3 Reasons Workday's Business May Be Re-Accelerating

D.A. Davidson, which reaffirmed its Buy rating and $99 price target on Workday Inc WDAY, revealed three reasons why the company's business might be re-accelerating.

Justification For 'Re-Acceleration' Claim

1. Workday has earlier stated that it faces an estimated 5 percent headwind to FY17 billings growth due to the introduction of more flexible contract terms. But, the brokerage believes this headwind will turn into a tailwind in FY2018.

2. The brokerage said recent discussions with HR executives indicate the move of HR applications to the cloud may be accelerating. "We believe WDAY may benefit in the near term from potential disruption associated with The Ultimate Software Group, Inc. ULTI/NetSuite Inc N partnership, given Oracle Corporation ORCL's pending acquisition of NetSuite," analyst Jack Andrews wrote in a note.

3. Further, new revenue recognition rules may represent a potential catalyst for the company's Financials product.

Beginning in 2018, a proposed series of accounting rules will require a wide variety of companies to change the rate at which they book at least some of their revenue (i.e., depending on whether it constitutes a product, service, or subscription).

"Our view is that these regulations will cause many businesses to evaluate their entire systems' architectures, and they will be unlikely to purchase a new financial system that does not already have these capabilities. This scenario creates a significant competitive advantage for cloud-based providers of financials software, such as WDAY," Andrews highlighted.

Additional Support

In addition, the analyst cited a recent Gartner prediction that by 2018 at least 25 percent of new core financial application deployments in large enterprises will be SaaS solutions.

"On a tactical note, we believe the forthcoming introduction of a Planning module from WDAY may represent another catalyst for Financials adoption," Andrews added.

Meanwhile, Workday is expected to report its second quarter results on August 24, after the market close. Andrews projects revenue to grow 32.6 percent to $374.9 million, ahead of consensus at $373.1 million and guidance calling for $371 million—$373 million. The analyst sees non-GAAP EPS estimate of $(0.04), below consensus of $(0.02). Andrews expects billings to grow 34.5 percent to $420 million, in line with guidance.

At time of writing, shares of Workday were up 0.64 percent to $80.46.

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