The Paid-To-Hold Play On WDAY Stock: An 8.6% Annualized Income

Generate guaranteed income from your shares now by capping their potential upside above a higher price.

Workday (WDAY) finds itself at a fascinating crossroads. After underperforming the S&P 500 over the past year, with the stock currently trading about 20% below its 52-week high, the company is betting its future on an aggressive AI-led reinvention. This creates a strong setup for current shareholders: a chance to collect a meaningful cash income right now, yours to keep unconditionally, for agreeing to sell your shares at a higher price if the stock’s AI ambitions pay off. The trade is laid out below.

8.6% annualized income on WDAY shares you already own, with 21% of upside room, by selling a covered call.

• You own (or buy) 100 shares of WDAY near today’s price of $199.15.
• Sell one call option on WDAY expiring 9/17/2027, with a strike price of $240, about 21% above today.
• Collect roughly $1,825 in premium up front per contract (each contract covers 100 shares), which you keep no matter what the stock does.
• That premium is about 8.6% annualized on the $19,915 of stock, income you earn just for holding.
• If WDAY finishes above $240, your shares are called away at $240. Counting the premium, your total return works out to about 28% annualized, but you give up any gains above the strike.

Called Away Or Not, You Pocket The Premium

If WDAY finishes below $240 on 9/17/2027, the call expires worthless, and you keep the full $1,825 premium and all your shares. That is about 9.2% over 389 days, income earned just for holding, and you are free to sell another call.

If WDAY finishes above $240, your 100 shares are called away at $240. You still keep the $1,825 premium, and counting it your total gain works out to about 30% over the holding period (about 28% annualized), a healthy exit. The cost of the trade is that any gain above $240 is no longer yours. And if the stock instead falls, you keep the premium but still ride the shares down: the premium offsets the first 9.2% of the decline over the holding period and nothing beyond it.

What Upside Would You Be Handing Over?

The real question, then, is how much potential upside you are actually giving up. If Workday’s AI strategy truly ignites growth, capping your gains could mean leaving a lot of money on the table. The bull case is that momentum is already building, with management touting the “best first quarter of new ACV growth in 5 years” and new ACV from its agentic AI products growing more than 200% year-over-year. By expanding into new areas like IT service management with products like Sana for ITSM, the company believes AI makes its opportunities “limitless,” a scenario where you would regret a capped exit.

On the other hand, that very same AI wave could be what limits the stock’s run from here. As one analyst on the company’s recent call noted, there is a “new competitive dynamic” emerging where AI tools could make it cheaper for customers to build their own solutions rather than buy from Workday. There is also the simple execution risk of turning impressive demos into real-world value for customers. If the AI revolution is more of a slow burn than a big bang, collecting a guaranteed income now to sell at a healthy profit later looks like a smart move. The decision comes down to how you see that playing out, making the growth of Workday’s agentic AI solutions, now approaching $500 million in annual recurring revenue, the single most important metric to watch.

Turn A Stock You Own Into Income

You may not own WDAY, but you almost certainly own something that could be paying you. Our Covered Call Finder lets you type in a stock, or a few, and instantly see the income a covered call could generate on each, then dial the strike up or down with a slider to balance more income against more upside. It is the quickest way to see what the names in your own portfolio could pay.

Income From One Name, Stability From Many

Getting paid to cap the upside on a stock you own is a smart way to squeeze income from it. But a single covered call, and even a single-theme fund, still rides one slice of the market. What steadies a portfolio is breadth across sectors, where a rough stretch for one industry is offset by a good one elsewhere.

The Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio provides that breadth: roughly 30 quality, cash-generative companies spanning sectors, judged on the full picture of their fundamentals rather than one options setup, and re-balanced as conditions change. It carries a track record of outpacing a benchmark that combines the three major indices – the S&P 500, S&P Mid-cap, and Russell 2000. Keep collecting premium on individual names, with a cross-sector core doing the heavy lifting.