been pushing even though in the u.s in the hot market in the top 1,000 we have a lot of that customer There is still a lot to grow in enterprise, and there's still, again, geographically. It's geographic, it's more customers, it's expanding our TAM, it's the multiple solutions. We're just going everywhere, pushing, and there's a lot of opportunity. We have a lot to sell. We have a good value proposition when it comes to, again, unifying that data and offering the Office of the CFO the trusted data and becoming, in fact, more relevant you know in the era of AI, not less. There is still a lot to grow in enterprise, and there's still, again, geographically. there is still a lot to grow in enterprise and there's still again geographically It's geographic, it's more customers, it's expanding our TAM, it's the multiple solutions. it's geographic it's more customers it's expanding our tam it's the multiple solutions We're just going everywhere, pushing, and there's a lot of opportunity. we're just going everywhere pushing and there's a lot of opportunity We have a lot to sell. we have a lot to sell We have a good value proposition when it comes to, again, unifying that data and offering the Office of the CFO the trusted data and becoming, in fact, more relevant you know in the era of AI, not less. we have a good value proposition when it comes to again unifying that data and offering the office of the cfo the trusted data and becoming in fact more relevant you know in the era of ai not less

Speaker 1: Yeah. I think you all have also gotten better at just selling the platform from a go-to-market perspective too, right? Yeah. yeah I think you all have also gotten better at just selling the platform from a go-to-market perspective too, right? i think you all have also gotten better at just selling the platform from a go-to-market perspective too right

Speaker 2: We have our own execution, certainly, as you move towards the $1 billion. Barring anything catastrophic, we will be at $1 billion of ARR this year. I mean, you just have to execute differently. You've got to be more productive. You've got to be more efficient because you wanna use those resources in the best way possible for innovation, for speed, for continuing to expand your TAM. We've been elevating the profile of person all across the company, and we'll probably talk about go-to-market at some point, particularly on the go-to-market side. We're leveraging our partners, of course, a lot more. Another reason why we're able to go you know expand and get larger deal sizes and so forth. They are a huge growth lever for us. I mean, it's our strategy, right? We have our own execution, certainly, as you move towards the $1 billion. we have our own execution certainly as you move towards the $1 billion Barring anything catastrophic, we will be at $1 billion of ARR this year. barring anything catastrophic we will be at $1 billion of arr this year I mean, you just have to execute differently. i mean you just have to execute differently You've got to be more productive. you've got to be more productive You've got to be more efficient because you wanna use those resources in the best way possible for innovation, for speed, for continuing to expand your TAM. you've got to be more efficient because you wanna use those resources in the best way possible for innovation for speed for continuing to expand your tam We've been elevating the profile of person all across the company, and we'll probably talk about go-to-market at some point, particularly on the go-to-market side. we've been elevating the profile of person all across the company and we'll probably talk about go-to-market at some point particularly on the go-to-market side We're leveraging our partners, of course, a lot more. we're leveraging our partners of course a lot more Another reason why we're able to go you know expand and get larger deal sizes and so forth. another reason why we're able to go you know expand and get larger deal sizes and so forth They are a huge growth lever for us. they are a huge growth lever for us I mean, it's our strategy, right? i mean it's our strategy right It's our solutions on our connected, open, intuitive, intelligent platform. It's expanding globally. Of course, it's you know that strong, high-performing partner ecosystem. Those are all reasons. Yes, we're just getting better as we grow and scale. We're becoming that company that can execute more effectively in all areas of the company, particularly on the go-to-market side. It's our solutions on our connected, open, intuitive, intelligent platform. it's our solutions on our connected open intuitive intelligent platform It's expanding globally. it's expanding globally Of course, it's you know that strong, high-performing partner ecosystem. of course it's you know that strong high-performing partner ecosystem Those are all reasons. those are all reasons Yes, we're just getting better as we grow and scale. yes we're just getting better as we grow and scale We're becoming that company that can execute more effectively in all areas of the company, particularly on the go-to-market side. we're becoming that company that can execute more effectively in all areas of the company particularly on the go-to-market side

Speaker 1: Yeah. I said we would come back to some of those verticals that you mentioned earlier. Let's go into one of them, financial services. You all have been doing really well there. Where are we in terms of, like, the penetration within that vertical? How do you think about the opportunity set ahead of you, especially with some of your newer products like Fund Reporting? Yeah. yeah I said we would come back to some of those verticals that you mentioned earlier. i said we would come back to some of those verticals that you mentioned earlier Let's go into one of them, financial services. let's go into one of them financial services You all have been doing really well there. you all have been doing really well there Where are we in terms of, like, the penetration within that vertical? where are we in terms of like the penetration within that vertical How do you think about the opportunity set ahead of you, especially with some of your newer products like Fund Reporting? how do you think about the opportunity set ahead of you especially with some of your newer products like fund reporting

Speaker 2: Yeah. Thank you for calling out this vertical because it's one we've been incredibly enthusiastic about because we have seen so much traction. As I mentioned earlier in the verticals that we like to go after, it's those with you know a lot of regulation where there's complex regulations. If you think about banking and the regulation around that and insurance and investment, we're in all of those verticals because there's so much complexity, and we shine around regulatory disclosure and helping our customers you know report with when there is that environment of complexity. We've seen a lot of traction there. It's where most of our multimillion-dollar deals are with large deal sizes. We have a lot of vertical specific solutions, but of course, they also buy our horizontal solutions. Yeah. yeah Thank you for calling out this vertical because it's one we've been incredibly enthusiastic about because we have seen so much traction. thank you for calling out this vertical because it's one we've been incredibly enthusiastic about because we have seen so much traction As I mentioned earlier in the verticals that we like to go after, it's those with you know a lot of regulation where there's complex regulations. as i mentioned earlier in the verticals that we like to go after it's those with you know a lot of regulation where there's complex regulations If you think about banking and the regulation around that and insurance and investment, we're in all of those verticals because there's so much complexity, and we shine around regulatory disclosure and helping our customers you know report with when there is that environment of complexity. if you think about banking and the regulation around that and insurance and investment we're in all of those verticals because there's so much complexity and we shine around regulatory disclosure and helping our customers you know report with when there is that environment of complexity We've seen a lot of traction there. we've seen a lot of traction there It's where most of our multimillion-dollar deals are with large deal sizes. it's where most of our multimillion-dollar deals are with large deal sizes We have a lot of vertical specific solutions, but of course, they also buy our horizontal solutions. we have a lot of vertical specific solutions but of course they also buy our horizontal solutions It's an area where we continue to put emphasis. There's a lot of room for growth there. Even though we have the top banks, as our customers, we continue to grow in those accounts. A lot more to offer. Globally, they've got a lot of the top banks have entities all over the world, so the multi-entity reporting in additional to financial reporting, and we've got Fund Reporting and you know non-financial or sustainability reporting. All of those horizontals play really well, but they also are very much interested in having their Corporate Regulatory Reporting across those you know specific verticals on the Workiva platform, again, with unified data, not siloed in different vendors or different systems. Again, here comes AI. When you do all that, you can apply your AI in our controlled environment. It's an area where we continue to put emphasis. it's an area where we continue to put emphasis There's a lot of room for growth there. there's a lot of room for growth there Even though we have the top banks, as our customers, we continue to grow in those accounts. even though we have the top banks as our customers we continue to grow in those accounts A lot more to offer. a lot more to offer Globally, they've got a lot of the top banks have entities all over the world, so the multi-entity reporting in additional to financial reporting, and we've got Fund Reporting and you know non-financial or sustainability reporting. globally they've got a lot of the top banks have entities all over the world so the multi-entity reporting in additional to financial reporting and we've got fund reporting and you know non-financial or sustainability reporting All of those horizontals play really well, but they also are very much interested in having their Corporate Regulatory Reporting across those you know specific verticals on the Workiva platform, again, with unified data, not siloed in different vendors or different systems. all of those horizontals play really well but they also are very much interested in having their corporate regulatory reporting across those you know specific verticals on the workiva platform again with unified data not siloed in different vendors or different systems Again, here comes AI. again here comes ai When you do all that, you can apply your AI in our controlled environment. when you do all that you can apply your ai in our controlled environment The auditors can go in you know at any point in time through the quarter, not just at the end, that you can go in and get data that you can feel confident about. It's you know kind of a sacred place for the Office of the CFO to go think about their data with all that noise out there, with data here, data there, this system, this agent. Workiva, they know what's in that system, and that it is again trusted data, and they can justify any number coming out of that system all the way to when that data entered the system from a source. The auditors can go in you know at any point in time through the quarter, not just at the end, that you can go in and get data that you can feel confident about. the auditors can go in you know at any point in time through the quarter not just at the end that you can go in and get data that you can feel confident about It's you know kind of a sacred place for the Office of the CFO to go think about their data with all that noise out there, with data here, data there, this system, this agent. it's you know kind of a sacred place for the office of the cfo to go think about their data with all that noise out there with data here data there this system this agent Workiva, they know what's in that system, and that it is again trusted data, and they can justify any number coming out of that system all the way to when that data entered the system from a source. workiva they know what's in that system and that it is again trusted data and they can justify any number coming out of that system all the way to when that data entered the system from a source

Speaker 1: Okay. Let's talk a little bit about GRC. The growth there accelerating meaningfully, 19%-30% ARR growth this past year. What's going on there? What has been some of the unlocks to drive that kind of growth inflection? Okay. okay Let's talk a little bit about GRC. let's talk a little bit about grc The growth there accelerating meaningfully, 19%-30% ARR growth this past year. the growth there accelerating meaningfully 19%-30% arr growth this past year What's going on there? what's going on there What has been some of the unlocks to drive that kind of growth inflection? what has been some of the unlocks to drive that kind of growth inflection

Speaker 2: Sure. I'll go back to your comment. You're getting better, right? Yes, we are getting better at execution. Again, get towards the $1 billion, you have to be good, you have to be productive, you have to have those sellers that can sell your capabilities, but also sell a platform, also embrace partners because partners help us you know go up higher in the organization, sell more broadly, higher win rate, et cetera. We've got better execution. We're also seeing trends in the market that lead us to have better outcomes with when we talk with our customers about GRC. One I mentioned a little earlier, which is we've got this trend in the market around legacy systems. Again, AI is you know kind of spurring this on. Sure. sure I'll go back to your comment. i'll go back to your comment You're getting better, right? you're getting better right Yes, we are getting better at execution. yes we are getting better at execution Again, get towards the $1 billion, you have to be good, you have to be productive, you have to have those sellers that can sell your capabilities, but also sell a platform, also embrace partners because partners help us you know go up higher in the organization, sell more broadly, higher win rate, et cetera. again get towards the $1 billion you have to be good you have to be productive you have to have those sellers that can sell your capabilities but also sell a platform also embrace partners because partners help us you know go up higher in the organization sell more broadly higher win rate et cetera We've got better execution. we've got better execution We're also seeing trends in the market that lead us to have better outcomes with when we talk with our customers about GRC. we're also seeing trends in the market that lead us to have better outcomes with when we talk with our customers about grc One I mentioned a little earlier, which is we've got this trend in the market around legacy systems. one i mentioned a little earlier which is we've got this trend in the market around legacy systems Again, AI is you know kind of spurring this on. again ai is you know kind of spurring this on You don't wanna have your legacy systems and apply AI when your data isn't in the format and the shape that it should be to go action those insights. You've got siloed systems besides which. If you're gonna modernize, Workiva is an incredible platform to modernize on because you're not just getting modern technology, but you're also getting it that data again in one unified platform. This is why, again, I go back to when we talk about our moat. We're getting more relevant, not less in the era of AI because they want to have their data in one place and modernize their technology. We're seeing that. Again, just better execution, good market trends for us. Governance is becoming even more important to companies. You don't wanna have your legacy systems and apply AI when your data isn't in the format and the shape that it should be to go action those insights. you don't wanna have your legacy systems and apply ai when your data isn't in the format and the shape that it should be to go action those insights You've got siloed systems besides which. you've got siloed systems besides which If you're gonna modernize, Workiva is an incredible platform to modernize on because you're not just getting modern technology, but you're also getting it that data again in one unified platform. if you're gonna modernize workiva is an incredible platform to modernize on because you're not just getting modern technology but you're also getting it that data again in one unified platform This is why, again, I go back to when we talk about our moat. this is why again i go back to when we talk about our moat We're getting more relevant, not less in the era of AI because they want to have their data in one place and modernize their technology. we're getting more relevant not less in the era of ai because they want to have their data in one place and modernize their technology We're seeing that. we're seeing that Again, just better execution, good market trends for us. again just better execution good market trends for us Governance is becoming even more important to companies. governance is becoming even more important to companies That you know our audit and controls and risk management solutions, just absolutely play into that trend. Again, not being a point solution, it's working in our favor for sure. That you know our audit and controls and risk management solutions, just absolutely play into that trend. that you know our audit and controls and risk management solutions just absolutely play into that trend Again, not being a point solution, it's working in our favor for sure. again not being a point solution it's working in our favor for sure

Speaker 1: Let's hit on sustainability. Gets a lot of investor attention. Remind us again how much of that is actually part of your business, how much of it is part of your TAM, and how do you think about the evolving regulatory landscape that we're seeing and how you think about that business going forward? Let's hit on sustainability. let's hit on sustainability Gets a lot of investor attention. gets a lot of investor attention Remind us again how much of that is actually part of your business, how much of it is part of your TAM, and how do you think about the evolving regulatory landscape that we're seeing and how you think about that business going forward? remind us again how much of that is actually part of your business how much of it is part of your tam and how do you think about the evolving regulatory landscape that we're seeing and how you think about that business going forward

Speaker 2: Sure. I think important to recognize that sustainability, even with the changing regulatory landscape, it is alive and well, and it's a good growth factor for Workiva, right? Our tailwind has dissipated some. We've talked about that. You know, we've had a moderation in the surge that we saw in 2024. 2025, much more steady state for the market. There is still regulation out there. You look at CSRD, sure, the regulatory landscape changed a bit, and there was a de-scoping in that regulation, but alive and well for the wave one customers who had to report in 2025. This is the second year we're going around having conversations with those that did not leverage Workiva, that had muscled through and/or used some inferior technology platform. Sure. sure I think important to recognize that sustainability, even with the changing regulatory landscape, it is alive and well, and it's a good growth factor for Workiva, right? i think important to recognize that sustainability even with the changing regulatory landscape it is alive and well and it's a good growth factor for workiva right Our tailwind has dissipated some. our tailwind has dissipated some We've talked about that. we've talked about that You know, we've had a moderation in the surge that we saw in 2024. 2025, much more steady state for the market. you know we've had a moderation in the surge that we saw in 2024 2025 much more steady state for the market There is still regulation out there. there is still regulation out there You look at CSRD, sure, the regulatory landscape changed a bit, and there was a de-scoping in that regulation, but alive and well for the wave one customers who had to report in 2025. you look at csrd sure the regulatory landscape changed a bit and there was a de-scoping in that regulation but alive and well for the wave one customers who had to report in 2025 This is the second year we're going around having conversations with those that did not leverage Workiva, that had muscled through and/or used some inferior technology platform. this is the second year we're going around having conversations with those that did not leverage workiva that had muscled through and/or used some inferior technology platform That's a good area of growth for us. The wave two, nothing's changed substantially. Sure, it's out a year or two, but that's alive and well. There are other areas across the world. Think of Australia, they still talk about ESG. They haven't even changed the name to non-financial reporting or sustainability yet. There's a lot of areas. A lot of companies are doing this for business reasons still. It is Risk Management. It's surfacing those risks, identifying those risks, managing and tracking those risks. That's what non-financial you know data is all about, and those non-financial risks. You've got to track them, and you've got to be transparent about them. Companies are doing that. That's a good area of growth for us. that's a good area of growth for us The wave two, nothing's changed substantially. the wave two nothing's changed substantially Sure, it's out a year or two, but that's alive and well. sure it's out a year or two but that's alive and well There are other areas across the world. there are other areas across the world Think of Australia, they still talk about ESG. think of australia they still talk about esg They haven't even changed the name to non-financial reporting or sustainability yet. they haven't even changed the name to non-financial reporting or sustainability yet There's a lot of areas. there's a lot of areas A lot of companies are doing this for business reasons still. a lot of companies are doing this for business reasons still It is Risk Management. it is risk management It's surfacing those risks, identifying those risks, managing and tracking those risks. it's surfacing those risks identifying those risks managing and tracking those risks That's what non-financial you know data is all about, and those non-financial risks. that's what non-financial you know data is all about and those non-financial risks You've got to track them, and you've got to be transparent about them. you've got to track them and you've got to be transparent about them Companies are doing that. companies are doing that They also know when they put their financial data and their non-financial sustainability data together in one system, and they look at those and apply AI, get insights from them, they get much more holistic view of their business than not looking at those capabilities and that data. You know, we're seeing a myriad of reasons why, but we are seeing customers understanding that it's an important component of their business. Even if it's just the box checkers and the compliers, we still get a large portion of that market because there is still regulation alive and well in the market. They also know when they put their financial data and their non-financial sustainability data together in one system, and they look at those and apply AI, get insights from them, they get much more holistic view of their business than not looking at those capabilities and that data. they also know when they put their financial data and their non-financial sustainability data together in one system and they look at those and apply ai get insights from them they get much more holistic view of their business than not looking at those capabilities and that data You know, we're seeing a myriad of reasons why, but we are seeing customers understanding that it's an important component of their business. you know we're seeing a myriad of reasons why but we are seeing customers understanding that it's an important component of their business Even if it's just the box checkers and the compliers, we still get a large portion of that market because there is still regulation alive and well in the market. even if it's just the box checkers and the compliers we still get a large portion of that market because there is still regulation alive and well in the market

Speaker 1: SEC. What are you seeing in capital markets right now? How are you evolving that product? I think you launched SEC Intelligence. Tell us a little bit about that as well? SEC. sec What are you seeing in capital markets right now? what are you seeing in capital markets right now How are you evolving that product? how are you evolving that product I think you launched SEC Intelligence. i think you launched sec intelligence Tell us a little bit about that as well? tell us a little bit about that as well

Speaker 2: Sure. On the capital markets side, I think everyone in this room probably understands that capital markets had a few years of you know I'll say lackluster performance. IPOs weren't booming. We saw that post-pandemic. We did see more activity over 2025, particularly toward in Q3. It was probably our strongest quarter, which we talked about. Q4 saw some improved activity as well. Of course, we had a shutdown. There's a lot of macro factors that are you know affecting IPOs and our capital markets business. We always have the secondary markets, and we are getting our fair share and have over the last several years, our fair share of IPOs. We're optimistic about the IPO market and our capital markets business rolling into 2026. We're not overshooting there. Sure. sure On the capital markets side, I think everyone in this room probably understands that capital markets had a few years of you know I'll say lackluster performance. on the capital markets side i think everyone in this room probably understands that capital markets had a few years of you know i'll say lackluster performance IPOs weren't booming. ipos weren't booming We saw that post-pandemic. we saw that post-pandemic We did see more activity over 2025, particularly toward in Q3. we did see more activity over 2025 particularly toward in q3 It was probably our strongest quarter, which we talked about. it was probably our strongest quarter which we talked about Q4 saw some improved activity as well. q4 saw some improved activity as well Of course, we had a shutdown. of course we had a shutdown There's a lot of macro factors that are you know affecting IPOs and our capital markets business. there's a lot of macro factors that are you know affecting ipos and our capital markets business We always have the secondary markets, and we are getting our fair share and have over the last several years, our fair share of IPOs. we always have the secondary markets and we are getting our fair share and have over the last several years our fair share of ipos We're optimistic about the IPO market and our capital markets business rolling into 2026. we're optimistic about the ipo market and our capital markets business rolling into 2026 We're not overshooting there. we're not overshooting there We're not over our skis with it, we have baked in some growth over 2026. We're waiting to see, again, new Fed chair economy is what it is. Of course you know we're looking at tech valuation, so that will probably be moderated too in terms of IPO activity. We're being very thoughtful about how we've put it into our guide, but we're you know we're optimistic about it. On the SEC Intelligence, again, just more offerings for our flagship product to bring more capabilities to those who are wanting to have advanced capability, who are you know more enthusiastic about using our AI. We've put that in the top premium tier of our good, better, best model. We're again seeing uptick on it today. We're not over our skis with it, we have baked in some growth over 2026. we're not over our skis with it we have baked in some growth over 2026 We're waiting to see, again, new Fed chair economy is what it is. we're waiting to see again new fed chair economy is what it is Of course you know we're looking at tech valuation, so that will probably be moderated too in terms of IPO activity. of course you know we're looking at tech valuation so that will probably be moderated too in terms of ipo activity We're being very thoughtful about how we've put it into our guide, but we're you know we're optimistic about it. we're being very thoughtful about how we've put it into our guide but we're you know we're optimistic about it On the SEC Intelligence, again, just more offerings for our flagship product to bring more capabilities to those who are wanting to have advanced capability, who are you know more enthusiastic about using our AI. on the sec intelligence again just more offerings for our flagship product to bring more capabilities to those who are wanting to have advanced capability who are you know more enthusiastic about using our ai We've put that in the top premium tier of our good, better, best model. we've put that in the top premium tier of our good better best model We're again seeing uptick on it today. we're again seeing uptick on it today It's around at renewal time. We'll come and see if you're interested in leveraging more capability. It's around at renewal time. it's around at renewal time We'll come and see if you're interested in leveraging more capability. we'll come and see if you're interested in leveraging more capability

Speaker 1: Let's shift over to go-to-market. You talked a little bit about this earlier, but you all have been really focused on making some changes there. Can you remind us again, what are some of those key changes, and how have you progressed against your initial expectations there? Let's shift over to go-to-market. let's shift over to go-to-market You talked a little bit about this earlier, but you all have been really focused on making some changes there. you talked a little bit about this earlier but you all have been really focused on making some changes there Can you remind us again, what are some of those key changes, and how have you progressed against your initial expectations there? can you remind us again what are some of those key changes and how have you progressed against your initial expectations there

Speaker 2: Sure. We are working to improve our productivity on our sales and marketing. It's one of the areas where we believe we can improve the most. I've been pretty open about some of the activities that we're doing in sales and marketing, so the actions we're taking. We have a very expensive sales model, or we have had this historically. We're moving away from that towards a more efficient, more productive, more effective sales model. What we're doing is we're becoming less reliant on sales specialists for some of our solutions. We're leaning more on solution engineers and we're improving the capabilities of our account execs. We're doing that, and that's sort of on the structure side. Sure. sure We are working to improve our productivity on our sales and marketing. we are working to improve our productivity on our sales and marketing It's one of the areas where we believe we can improve the most. it's one of the areas where we believe we can improve the most I've been pretty open about some of the activities that we're doing in sales and marketing, so the actions we're taking. i've been pretty open about some of the activities that we're doing in sales and marketing so the actions we're taking We have a very expensive sales model, or we have had this historically. we have a very expensive sales model or we have had this historically We're moving away from that towards a more efficient, more productive, more effective sales model. we're moving away from that towards a more efficient more productive more effective sales model What we're doing is we're becoming less reliant on sales specialists for some of our solutions. what we're doing is we're becoming less reliant on sales specialists for some of our solutions We're leaning more on solution engineers and we're improving the capabilities of our account execs. we're leaning more on solution engineers and we're improving the capabilities of our account execs We're doing that, and that's sort of on the structure side. we're doing that and that's sort of on the structure side We also rolled out new logo teams that are more hunters and dedicated to hunting for those new logos. We're doing a lot of on structure. We're also doing staffing, making some changes in staff, and that might be elevating profiles of sellers, those that can embrace and understand the value of partners, that will bring partners earlier in when we identify deals and when we want to expand accounts. They understand how to sell a platform and what that means and the value of the platform. They understand it's different than a transaction sell, just selling a solution or two solutions, right? We're just getting more mature across you know both the structure and the staffing in the organization. We also rolled out new logo teams that are more hunters and dedicated to hunting for those new logos. we also rolled out new logo teams that are more hunters and dedicated to hunting for those new logos We're doing a lot of on structure. we're doing a lot of on structure We're also doing staffing, making some changes in staff, and that might be elevating profiles of sellers, those that can embrace and understand the value of partners, that will bring partners earlier in when we identify deals and when we want to expand accounts. we're also doing staffing making some changes in staff and that might be elevating profiles of sellers those that can embrace and understand the value of partners that will bring partners earlier in when we identify deals and when we want to expand accounts They understand how to sell a platform and what that means and the value of the platform. they understand how to sell a platform and what that means and the value of the platform They understand it's different than a transaction sell, just selling a solution or two solutions, right? they understand it's different than a transaction sell just selling a solution or two solutions right We're just getting more mature across you know both the structure and the staffing in the organization. we're just getting more mature across you know both the structure and the staffing in the organization We're also you know leaning into our strategy, whether it is in the new logo play, whether account expansion enable. We're just getting better. Again, when you start crossing that line of $1 billion you know your productivity is important. Your efficiency and your effectiveness is important. It's getting better at execution. We're growing up, and we're scaling, and that applies heavily into the sales and marketing area. We're also you know leaning into our strategy, whether it is in the new logo play, whether account expansion enable. we're also you know leaning into our strategy whether it is in the new logo play whether account expansion enable We're just getting better. we're just getting better Again, when you start crossing that line of $1 billion you know your productivity is important. again when you start crossing that line of $1 billion you know your productivity is important Your efficiency and your effectiveness is important. your efficiency and your effectiveness is important It's getting better at execution. it's getting better at execution We're growing up, and we're scaling, and that applies heavily into the sales and marketing area. we're growing up and we're scaling and that applies heavily into the sales and marketing area

Speaker 1: Yeah. Clearly a big focus on efficiency, and you've seen that on the, on the margin front too, going from, I think, 4%-10% in a year. Your guidance for 26-. Yeah. yeah Clearly a big focus on efficiency, and you've seen that on the, on the margin front too, going from, I think, 4% - 10% in a year. clearly a big focus on efficiency and you've seen that on the on the margin front too going from i think 4% - 10% in a year Your guidance for 26-. your guidance for 26-

Speaker 2: Yep. Yep. yep

Speaker 1: 15% plus. The 27% target of 18%. What gives you the confidence to be able to continue to drive this continued margin expansion here? 15% plus. 15% plus The 27% target of 18%. the 27% target of 18% What gives you the confidence to be able to continue to drive this continued margin expansion here? what gives you the confidence to be able to continue to drive this continued margin expansion here

Speaker 2: I mean, nothing better than looking at numbers, right? You can see the expanding margins and the work we've been doing. We exited last year at 10%, as you say, at 560 basis points greater than the prior year, 2024. We feel very confident on the trajectory. We have plans in place. This is not we're trying to do things ad hoc. We have plans in place. We feel very confident. We put those medium and long-term targets out there, we are making you know very reasonable progress towards those that you should all be able to see, as you look at our numbers. I mean, nothing better than looking at numbers, right? i mean nothing better than looking at numbers right You can see the expanding margins and the work we've been doing. you can see the expanding margins and the work we've been doing We exited last year at 10%, as you say, at 560 basis points greater than the prior year, 2024. we exited last year at 10% as you say at 560 basis points greater than the prior year 2024 We feel very confident on the trajectory. we feel very confident on the trajectory We have plans in place. we have plans in place This is not we're trying to do things ad hoc. this is not we're trying to do things ad hoc We have plans in place. we have plans in place We feel very confident. we feel very confident We put those medium and long-term targets out there, we are making you know very reasonable progress towards those that you should all be able to see, as you look at our numbers. we put those medium and long-term targets out there we are making you know very reasonable progress towards those that you should all be able to see as you look at our numbers Again, on the sales and marketing side, as you can see, we hired someone who's been there and done that, knows how to build a marketing machine, brought a new CRO in, Michael Pinto, who's spent the last couple years at Databricks. Prior to that, he spent you know six, seven years at AWS growing and scaling from a few hundred million to multi-billion in both of those companies for the areas that he's had responsibility for. Transforming and scaling our go-to-market organization is really why he's here and just building that machine. We feel very confident in those numbers and the guide. We've reiterated our guide and reiterated those targets. Again, on the sales and marketing side, as you can see, we hired someone who's been there and done that, knows how to build a marketing machine, brought a new CRO in, Michael Pinto, who's spent the last couple years at Databricks. again on the sales and marketing side as you can see we hired someone who's been there and done that knows how to build a marketing machine brought a new cro in michael pinto who's spent the last couple years at databricks Prior to that, he spent you know six, seven years at AWS growing and scaling from a few hundred million to multi-billion in both of those companies for the areas that he's had responsibility for. prior to that he spent you know six seven years at aws growing and scaling from a few hundred million to multi-billion in both of those companies for the areas that he's had responsibility for Transforming and scaling our go-to-market organization is really why he's here and just building that machine. transforming and scaling our go-to-market organization is really why he's here and just building that machine We feel very confident in those numbers and the guide. we feel very confident in those numbers and the guide We've reiterated our guide and reiterated those targets. we've reiterated our guide and reiterated those targets

Speaker 1: Let's talk about delivering shareholder value. How do you guys think about the balance between organic investments, M&A, capital returns? Let's talk about delivering shareholder value. let's talk about delivering shareholder value How do you guys think about the balance between organic investments, M&A, capital returns? how do you guys think about the balance between organic investments m&a capital returns

Speaker 2: Sure. We are here. I know my job is here for you know shareholder value. That is what it's all about. We do it with, of course, a number of different vehicles. The thing we focus on the most, of course, is growth. Today, I am happy to say profitable growth. That is what we're focusing on. It really is about ensuring we are productive. Part of that productivity drive for us, yes, it's about expanding margin and make sure we are being thoughtful for shareholders, but it's also to make sure we are being productive to invest in the right places. We're going to be investing in innovation, going to be investing in that marketing and sales machine that I just talked about. Sure. sure We are here. we are here I know my job is here for you know shareholder value. i know my job is here for you know shareholder value That is what it's all about. that is what it's all about We do it with, of course, a number of different vehicles. we do it with of course a number of different vehicles The thing we focus on the most, of course, is growth. the thing we focus on the most of course is growth Today, I am happy to say profitable growth. today i am happy to say profitable growth That is what we're focusing on. that is what we're focusing on It really is about ensuring we are productive. it really is about ensuring we are productive Part of that productivity drive for us, yes, it's about expanding margin and make sure we are being thoughtful for shareholders, but it's also to make sure we are being productive to invest in the right places. part of that productivity drive for us yes it's about expanding margin and make sure we are being thoughtful for shareholders but it's also to make sure we are being productive to invest in the right places We're going to be investing in innovation, going to be investing in that marketing and sales machine that I just talked about. we're going to be investing in innovation going to be investing in that marketing and sales machine that i just talked about We want the resources going to the right places where we believe we can win, where it's proven we can win. We're gonna continue to invest, but we're also gonna do it in a productive way. We're going to be efficient where we add. Of course, we're going to be leveraging AI where we can. We are going around the company to ensure that we are working productively. We still have room for improvement. I will be the first to say there's room for operating efficiency and effectiveness, and we're going after it. As I said, we have a plan. We will continue, of course, to be thoughtful about stock-based compensation and dilution. We want the resources going to the right places where we believe we can win, where it's proven we can win. we want the resources going to the right places where we believe we can win where it's proven we can win We're gonna continue to invest, but we're also gonna do it in a productive way. we're gonna continue to invest but we're also gonna do it in a productive way We're going to be efficient where we add. we're going to be efficient where we add Of course, we're going to be leveraging AI where we can. of course we're going to be leveraging ai where we can We are going around the company to ensure that we are working productively. we are going around the company to ensure that we are working productively We still have room for improvement. we still have room for improvement I will be the first to say there's room for operating efficiency and effectiveness, and we're going after it. i will be the first to say there's room for operating efficiency and effectiveness and we're going after it As I said, we have a plan. as i said we have a plan We will continue, of course, to be thoughtful about stock-based compensation and dilution. we will continue of course to be thoughtful about stock-based compensation and dilution You saw that we increased you know our ability to buy back our stock, got authorized for another $250 million on top of the $100 million that we already were authorized to spend. We'll continue to, again, be thoughtful about that. We wanna make sure that we are actively you know thinking about dilution and taking action toward. You saw that we increased you know our ability to buy back our stock, got authorized for another $250 million on top of the $100 million that we already were authorized to spend. you saw that we increased you know our ability to buy back our stock got authorized for another $250 million on top of the $100 million that we already were authorized to spend We'll continue to, again, be thoughtful about that. we'll continue to again be thoughtful about that We wanna make sure that we are actively you know thinking about dilution and taking action toward. we wanna make sure that we are actively you know thinking about dilution and taking action toward

Speaker 1: Yeah. I wanted to go a little bit deeper on stock-based compensation. It's not just you all, but the entire software- Yeah. yeah I wanted to go a little bit deeper on stock-based compensation. i wanted to go a little bit deeper on stock-based compensation It's not just you all, but the entire software- it's not just you all but the entire software-

Speaker 2: Sure. Sure. sure

Speaker 1: industry stocks are down a bunch over the past year, six months. How does that kind of inform what you're doing in terms of, like, issuing units? Are you gonna be issuing more units? Are you shifting more of your compensation to cash? How do you think about that? industry stocks are down a bunch over the past year, six months. industry stocks are down a bunch over the past year six months How does that kind of inform what you're doing in terms of, like, issuing units? how does that kind of inform what you're doing in terms of like issuing units Are you gonna be issuing more units? are you gonna be issuing more units Are you shifting more of your compensation to cash? are you shifting more of your compensation to cash How do you think about that? how do you think about that

Speaker 2: Sure. We are acutely aware that this is a conversation going on these days, given valuations and so forth. Of course, again, we're being pretty thoughtful about it. You can see in our mid and long-term models that we're looking at the 12% and feel very confident we can stay within that range. We have been on the you know below average side on the stock-based compensation. Look, we're a tech company. We retain talent and strive for that in this market like everyone else. We understand what's important. We understand the visibility of a. We understand you know, retention. Again, we just authorized the $250 million, and we will be taking action on that as appropriate. Sure. sure We are acutely aware that this is a conversation going on these days, given valuations and so forth. we are acutely aware that this is a conversation going on these days given valuations and so forth Of course, again, we're being pretty thoughtful about it. of course again we're being pretty thoughtful about it You can see in our mid and long-term models that we're looking at the 12% and feel very confident we can stay within that range. you can see in our mid and long-term models that we're looking at the 12% and feel very confident we can stay within that range We have been on the you know below average side on the stock-based compensation. we have been on the you know below average side on the stock-based compensation Look, we're a tech company. look we're a tech company We retain talent and strive for that in this market like everyone else. we retain talent and strive for that in this market like everyone else We understand what's important. we understand what's important We understand the visibility of a. we understand the visibility of a We understand you know, retention. we understand you know retention Again, we just authorized the $250 million, and we will be taking action on that as appropriate. again we just authorized the $250 million and we will be taking action on that as appropriate

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. yeah

Speaker 2: taking a very thoughtful approach. taking a very thoughtful approach. taking a very thoughtful approach

Speaker 1: Got it. Got it. got it

Speaker 2: We're well aware of that and, we'll act accordingly and responsibly. We're well aware of that and, we'll act accordingly and responsibly. we're well aware of that and we'll act accordingly and responsibly

Speaker 1: Got it. Before I open it up to the audience here, we've coined this term the ERP super cycle to kind of talk about that large upcoming deadline of companies moving off of on-premise ERP systems to the cloud. Yeah, I think 2024 was really strong for those migrations. 2025, a bit slower. I'm curious if that's also kind of your takeaway, and how do you think about those deals over the next you know 12, 24 months? Got it. got it Before I open it up to the audience here, we've coined this term the ERP super cycle to kind of talk about that large upcoming deadline of companies moving off of on-premise ERP systems to the cloud. before i open it up to the audience here we've coined this term the erp super cycle to kind of talk about that large upcoming deadline of companies moving off of on-premise erp systems to the cloud Yeah, I think 2024 was really strong for those migrations. 2025, a bit slower. yeah i think 2024 was really strong for those migrations 2025 a bit slower I'm curious if that's also kind of your takeaway, and how do you think about those deals over the next you know 12, 24 months? i'm curious if that's also kind of your takeaway and how do you think about those deals over the next you know 12 24 months

Speaker 2: thank you for bringing that up. We love the ERP system upgrades or transitions. It's a great trigger for a buying moment for Workiva. I mean, usually when you move off of an ERP system, you evaluate. If I was a CIO, when I did something big like that, I'd be looking at the full stack. You wanna modernize your stack. You don't wanna bring your new ERP system to a legacy stack. It's a great opportunity to think through you know your disclosure system, your reporting system. Also a lot of these companies that are moving onto a new ERP or upgrading, they've got all these large companies. They've got ERP systems in country that they've developed a whole you know a whole stack of them. They wanna get away from those. thank you for bringing that up. thank you for bringing that up We love the ERP system upgrades or transitions. we love the erp system upgrades or transitions It's a great trigger for a buying moment for Workiva. it's a great trigger for a buying moment for workiva I mean, usually when you move off of an ERP system, you evaluate. i mean usually when you move off of an erp system you evaluate If I was a CIO, when I did something big like that, I'd be looking at the full stack. if i was a cio when i did something big like that i'd be looking at the full stack You wanna modernize your stack. you wanna modernize your stack You don't wanna bring your new ERP system to a legacy stack. you don't wanna bring your new erp system to a legacy stack It's a great opportunity to think through you know your disclosure system, your reporting system. it's a great opportunity to think through you know your disclosure system your reporting system Also a lot of these companies that are moving onto a new ERP or upgrading, they've got all these large companies. also a lot of these companies that are moving onto a new erp or upgrading they've got all these large companies They've got ERP systems in country that they've developed a whole you know a whole stack of them. they've got erp systems in country that they've developed a whole you know a whole stack of them They wanna get away from those. they wanna get away from those We have something called Multi-Entity Reporting, Global Statutory Reporting, that allows them to do in-country reporting, and align with their larger new ERP system. It's a great opportunity for Workiva, and more and more we're working to get in with our consulting and advisory partners, get into their playbooks for when they go in and help them. You know, these enterprise customers, they've got you know the Big Four in there continually in these consulting advisories. We love to align with our Big Four and consulting advisory partners to help go in as early as possible in the ERP transition cycle so that we can provide disclosure management you know transparent reporting, but also things like Multi-Entity Reporting too. We fit very nicely into the ERP super cycle. Thank you for highlighting that. We have something called Multi-Entity Reporting, Global Statutory Reporting, that allows them to do in-country reporting, and align with their larger new ERP system. we have something called multi-entity reporting global statutory reporting that allows them to do in-country reporting and align with their larger new erp system It's a great opportunity for Workiva, and more and more we're working to get in with our consulting and advisory partners, get into their playbooks for when they go in and help them. it's a great opportunity for workiva and more and more we're working to get in with our consulting and advisory partners get into their playbooks for when they go in and help them You know, these enterprise customers, they've got you know the Big Four in there continually in these consulting advisories. you know these enterprise customers they've got you know the big four in there continually in these consulting advisories We love to align with our Big Four and consulting advisory partners to help go in as early as possible in the ERP transition cycle so that we can provide disclosure management you know transparent reporting, but also things like Multi-Entity Reporting too. we love to align with our big four and consulting advisory partners to help go in as early as possible in the erp transition cycle so that we can provide disclosure management you know transparent reporting but also things like multi-entity reporting too We fit very nicely into the ERP super cycle. we fit very nicely into the erp super cycle Thank you for highlighting that. thank you for highlighting that

Speaker 1: Yeah. When you work with partners, it's higher win rates. The deal sizes are larger too. Yeah. yeah When you work with partners, it's higher win rates. when you work with partners it's higher win rates The deal sizes are larger too. the deal sizes are larger too

Speaker 2: You said it, higher win rates. We sell higher, we sell broader, we sell more, higher prices. Yes, twice the win rate. I mean, it is a beautiful match. They sell everything that we do. They sell the services around it, we sell the tech. It's a beautiful relationship, and we have dedicated alliances that continue to get even more high performing across all of the Big Four consulting advisory, and then of course the next tier with regional partners as well. You said it, higher win rates. you said it higher win rates We sell higher, we sell broader, we sell more, higher prices. we sell higher we sell broader we sell more higher prices Yes, twice the win rate. yes twice the win rate I mean, it is a beautiful match. i mean it is a beautiful match They sell everything that we do. they sell everything that we do They sell the services around it, we sell the tech. they sell the services around it we sell the tech It's a beautiful relationship, and we have dedicated alliances that continue to get even more high performing across all of the Big Four consulting advisory, and then of course the next tier with regional partners as well. it's a beautiful relationship and we have dedicated alliances that continue to get even more high performing across all of the big four consulting advisory and then of course the next tier with regional partners as well

Speaker 1: Any questions from the audience here? Any questions from the audience here? any questions from the audience here

Speaker 2: Talked a lot and covered a lot. Talked a lot and covered a lot. talked a lot and covered a lot

Speaker 1: All right. Maybe last one, Julie. As we reflect back on 2025 you know what are some of the key lessons you can draw from that in terms of what worked really well, and what are some areas you're still looking to improve upon? All right. all right Maybe last one, Julie. maybe last one julie As we reflect back on 2025 you know what are some of the key lessons you can draw from that in terms of what worked really well, and what are some areas you're still looking to improve upon? as we reflect back on 2025 you know what are some of the key lessons you can draw from that in terms of what worked really well and what are some areas you're still looking to improve upon

Speaker 2: You know, I look back on 2025, it was so different to where we are today. I'm not sure any of those lessons apply other than just resilience, speed, innovation, lean into your relevancy. I think those are the things that I think about as a CEO, is continue to build a resilient organization. Leadership has got to be resilient. We need to be ready for anything. We need to respond in the market. We've got to remain innovative for ourselves, for our customers, this relevancy of becoming even you know more important in the era of AI, not less. We've got to lean into this, we've got to lean into you know what we do for our customers. We serve the office as a CFO. You know, I look back on 2025, it was so different to where we are today. you know i look back on 2025 it was so different to where we are today I'm not sure any of those lessons apply other than just resilience, speed, innovation, lean into your relevancy. i'm not sure any of those lessons apply other than just resilience speed innovation lean into your relevancy I think those are the things that I think about as a CEO, is continue to build a resilient organization. i think those are the things that i think about as a ceo is continue to build a resilient organization Leadership has got to be resilient. leadership has got to be resilient We need to be ready for anything. we need to be ready for anything We need to respond in the market. we need to respond in the market We've got to remain innovative for ourselves, for our customers, this relevancy of becoming even you know more important in the era of AI, not less. we've got to remain innovative for ourselves for our customers this relevancy of becoming even you know more important in the era of ai not less We've got to lean into this, we've got to lean into you know what we do for our customers. we've got to lean into this we've got to lean into you know what we do for our customers We serve the office as a CFO. we serve the office as a cfo We manage the data that matters for them, and we will ensure that we keep true to our mission, which is ensuring they have a trusted platform to leverage in all of this noise, in all of the agents floating around, and all the data floating around. We are that place where a CFO knows they can go and their data is, again, accurate, has data integrity and data consistency and is traceable and justifiable. We manage the data that matters for them, and we will ensure that we keep true to our mission, which is ensuring they have a trusted platform to leverage in all of this noise, in all of the agents floating around, and all the data floating around. we manage the data that matters for them and we will ensure that we keep true to our mission which is ensuring they have a trusted platform to leverage in all of this noise in all of the agents floating around and all the data floating around We are that place where a CFO knows they can go and their data is, again, accurate, has data integrity and data consistency and is traceable and justifiable. we are that place where a cfo knows they can go and their data is again accurate has data integrity and data consistency and is traceable and justifiable

Speaker 1: Awesome. Think we can end it there. Thank you so much, Julie. Awesome. awesome Think we can end it there. think we can end it there Thank you so much, Julie. thank you so much julie

Speaker 2: Thank you. Appreciate all the questions. Thank you all for attending. Thank you. thank you Appreciate all the questions. appreciate all the questions Thank you all for attending. thank you all for attending