Golden Lake Partners
Company Research, Infrastructure Technology, Cybersecurity, Vertical & Design Software
Workday's problem is not vibe coding but fundamentals that have deteriorated since 2022. It spends 35% of revenue on R&D yet produces no products or features that drive growth, while spending heavily on acquisitions. @CapitalObserver notes it has nearly 15% short interest despite a forward free cash flow yield above 5%. x.comÂ
Workday's Q2 was totally fine, and the business is steadier than the bearish narrative implied. Growth relies on upselling a mature HCM and finance base, giving about 10-12% revenue growth, while margins have plenty of room to rise from 14% GAAP. AI is only 6% of revenue, so the business is unlikely to change much. The real risk is big companies shifting spending to hotter AI tools such as Claude. A sale anywhere below $250 would be insulting to shareholders, and 20x earnings power is not crazy. … Show more
Workday is exposed because Anthropic has declared war on the enterprise: it hired Workday's CTO, who left after 11 months, and then posted that it is building its own Workday. AI got better and Anthropic started shipping like crazy, so buying the dip looks misguided. x.com x.com x.comÂ
Workday at 3x sales is a travesty for a business of its quality, implying the market expects management to destroy value through poor capital allocation on top of AI fears. It could likely raise margins toward 30% without much customer impact, given bloat and complacency; the same factors that make it easy to catch up also make it easy to run more profitably. Venture valuations like Rippling's make more sense with Workday at 6-8x sales. x.com x.com x.comÂ
Software is nowhere near a floor because AI has broken the assumption behind the sector's premium: very long-duration, highly recurring revenue. Competition is intensifying, new products such as Anthropic's suite far outperform incumbents like Microsoft Copilot, and AI natives move faster without legacy constraints. Accounting flatters results, with Snowflake's SBC above its CY25 free cash flow. Even at 30x GAAP earnings most names have downside, versus Alphabet at 23x and Nvidia at 14x. x.com … Show more
Salesforce and Workday have another 25% downside, with Adobe already trading at 7x. That holds even against @dalibali2's point that both sit near single-digit free-cash-flow multiples and can keep growing free cash flow by double digits for a long time. x.comÂ
Software's relative strength and sound finances make institutional rotation from semis plausible. It could lead while semis consolidate, despite slow growth at some firms; the market rewards cash flow, healthy balance sheets and manageable debt. Salesforce, ServiceNow, Palantir, Shopify and Workday hold up; SAP's cloud and AI shift, Instacart's massive 10-month base, Veeva's massive five-year base and Atlassian's Stage 2 strength add to the case. Semis may still rally; the view can change. x.com … Show more
ServiceNow's growth looks likely to keep slowing, yet it trades at 50x 2027 GAAP EPS versus 20-25x for Microsoft, Google and Amazon growing as fast or faster. Subscription revenue grew about 21%, but the customer base is flat, so growth relies on upselling modules. Operating margin dipped and stock-based pay rose. Customers are mixed on its AI products and delay over price. Big SaaS firms near 20% growth often slide faster than expected, and its long-term targets look hard to reach. x.com x.comÂ
Ondas Holdings financially engineered its growth through acquisitions and will spend years untangling the mess, so GAAP profitability may be 5-10 years away. Integrating acquisitions is hard given cultural and process differences, and unifying data platforms is a mess. The CEO has developed almost none of the products himself, buying them from other founders. Using Palantir's tools, which @TechRepub says cut integration to a few months, will not solve culture and management problems. x.com x.com … Show more
Workday looks undervalued, with multiple valuation models putting intrinsic value near $165, a 15-16% discount, despite fears that AI will disrupt SaaS and weak enterprise software guidance from IBM. Its AI agents run at enterprise scale for over 4,000 clients, its 12-month subscription backlog grew more than 15%, and non-GAAP operating margin widened to 31.8% as management raised full-year profit guidance. x.comÂ
The software selloff will last a while unless software companies invest to accelerate revenue growth, from 10% to 20-25% or from 20% to 30-40%, which will not be easy. Sentiment should change at some point. x.comÂ
