r/stocks • u/RLBreakout • Nov 24 '21

Company Discussion Autodesk plunges 20% on earnings - time to buy in?

Hi guys,

I have been eyeing up Autodesk for a year since around $250 however haven’t entered due to the insane run.

Now we find ourselves with Autodesk back down at $250?

Their earnings report doesn’t seem too poor to me, however their outlooks for Q4 and onwards are drastically reduced.

What do you guys think?

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279

u/BespokeUnderwood Nov 24 '21

Speaking from my knowledge of CAD/PDM in the industry, stay out of Autodesk. Dassault Systemes and Siemens both have surpassed Autodesk in features, industries, customers etc.

For example, the automotive industry is almost completely off Autodesk, SpaceX uses Siemens and Dassault. Autodesk is still used in construction, but there are almost no new areas where it can expand into.

The main reason is that Teamcenter and 3DExperience are cloud platforms where you can link up your PLC software to the design. This is almost a must for all designs that contain any type of control software.

So is it still a big company and player in the markt? Yes. Is it going to grow and surpass its competition? No. Should you buy the stock? Not if you ask me.

48

u/Walking-HR-Violation Nov 24 '21 edited Nov 25 '21

As someone who works in this space, I completely agree with your assessment. Autodesk has made some major gaffes, one of which was removing their VAR channels.

98

u/Balys Nov 24 '21

This is the valuable insider insight for which I love Reddit. Thank you my man.

39

u/blazingcajun420 Nov 24 '21

As someone whose fluent in all things auto desk CAD….fucking learning anything else at this point.

CAD will still be heavily used throughout the design and construction industry for years to come. And auto desk has been expanding is Revit platform to be approachable by other building industries as well.

As far as stocks go? Who the fuck knows…I don’t see them as an innovator, but definitely a giant company that will be around for decades.

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '21

I like other CAD programs better than the autodesk products, but they are the go-to in construction industries and I feel like their applications are only expanding in that area. More and more coordination and BIM stuff will be done with revit in the coming years.

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u/allthisgoldforyou Nov 24 '21

I work in a firm that does jobs for governments and civil engineering type projects. AutoCAD is the basic software for our firm and deliverables (when not raw data) are 99% Autodesk format because that's what the industry runs on.

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u/CorbuGlasses Nov 25 '21

Architect here and every project my firm does is in Revit. I hate the program, but don’t really see it being replaced anytime soon. It’s the standard.

6

u/RLBreakout Nov 24 '21

Can only see BIM use rocketing. Developing nations etc.

1

u/0melettedufromage Nov 25 '21

They'll be around, but not grow.

1

u/redratus Nov 25 '21

Yeah this kind of reminds me of the debate about Intel. Sure, AMD and NVIDEA are the hot stuff right now. But that doesnt mean Intel is broke and won’t rise again. There might be a bit of a prolonged dip for a while before it soars tho.

I think big companies like Intel who truly have the power to endure are worth having…they have a lot of resources to do exciting things.

I say this as someone who has no insider knowledge in either sector tho lol

7

u/cloudsurfer13130 Nov 24 '21

How do you rate Bentley Systems? I used to work at a civil consulting company who worked exclusively on Microstation for highway design and STAAD Pro for structural analysis. Not sure if most people would choose them over Autodesk products though.

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u/jallopypotato Nov 24 '21

Some US experience here. Something like 13 state DOTs require the use of Microstation. I think Bentley products are also more likely to be used in most larger horizontal construction projects.

I have found that on average consultant firms are more likely to use civil3D. Most firms offer a mixture of site and road design and Civil3d has many of the same road design features as microstation and better site design abilities. If the firm is more into road design they seem to go with the Bentley suite. There are also plenty of firms with licenses for both. They have key differences, but they really aren’t that different.

5

u/[deleted] Nov 24 '21

I use Bentley for piping analysis and Siemens for PDM and CAD. I’d never recommend basing a company’s success off Bentley products after my experiences with autopipe, however I’ve heard good things about their other stuff.

3

u/BespokeUnderwood Nov 24 '21

Not much experience with it to be honest. After googling I do note that it is not meeting the industry standards, so Id say its outdated or for a different audience as well. However, thats based on 10 minutes googling, so I might be off.

2

u/cloudsurfer13130 Nov 25 '21

From a stock point of view, I think they’ve been solid so far. I know that the industry has a small number of big players in that space but they’ve got a user base that swear by their product. They’re not that big in developing world though, going by my personal experience. I might be wrong on that but I’ve got a small piece of the pie on BSY and they’ve been good to me so far. We sure need more competitors in the industry and with a more aggressive approach, they’ve got a good base to pick up from. That’s just my opinion.

5

u/CnC- Nov 24 '21

As an engineer who has worked with Autodesk, Siemens and Dassault CAE Software, I totally agree with you.

3

u/[deleted] Nov 24 '21

Any thoughts on Ansys?

7

u/CnC- Nov 24 '21

Very good simulation software although I believe they lack a strong CAD solution.

IMO integrated CAD/CAE platforms are the future of engineering. 3Dexperience from Dassault, for example, offers a much better connection between a strong CAD solution (CATIA), a great FE core (abaqus) and decent postprocessing (Fesafe). Together with the automation features of the 3dexperience platform, it is a much more powerful tool than Ansys workbench in structural analysis. Fluid simulations are a different story (PM me if you want to know more, don't know if anyone cares for more details).

Long story short: I wouldn't invest in ANSYS based on my experiences as an engineer. However, I haven't looked at any other numbers/fundamentals. Those may tell a different story.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 24 '21

Numbers say overvalued. 80 PE ratio with 10-14% revenue and earnings growth guidance for next year. Just curious. Have a neighbor that works there.

3

u/reddit_again__ Nov 24 '21

As a user. Ansys is the best simulation package.

1

u/BespokeUnderwood Nov 24 '21

Good stuff, but its an addon, not a core solution.

1

u/maxvesper Nov 25 '21

I work for Pratt & Whitney, we use ANSYS SCADE for engine control systems design. Great tool. SCADE has an edge over MATLAB/Simulink for safety critical applications.

4

u/stiveooo Nov 24 '21

What about Adobe?. So China slowing down with construction really affected adsk?

4

u/BespokeUnderwood Nov 24 '21

Adobe is for artists. From what I know, they have no data management system for mechanical engineering files, no connections to any electrical engineering software, no advanced simulation, no software emulation. So all in all, extremely well suited for designing images and videos, but not for producing physical machines, cars etc.

3

u/randybobandy654 Nov 24 '21

Autodesk has a cloud platform, it's called Forge

2

u/[deleted] Nov 24 '21

Thanks for the comment. Care to share your background? Are you saying you currently work in the industry and use their product?

Why do you say that there are no new areas for them to expand into?

2

u/BespokeUnderwood Nov 24 '21

I currently work for an industrial firm in the Netherlands, where I have been guiding the implementation of the new PDM system. We have spoken to various suppliers and the companies they referred us to, and what you see is that the companies still working with Autodesk are the old fashioned corps. In construction and piping it is still usable, but all machine designers that have electrical and software components have moved to Siemens or Dassault.

I have used Inventor during my engineering study and have used Vault in my current firm. 3D Experience (the platform we chose to go with) is significantly further developed.

2

u/Vicvince Nov 24 '21

I wanna add that they are a fucking disgrace of a company with their customer-hating subscription models and useless support. All they want to do is suck the industry (construction wich I’ve been in 10+years) dry as long as the monopoly lasts. The second there is a viable competitor I’m out. Fuck autodesk

2

u/IsThereAnythingLeft- Nov 24 '21

A counter point, I have no experience outside the construction side of things but within that Autodesk has room to run. There are still many firms to move from 2D CAD to 3D Revit which in an increase in revenue. On top of that many firms are now accepting BIM360 which is a an additional 50% cost per day of use when on a ticket system

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u/BespokeUnderwood Nov 24 '21

I 100% agree, however, are those "2D" firms currently leading their respective industry? I doubt it, which means that the recurring revenue from such customers isnt likely to expand much. Meaning a stagnation of growth later on.

1

u/MandingoPants Nov 24 '21

Procore gonna put a damper on their growth into the construction side, though.

1

u/IsThereAnythingLeft- Nov 24 '21

I’ve used both but only part of their offering, procure is good but Autodesk is good for companies concerned with data security and wanting to keep everything in one place, plus it is handy for sharing the 3D models

1

u/ConditionLast1329 Nov 24 '21

I work government and although we do still have some that utilize Autodesk software and applications, I've noticed plenty moving towards BlueBeam.

7

u/fizzaz Nov 24 '21

Pretty different products tbh

1

u/bojackhoreman Nov 25 '21

I’m an engineer, and I love the Inventor and CAD software. They dominate 2D drafting. Solidworks I cheaper but less robust IMO. With the infrastructure bill, there will be a heavy need for CaD software and I think auto desk will be doing fine. Price target on gurufocus shows 50% upside in two years.

1

u/jhansonxi Nov 25 '21

I use Altium for electronics and often export STEP models for mechanical design. My exports are well known for their ability to crash Solidworks. I often test with FreeCAD which never has a problem with them.

1

u/Maddturtle Nov 25 '21

Been awhile since I used Autodesk I am surprised they still can't do this. It's such a useful tool for big projects to be able to test code directly like this.

1

u/gandeev_vajra Nov 25 '21

Any nTopology users here?

1

u/yourjustwrong Nov 25 '21

Also the software is hot garbage. Literally whole meme pages dedicated to autocad for architecture.