Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Adobe is down nearly 28% this year yet still beating earnings estimates and raising guidance, which raises an uncomfortable question about whether the market has gotten the AI disruption story completely wrong.

The 24/7 Wall St. price target for Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE | ADBE Price Prediction) is $294.54 over the next 12 months. With shares trading at $252.88, that works out to 16.5% upside. The stock gets a buy rating with high confidence.

Metric
Value

Current Price
$252.88

Price Target from 24/7 Wall St.
$294.54

Upside/Downside
16.5%

Recommendation
BUY

Confidence Level
90%

Adobe’s growth is holding up and guidance keeps rising, yet the stock is priced as if its business is shrinking. That gap drives the call. At a forward P/E of about 9x, the market has already priced in a lot of fear about AI disruption.

The open question is whether Adobe can turn rapid AI adoption into a clear acceleration in annual recurring revenue (ARR). We think the current price leaves enough room for that to work.

Rebound Week Follows a Bruising 2026
Shares gained 5.07% today and 8.64% over the past week. Shares remain down 4.79% over the past month and 27.75% year to date. The stock sits 30.5% below its 52-week high of $363.70 and 33% above its low of $190.12. The bounce came right after a widely read Barron’s report on a downgrade to Sell over growth concerns.

The latest results were solid. Fiscal Q3 revenue rose 12.9% to $6.76 billion, ahead of the $6.70 billion consensus. Non-GAAP EPS of $6.13 beat the $6.09 estimate. Management also raised full-year non-GAAP EPS guidance to $24.45 to $24.50. Leadership is changing too: Anil Chakravarthy becomes CEO on December 1, and Shantanu Narayen stays on as executive chair.

Why Bulls See $326 Within Reach
Adobe’s AI-first ARR now exceeds $650 million and is growing more than 150% a year. Firefly ARR rose 40% quarter over quarter. Creative freemium users passed 100 million, up more than 70%. Adobe has also held off on pricing actions to build its user base first, which gives it room to raise prices later.

Capital returns add support: Adobe bought back 9.5 million shares last quarter and has $24.55 billion left under its authorization. Of the analysts covering the stock, 11 rate it Buy or Strong Buy, and the consensus target is $272.31. The bull case is $326.20.

Cracks Bears Say Are Already Showing
Remaining performance obligations grew just 8%, and analysts pressed management on net new ARR. Five analysts rate the stock Sell or Strong Sell. Net income rose only 3.1%.

On the other side of the ledger, free cash flow grew 14.68%, and much of the profit lag reflects planned investment in freemium growth. The bear case is at $254.03.

Adobe Trades at a Steep Discount to Microsoft and Salesforce
The benchmark for AI monetization at scale is Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT). It has more than 30 million paid Copilot seats and grew quarterly revenue 17.75% while trading at about 30x trailing earnings.

Adobe Experience Cloud faces direct competition from Salesforce (NYSE:CRM). It grew revenue a slower 10.83% yet trades at 26x trailing earnings.

Company
P/E
Latest Quarterly Revenue Growth

Adobe (forward)
9x
12.9%

Microsoft (trailing)
30x
17.75%

Salesforce (trailing)
26x
10.83%

Adobe is growing faster than Salesforce at a far lower multiple. Next to that peer group, our 24/7 Wall St. price target looks conservative.

What Could Make or Break Adobe From Here
The 24/7 Wall St. price target remains at $294.54, with a buy rating and 90% confidence. Valuation is the deciding factor.

Shares could outperform if AI-first ARR keeps growing at triple digits and the new CEO starts turning freemium users into paying ones. The bear case gains weight if net new ARR keeps slowing into fiscal 2027.

Year
Price Target from 24/7 Wall St.

2026
$261.36

2027
$294.54

2028
$335.35

2029
$360.13

2030
$396.73

Adobe would need to keep executing on its current strategy for these projections to hold. Generative AI competitors could drive results well below this path, while faster monetization of its user base could drive them well above it.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE), the global technology leader that unleashes creativity, productivity and customer experiences through innovative tools and platforms, and NVIDIA today announced an expansion of their partnership to optimize Adobe’s flagship tools including Adobe Photoshop, Premiere, Substance 3D, Frame.io and Brand Concierge, delivering faster AI-powered creation, production and personalization.

This work builds on Adobe and NVIDIA’s strategic partnership announced in March, which brings together Adobe’s creative and marketing workflows, models and technology with NVIDIA’s open models, libraries, research and accelerated computing to accelerate creative, production and marketing workflows across video, images, 3D and other creative media. That collaboration includes GPU acceleration for media ingestion and intelligence in Frame.io, as well as ongoing work around Adobe Substance 3D, Adobe Firefly Foundry and 3D digital twin workflows for enterprise customers.

“Creative workflows are more multimodal than ever, with many projects spanning images, video, audio, motion and 3D, making performance critical to helping creatives stay focused on their ideas and craft,” said Deepa Subramaniam, vice president, product marketing, creative professionals, Adobe. “By partnering with NVIDIA to optimize Photoshop, Premiere and Substance 3D for RTX Spark and accelerating Frame.io in the cloud, we’re delivering the performance creatives need to bring their ideas to life.”

“AI agents are helping creators unlock deeper and richer workflows using the Adobe applications they know and love,” said Jason Paul, vice president, local AI, NVIDIA. “Powered by RTX Spark, Adobe’s optimized tools deliver up to 2x faster performance to accelerate these new workflows.”

Empowering Creatives With Faster Adobe Tools Rearchitected With NVIDIA

Creative professionals today move between image, video, motion and 3D, sometimes all within the same project. As AI increasingly becomes part of the creative process, they need technology that keeps pace with the speed of their ideas and the complexity of their workflows. As an industry leader in creativity, Adobe's tools apply decades of creative expertise to amplify human potential and make it easier to quickly turn ideas into impactful work.

Adobe is bringing the power of the NVIDIA RTX Spark superchip, which NVIDIA launched earlier this month, to its agentic creative applications Photoshop, Premiere and Substance 3D. RTX-accelerated and optimized to take full advantage of RTX Spark’s unified memory and AI compute, these applications deliver up to 2x faster AI processing, editing, color and effects, helping creatives iterate faster and stay in their creative flow.

Adobe rearchitected Photoshop around GPU-accelerated compositing to be faster and more responsive for creative tasks from removing distractions with the Remove Tool to applying effects like Gaussian Blur and Light Leaks directly on canvas.

Some of the most demanding post-production workflows in Premiere, from playback and rendering, to effects, color and AI-powered tools, are RTX-accelerated and optimized for RTX Spark. This results in real, tangible speed gains for popular audio and video features in Premiere like Enhance Speech and Object Mask. For 3D artists using Substance 3D Painter, RTX Spark speeds up the heaviest steps around texturing.

Accelerating Cloud Video Workflows With Frame.io and NVIDIA

Adobe is also using NVIDIA accelerated computing to speed cloud media processing and intelligent content discovery for Adobe Frame.io, helping production teams find and use growing media libraries faster. The updated Frame.io pipeline uses NVIDIA video acceleration, including NVIDIA NVDEC for hardware-accelerated decoding and NVIDIA TensorRT ™ with CUDA™ for content preprocessing and embedding generation.

Moving compute-intensive video decoding, preprocessing and embedding generation onto NVIDIA GPUs lets Frame.io process media faster and make it searchable sooner, while supporting more responsive discovery across large content libraries.

Early performance results from selected Frame.io transcode and search workloads show:

Approximately 5x faster embedding generation 4-5x improvement in P95 processing latency An approximately 80% smaller search proxy For creative teams, these gains mean uploaded content becomes searchable sooner, larger libraries refresh more efficiently, and discovery and review stay frictionless as media volumes grow.

Personalized Conversational Experiences With Adobe Brand Concierge Optimized On NVIDIA Nemotron

Brands also want more choice and value from the AI models powering personalized experiences. Open models can help meet that need, providing a flexible and efficient way to deliver high-quality, responsive conversations at enterprise scale.

Adobe and NVIDIA worked together to optimize Brand Concierge using NVIDIA Nemotron™ open models. This version will be available to enterprise customers later this year. NVIDIA has also selected Brand Concierge to drive personalized conversational experiences grounded in organizational data and content. This enables NVIDIA to tailor interactions on their website based on customer needs, while leveraging Nemotron to deliver fast, high-quality responses at scale.

Sparking Creativity, to the MAX

Get ready for what’s next — with three days of creative skill-building, visionary keynotes and valuable connections at Adobe MAX, running Nov. 10-12. Adobe and NVIDIA will showcase the latest advancements for creators alongside their hardware partners.

About Adobe

Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) empowers everyone to create through industry-leading platforms and tools that unleash creativity, productivity and personalized customer experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

About NVIDIA

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) is the world leader in AI and accelerated computing.

NVIDIA Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to, statements as to: expectations with respect to growth, performance, availability, and benefits of NVIDIA’s products, services and technologies, and related trends and drivers; expectations with respect to NVIDIA’s third party arrangements, including with its collaborators and partners; expectations with respect to technology developments, and related trends and drivers; projected market growth and trends; expectations with respect to AI and related industries; and other statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, which are subject to the “safe harbor” created by those sections based on management’s beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to management and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be materially different than expectations. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include: global economic and political conditions; NVIDIA’s reliance on third parties to manufacture, assemble, package and test NVIDIA’s products; the impact of technological development and competition; development of new products and technologies or enhancements to NVIDIA’s existing products and technologies; market acceptance of NVIDIA’s products or NVIDIA’s partners’ products; design, manufacturing or software defects; changes in consumer preferences or demands; changes in industry standards and interfaces; unexpected loss of performance of NVIDIA’s products or technologies when integrated into systems; NVIDIA’s ability to realize the potential benefits of business investments or acquisitions; and changes in applicable laws and regulations, as well as other factors detailed from time to time in the most recent reports NVIDIA files with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, including, but not limited to, its Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. Copies of reports filed with the SEC are posted on NVIDIA’s website and are available from NVIDIA without charge. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and speak only as of the date hereof, and, except as required by law, NVIDIA disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.

© 2026 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved. NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, and other NVIDIA product and service names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and other countries and regions. Other company, product, and service names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

© 2026 Adobe. All rights reserved. Adobe and the Adobe logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

More News From Adobe

Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE) shares are trading lower Monday after Wells Fargo downgraded the stock to Underweight from Overweight and cut its price target to $225, citing results from its latest survey of chief information officers on AI spending.

Adobe shares are sliding. Why are ADBE shares down?
Wells Fargo Says Adobe Is Losing AI Budget Share and Faces a Steep Fourth-Quarter RampAccording to Investing.com, analyst Michael Turrin told investors he "came away more cautious" on front office and creative software and gave four reasons for the downgrade. First, Adobe’s third-quarter results suggest cracks are starting to show, and a steep fourth-quarter ramp looks difficult, since it would require new annual recurring revenue to roughly double from the previous quarter. Second, he sees risk to Adobe’s preliminary fiscal 2027 guidance given the lack of a price increase and an ongoing management transition, with both the CEO and CFO changing.

Third, the CIO survey reportedly showed Adobe as a clear loser of budget share in the AI evaluation cycle. Fourth, competition in Adobe’s core creative business is intensifying.

Wells Fargo Now Models Negative New ARR Growth in Fiscal 2027Wells Fargo now models negative growth in new annual recurring revenue in fiscal 2027 and total annual recurring revenue growth of about 7%, below the consensus of more than 8%. It also lowered its margin forecasts, citing a focus on adding users over near-term monetization

Read Next

Adobe Shares FallADBE Price Action: At the time of publication, Adobe shares are trading 4.16% lower at $232.19, according to data from Benzinga Pro.

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This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

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A decade ago, shares of Adobe (ADBE +0.51%) closed at about $109. Today, they trade near $243 as I write. That's a rise of about 123%, enough to turn a $10,000 investment into about $22,300.

It seems OK until you compare it to the market. In the same period, $10,000 in an S&P 500 (^GSPC +0.59%) index fund (with dividends reinvested) rose to around $42,100, a gain of about 321%.

And because Adobe doesn't pay a dividend, its stock price is the full return.

In other words, the creative software company has returned less than half as much as the broad market over the last decade. But its business kept growing all along. I think the gap boils down to how much investors were paying for Adobe's profits -- not the profits themselves.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

The lag is all from the past five yearsIn the first half of the decade, Adobe was one of the market's big winners. The stock closed at a record $688.37 in November 2021, more than six times its October 2016 price.

An S&P 500 index fund climbed around 138% over the same stretch.

Since then, the two have switched places. The index fund is up about 77% from that November 2021 close, but Adobe stock is about 65% off its peak.

Shares have dropped about 31% in 2026 alone, from roughly $350 when last year ended.

Much of this year's slide came as investors worried that artificial intelligence (AI) might disrupt software companies. AI agents could take over some of the work businesses pay for one seat at a time, and Adobe sells many of its subscriptions that way. By mid-January, Adobe was already among the S&P 500's worst performers of 2026 as software stocks sold off on these fears.

Earnings kept risingShowing how much Adobe grew under the surface, the company made $3.01 a share on a non-GAAP (adjusted) basis in fiscal 2016. Five years later, that number was $12.48, and revenue had almost tripled, from $5.85 billion to $15.79 billion. For this fiscal year, management's target calls for adjusted earnings per share between $24.45 and $24.50, on around $26.6 billion in revenue. That's about eight times the fiscal 2016 level.

True, growth has slowed. Adjusted earnings per share compounded at around 33% a year from fiscal 2016 to fiscal 2021, versus about 14% a year since then if Adobe reaches this year's target.

Part of the fall in the stock's valuation was arguably deserved. But the slowdown hasn't become a decline. Revenue has grown 12% to 13% year over year in all three quarters Adobe has reported this fiscal year.

And in the fiscal third quarter of 2026 (the period ended Aug. 28, 2026), Adobe's adjusted earnings per share rose 15% over the year-ago quarter, to $6.13. Annualized recurring revenue from its AI-first products grew more than 150%.

The valuation is where the decade went. In October 2016, investors paid around 36 times Adobe's fiscal 2016 adjusted earnings per share. At the November 2021 high, the stock cost about 55 times its fiscal 2021 adjusted earnings.

Today's price is around 10 times this year's adjusted earnings target.

In other words, earnings per share are on track to grow about eightfold, while the price of each dollar of those earnings has fallen by about 73%. Together, these two numbers explain the stock's 123% gain.

What does 10 times earnings ask of Adobe?I'd say a valuation of around 10 times adjusted earnings asks very little of Adobe. It's the sort of price the market tends to put on a business it expects to stall or shrink.

Premium Feature

Moneyball Superscore

81/100

Today's Change

(

0.51

%) $

1.22

Current Price

$

242.27

Adobe's earnings per share are still growing at a double-digit rate. If its valuation multiple just stays around 10 times adjusted earnings, shares may climb about as fast as earnings per share from here.

Sure, the risk is that AI one day does to Adobe's growth what the market fears. Management's own target already calls for total annualized recurring revenue to climb 10.2% this year, a little slower than revenue. If that rate keeps falling toward the low single digits, today's price-to-earnings ratio might turn out to be fair.

In the end, I think the past decade says more about the price investors paid in 2021 than about the business. Back then, Adobe stock cost over 50 times adjusted earnings and needed almost everything to go right. Today it needs much less.

I'd consider buying Adobe stock today. But with AI's long-term impact on Adobe's customers still unknown, I'd start with a small position.

SummaryAdobe is rated Buy with a 12-month target of $294 and probability-weighted fair value of $274, citing undervalued growth.The current price implies ~3% annual revenue growth, while ADBE has delivered an average of 10.8% over the last four years.Management reiterated a 10.2% ARR growth target and raised full-year guidance, emphasizing a strategic focus on expanding the freemium funnel.Key risks include freemium conversion, contracted demand, and AI compute costs; Q4 ARR and RPO metrics are critical for thesis validation. We Are/DigitalVision via Getty Images

Company Overview Adobe Inc. (ADBE) is a subscription software business catering to creative professionals, enterprises and consumers, with subscriptions making up 96% of FY2025 revenue at $23.8B. It reports two customer groups, Business Professionals & Consumers and Creative & Marketing Professionals, selling through Creative

11 Followers

Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have a beneficial long position in the shares of ADBE either through stock ownership, options, or other derivatives. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha's Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

Adobe beat earnings for the fifth straight quarter, yet the stock sits 31% in the hole for the year while a generative AI rival just torched its retail sentiment. Something has to give, and the answer depends on a bet…

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Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE | ADBE Price Prediction) trades at $239.94. Our 24/7 Wall St. price target is $286.62 over the next 12 months, which means 19.45% upside. Our model rates the stock a buy, and its confidence level is high.

24/7 Wall St. Price Target Summary Metric Value Current Price $239.94 Price Target from 24/7 Wall St. $286.62 Upside/Downside 19.45% Recommendation BUY Confidence Level 90% The debate: can Adobe convert surging AI engagement into durable revenue faster than generative AI rivals erode its creative moat? At 9x forward earnings, the market is pricing in a decline the financials have yet to show.

Adobe Slid 31% in 2026 Despite a Q3 Beat The stock is down 31.31% year to date and 17.89% over the past month, and it was flat over the past week. That leaves it about 34% below its 52-week high of $363.70 and 26% off its $190.12 low.

Fiscal Q3 revenue of $6.76B beat the $6.70B consensus, and non-GAAP EPS of $6.13 topped expectations for a 5th consecutive quarter. Management raised full-year non-GAAP EPS guidance to $24.45 to $24.50.

Retail sentiment turned bearish after OpenAI released ChatGPT Images 2.5. Investors also face a leadership change: Anil Chakravarthy takes over as CEO on December 1st.

Why Bulls See a Path to $320 AI-first ARR topped $650 million, up more than 150% year over year. Monthly active users passed 1 billion, and Firefly ARR grew 40% quarter over quarter. Adobe also has $24.55 billion left on its buyback authorization.

Analysts expect fiscal 2027 EPS of $27.6733, and their consensus target is $275.06. In our bull scenario, the stock reaches $320.65.

What Could Push Adobe Toward $249 Wall Street remains cautious, with 23 Hold ratings against 5 Sell or Strong Sell ratings. One analyst noted net new ARR fell “36, 37%” year over year, while remaining performance obligations grew only 8%.

Management prioritizes freemium user acquisition and delays pricing actions, which bulls see as investment in future conversion. Our bear case is at $249.08.

Adobe Trades at a Steep Discount to Salesforce and Autodesk Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) competes directly with Adobe Experience Cloud for enterprise customer-experience budgets. The stock changes hands at 14x forward earnings, with quarterly revenue growth of 10.8%. Adobe is growing faster at a lower multiple.

Autodesk (NASDAQ:ADSK) is the closest subscription design-software peer. It commands 18x forward earnings, with revenue growth of 16.1%.

Company Forward P/E Quarterly Revenue Growth (YoY) Adobe 9x 12.9% Salesforce 14x 10.8% Autodesk 18x 16.1% Our target means a forward multiple still below both peers. Against this group, the 24/7 Wall St. price target looks conservative.

Adobe Price Prediction 2026-2030 The 24/7 Wall St. price target of $286.62 comes with a buy rating and 90% confidence. What tips the scale for me is Adobe’s single-digit forward multiple sitting alongside double-digit growth.

The setup looks compelling if freemium users start converting into ARR during the seasonally strong fourth quarter. Caution makes sense if net new ARR keeps shrinking under the new CEO. I think the market is too pessimistic here.

Looking further ahead, here is where our model projects Adobe could trade by the end of each year, assuming current growth trends and market conditions hold.

Year Price Target from 24/7 Wall St. 2026 $250.23 2027 $294.47 2028 $325.33 2029 $371.47 2030 $404.07 Adobe would need to keep executing on its agentic AI strategy for these projections to hold. Faster Firefly monetization could add significant upside, while losing creative share to generative AI rivals is the biggest downside risk.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Adobe keeps beating earnings estimates while its stock collapses, leaving investors to wonder whether Wall Street is pricing in a threat that may never materialize or a disruption that already has.

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Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE | ADBE Price Prediction) is a Hold at $235.47. Shares of the creative software leader trade as if the business were in decline, yet the company keeps raising its guidance.

Adobe makes Photoshop, Premiere, Acrobat and a customer experience suite that serves over 20,000 global enterprises. Third-quarter revenue rose 12.9% to $6.76 billion. Non-GAAP EPS of $6.13 was its 5th consecutive EPS beat. The stock still fell 32.72% year to date. Investors worry about generative AI rivals, a CEO transition to Anil Chakravarthy and the exit of the company’s former CFO.

Nine Times Forward Earnings for a Double-Digit Grower Bulls see a mispricing. Adobe trades at 9x forward earnings with a PEG ratio of 0.582. Management raised its full-year non-GAAP EPS guidance from an initial $23.30 to $23.50 to $24.45 to $24.50. AI-first ARR now tops $650 million and is growing more than 150%, which shows that customers pay for Firefly and agentic tools.

Capital returns support the case. Free cash flow rose 14.68% to $2.44 billion, and Adobe retired ~9.5M shares for $2.232B with approximately $24.55 billion of authorization remaining. On the insider side, Director David Ricks purchased 10,000 shares at $194.513 on the open market.

AI Rivals and Leadership Churn Test Adobe’s Moat Bears point to profits lagging sales. Net income grew just 3.1% in the quarter, while RPO growth slowed to 8%. Management put Creative Cloud price increases on hold to guide users into freemium, and it said that the shift pressures net new ARR.

Competition is getting louder. One widely discussed Reddit post read: “OpenAI releases ChatGPT Images 2.5. I expect Adobe stocks to nosedive once mass media gets a hold of this.” Add a $70M goodwill impairment in Publishing and Advertising, and the market views a business in transition.

A New CEO’s First Moves Decide the Next Leg Adobe’s execution rules out a Sell, and the unclear AI outlook rules out a Buy. The stock sits below its 50-day average of $257.41 and its 200-day average of $263.2, so momentum has not turned. The next few months bring Adobe MAX, Chakravarthy’s first strategy statements as CEO, the close of the Topaz Labs deal and a seasonally strong fourth quarter.

A 33% Slide While the Market Climbed Across 40 analysts, the average price target is $278.15, which implies about 18.1% upside. Price targets reflect analysts’ views and often miss. The ratings break down as follows:

Strong Buy: 4 Buy: 8 Hold: 23 Sell: 4 Strong Sell: 1 The stock trades at 13x trailing earnings, inside a 52-week range of $190.12 to $363.7. Over the past year, Adobe fell 33.51% while the S&P 500 rose 17.22%. Over the past month, the stock dropped 13.9% against a 0.69% rose for the index.

Adobe Is a Hold Until Freemium Converts At $235.47, Adobe is a Hold.

The valuation already prices in a lot of bad news, but buying the stock needs a reason for it to rebound. The first trigger for a Buy is fourth-quarter results that meet guidance of $6.80B to $6.85B in revenue with a margin near 44.0%, together with a increase in RPO growth. The second is proof that freemium users, now over 100 million on the creative side alone, are turning into paying subscribers.

A Sell case would build if ARR growth misses the 10.2% target or if analysts cut fiscal 2027 estimates, which currently average 27.6226. Because the stock has a beta of 1.417, it can swing sharply in either direction.

Waiting costs little. The stock pays no dividend, and the new CEO’s first full quarter will show whether Adobe’s AI spending leads to profit growth. At this price, patience lets investors see the new CEO’s results before taking a position.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Key Takeaways Adobe's multi-year Jet2 deal will use CX Enterprise, Firefly Foundry and Brand Intelligence.ADBE's AI-first ending ARR topped $650M in Q3 fiscal 2026, rising more than 150% year over year.Microsoft and Salesforce are intensifying competition in AI-powered customer engagement. Adobe (ADBE - Free Report) is expanding the use of its agentic artificial intelligence (AI) and customer-experience technologies through a multi-year strategic partnership with Jet2. The travel company plans to use Adobe CX Enterprise to deliver more personalized customer experiences, including tailored holiday recommendations, offers and engagement across the travel journey. Jet2 will also use Adobe Firefly Foundry and Brand Intelligence to accelerate branded content creation and improve consistency across customer interactions. The partnership includes a Jet2 x Adobe Customer Experience Lab focused on developing and scaling AI-powered experiences. Jet2 was among Adobe’s global enterprise customer wins in the third quarter of fiscal 2026.

The Jet2 partnership could help Adobe deepen adoption of its broader customer-experience portfolio and strengthen its positioning against Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) and Salesforce (CRM - Free Report) . Adobe CX Enterprise combines Adobe Experience Platform and native applications for customer engagement, GenStudio for content supply chains, and Experience Manager and agentic web applications for brand visibility. More than 20,000 global enterprises rely on Adobe, which delivers more than 1 trillion experiences annually for enterprise customers. Adobe CX Enterprise Coworker can synthesize insights from Adobe and third-party applications and coordinate AI agents and workflows across analytics, content creation and journey orchestration. The offering had attracted more than 1,700 customers and early adopters by the third quarter of fiscal 2026.

Adobe is expanding the supporting marketing stack around these deployments. In the third quarter of fiscal 2026, Adobe’s Brand Visibility solution combined Adobe LLM Optimizer with Semrush’s AI Optimization, leveraging nearly 300 million real-world AI search prompts to help brands track their visibility across platforms such as ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot. GenStudio for Commerce Media Networks helps retailers create self-service, on-brand content, while Brand Intelligence can preview how content may resonate before launch. The number of paid Brand Visibility customers doubled sequentially in the third quarter of fiscal 2026.

Customer-experience momentum is already strengthening. In the third quarter of fiscal 2026, ending annual recurring revenues (ARR) for Adobe Experience Manager and agentic web applications, Adobe GenStudio and Adobe Experience Platform and applications each increased more than 20% year over year. Adobe’s AI-first ending ARR exceeded $650 million and grew more than 150% year over year. Management said Customer Experience entered the fourth quarter with a strong pipeline. Deployments such as Jet2 could therefore support enterprise adoption, cross-selling and recurring subscription revenues.

ADBE Faces Tough CompetitionMicrosoft is challenging Adobe through Microsoft Copilot, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Foundry and Agent 365. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, Dynamics 365 exposed more than 650,000 Model Context Protocol actions across sales, finance, supply chain, human resources and customer service, while usage-based credit consumption in customer service increased fourfold sequentially. Microsoft Foundry reached 100,000 customers, with revenues more than doubling year over year, while nearly 90% of the Fortune 500 were already grounding their agents in enterprise context using Foundry, Microsoft Fabric and Work IQ. Agent 365 had nearly 40 million agents registered across tens of thousands of companies.

Salesforce is intensifying competition through Agentforce, Data 360 and its customer-engagement platform. In the second quarter of fiscal 2027, Agentforce ARR exceeded $1.5 billion, while combined Agentforce and Data 360 ARR reached nearly $3.9 billion. The number of accounts with agents in production increased 70% sequentially. Customers generated 3.2 billion Agentic Work Units during the quarter, up 97% sequentially. Salesforce’s own help agent has handled more than 5 million customer conversations, resolving 64% autonomously, while Xero’s Agentforce deployment achieved a roughly 62% customer-service deflection rate across more than 200,000 interactions. These metrics highlight the growing competition for enterprise spending on AI-powered personalization, customer engagement and workflow orchestration.

ADBE’s Share Price Performance, Valuation & EstimatesShares of Adobe have declined 31.9% year to date against the broader Zacks Computer and Technology sector’s 22.8% growth.

ADBE Stock’s Price Performance
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

ADBE stock is trading at a discount, with a forward 12-month price-to-earnings ratio of 8.79 compared with the broader sector’s 21.36. Adobe has a Value Score of B.

ADBE’s Valuation
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Adobe’s earnings is currently pegged at $6.32 per share, up a couple of cents, over the past 30 days, suggesting 14.91% year-over-year growth.

Adobe currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Student Spaces in Acrobat is now generally available globally for free, giving students a trusted, AI-powered study hub built on Acrobat's decades of document expertiseNew capabilities include adaptive flashcards, citation generation, summary sheets, handwritten note digitization and interview prep to help students learn more effectively and trust every answerStudent Spaces is expanding from the web to the Acrobat app on Android, bringing AI-powered study tools to students wherever they are SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 14, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE), global technology leader for creativity, productivity and customer experiences, announced that Student Spaces in Acrobat is now generally available globally and for free. First launched in beta in April 2026, Student Spaces quickly attracted more than 1 million monthly active users who utilized it to generate flashcards, quizzes, study guides, podcasts, summaries, and presentations directly from their course materials. Today's launch brings a wave of new capabilities designed to help students learn smarter, build trust in their work, and move confidently from the classroom to their career.

Adobe Acrobat and the PDF have been the standard that students and professionals alike rely on to communicate and absorb important information for three decades. Student Spaces builds directly on that foundation – using the same PDFs students already work with every day, from syllabi and lecture slides to lab reports and internship forms and grounding every AI answer in those source materials.

Study smarter, with AI you can trust

New and updated capabilities in Student Spaces help students make the most of their study time:

Focus study time with adaptive flashcards and quizzes that now track answers and adjust to what still needs practice, letting students spend less time on prep and more time on learning. Students can also individually edit flashcards and quizzes to make them their own.Verify information with one-click citations, with every AI answer linked directly back to source material so students always know where information came from. Starting later this month, students can also generate properly formatted citations – from a title, URL, DOI or ISBN – in APA, MLA, Chicago and more, and drop them straight into their own classroom documents.Study smarter with summary sheets by uploading documents to instantly generate a customizable, editable half-sheet, one-page, or two-page overview of must-know facts. Perfect for pre-exam prep or professor-style test notes.Use handwritten notes by uploading them directly into Student Spaces, where they are automatically converted into digital, searchable text.Get resume feedback and interview help from the AI Assistant, which reviews resumes and provides tailored feedback, then helps students prep for internship and job interviews so they are ready when an opportunity presents itself.Study more flexibly with editable video summaries that students can fine-tune to match exactly how they learn, plus full access to Student Spaces in the Acrobat app on Android for a mobile study experience. Built on a foundation you can rely on

Unlike general-purpose AI tools bolted onto coursework, Student Spaces is built specifically around the kind of documents students already use. Adobe's AI reads and grounds every answer in the actual source material – not a guess – so students can verify, trust and build on every insight. Whether breaking down a dense academic reading, polishing a group presentation or preparing for a first internship interview, Student Spaces is designed to help students stand out, not stress out.

Coming soon, Adobe will also introduce new Acrobat Studio and Acrobat Express student packages, giving students access to the same professional tools used across real-world careers.

You can download high-resolution imagery from our press kit. For more detailed information, visit our blog post.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at any time.

About Adobe

Adobe empowers everyone to create through industry-leading platforms and tools that unleash creativity, productivity and personalized customer experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

Press Contact:

ADOBE SYSTEMS GmbH
Livia Sedlmeir
Communications Manager, Central Europe

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Janna Laeube
PR-Consultant
Tel: (0)40-67 94 46-6143
E-Mail: [email protected]
https://news.adobe.com/de/

Jim Cramer called it months ago, and now Google has planted its AI inside the same Hollywood editing software that Adobe has long called home territory. The question is whether this is a one-off partnership or the opening move in…

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Hollywood film editing bays just got a little more crowded. Jim Cramer’s September 1 warning that Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL | GOOGL Price Prediction) was coming for Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE)’s turf now has a case study behind it. In the early morning hours of September 11, 2026, Google Cloud and Avid announced that Gemini Enterprise is embedded directly into browser-based Avid Media Composer, the professional video editor that shares Hollywood’s post-production stack with Adobe Premiere. The development landed the day after Adobe reported Q3 earnings, beating though its shares fell anyway in this tough competitive environment, down 11.5% in a week, 27.8% over a year, and 61.6% over five years.

Cramer’s Adobe Thesis, in His Own Words Cramer has been sounding the alarm on Adobe for months. On his June 16 show, he framed the stock as collateral damage in a broader AI displacement thesis: “Adobe’s been a house of pain, down more than 70% from its peak in 2021. In fact, it’s down more than 40% year to date. At these levels, the stock sells for just 8.5 times this midpoint of this year’s earnings forecast.”

He pinned the problem squarely on encroaching AI platforms: “Then, a couple of years ago we started hearing about all these new programs from the big AI platforms, programs that have gotten very good at writing custom software. Now this is really the root of the AI displacement thesis across the entire enterprise software edifice, and that includes Adobe.”

Gemini’s Scale Makes the Threat Credible The Avid deal is part of a broader pattern. Google’s Q2 FY2026 report showed Google Cloud revenue of $24.77 billion, up 82% year over year, with Gemini adoption reaching enterprise saturation. Google’s chief executive Sundar Pichai told investors:

“Gemini models now process 22 billion API tokens per minute and the Gemini App has 950 million monthly active users.”

He added that “nearly 90% of the Fortune 100” now use Gemini Enterprise, the same product being welded into Avid’s timeline.

What Editors Actually Get Avid surveyed 120 professional editors in Q2 2026 and found 79% already use AI in their workflows, with 87% saying the technology is most valuable when it frees up creative time. The integration delivers innovation like agentic editing via natural language prompts, semantic search that eliminates manual media logging, and connected newsroom-to-timeline workflows, attacking what the companies call the industry’s two biggest bottlenecks: media discovery and timeline organization.

Verdict for GOOGL Holders Alphabet trades at a trailing P/E of 16.7 with a $4.15 trillion market cap and 2026 CapEx guidance of $175 billion to $185 billion aimed at exactly this kind of enterprise land grab. Avid’s post-production niche is small on its own. As a proof point that Google Cloud can push Gemini into vertical creative software that Adobe once controlled uncontested, it fits the pattern Cramer flagged. Google Cloud backlog already sits at over $460 billion, and Hollywood’s editing bays are the newest end users.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Adobe ADBE is experiencing a significant drop in pre-market trading following a modest Q3 earnings beat and in-line Q4 guidance. Concerns persist regarding the company's ability to convert its rapid AI engagement into sustainable paid recurring revenue.

AI-first ending ARR surpassed $650 million, with the Firefly application and credit-pack ARR increasing by 40% sequentially. This growth reflects a rise in credit consumption, particularly in video, translating into recurring revenue. Notably, the Acrobat AI Assistant's monthly active users (MAU) doubled quarter-over-quarter, and the number of paid Adobe Brand Visibility customers also doubled. Creative freemium MAUs exceeded 100 million, marking over 70% year-over-year growth. Adobe has shifted its focus toward user acquisition while postponing Creative Cloud pricing changes. An analyst noted a decline in net new ARR of approximately 36-37% year-over-year, which management did not confirm or quantify. Total ending ARR reached $27.5 billion, reflecting an 11.2% increase year-over-year. However, the remaining performance obligation (RPO) of $22.16 billion slightly declined from Q2, with only 8% growth, while current RPO rose by 9%. Management attributed these trends to freemium investments and seasonal factors, anticipating a traditional Q4 enterprise boost to support its FY26 ARR target. Subscription revenue saw a 16% increase in Business Professionals and Consumers and a 13% rise in Creative and Marketing Professionals. Q3 operating cash flow hit a record $2.52 billion, with ADBE repurchasing around 9.5 million shares, leaving $24.55 billion under its April 2026 authorization. Q4 guidance anticipates a non-GAAP operating margin of approximately 44%. Anil Chakravarthy will take over as president and CEO on December 1, transitioning Shantanu Narayen to executive chair. Digital Media President David Wadhwani is departing, while Steve Day will remain interim CFO. ADBE also expects to finalize its acquisition of Topaz Labs, an AI image-and-video enhancement company, in Q4, with the November MAX event serving as a crucial product catalyst.The report highlights a growing gap between Adobe's rapidly expanding AI usage and the slower financial conversion of that engagement. While products like Firefly and the Acrobat AI Assistant are gaining traction, the decline in net new ARR and modest RPO growth leave investors seeking clearer evidence of Adobe's overall growth acceleration. The Q4 outlook hinges on seasonal enterprise closings, continued AI conversion, and new product launches to counteract freemium and deferred pricing challenges. A strong finish in ARR, improved RPO growth, and clearer AI pricing strategies would affirm Adobe's approach, while ongoing weaknesses in Creative or further delays in conversion could complicate FY27 growth expectations.

This stock alert was generated using automated technology and GuruFocus financial data to provide readers with timely and accurate market reporting. This content was reviewed by GuruFocus editorial team prior to publication. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected].

Disclosures I/We may personally own shares in some of the companies mentioned above. However, those positions are not material to either the company or to my/our portfolios.

Key Takeaways Adobe made agentic AI central to its strategy while prioritizing user acquisition over near-term pricing.Adobe's AI-first ending ARR topped $650 million, rising more than 150% year over year in the third quarter.Adobe raised fiscal 2026 revenue and earnings guidance while maintaining its 10.2% ending ARR growth target. Adobe Inc. (ADBE - Free Report) used its fiscal third-quarter 2026 earnings call to frame agentic AI as the next platform shift across creativity, productivity and customer experience, while prioritizing user acquisition over near-term pricing actions.

The call also marked a leadership handoff. Chairman and CEO Shantanu Narayen will become executive chair on Dec. 1, when Anil Chakravarthy, president of Customer Experience Orchestration, becomes president and CEO.

ADBE Clears Estimates as Strategy Shifts

Adobe posted non-GAAP diluted earnings of $6.13 per share, which outpaced the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $6.08. Revenues of $6.76 billion topped the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $6.69 billion.

Interim CFO Steve Day said ending ARR reached $27.50 billion, up 11.2% year over year. Customer-group subscription revenues rose 14% to $6.56 billion, while operating cash flow was a record $2.52 billion.

Chairman and CEO Narayen said AI-first ending ARR exceeded $650 million and grew more than 150% year over year. He highlighted more than 1 billion monthly active users across Adobe’s businesses.

Adobe Puts Agentic AI at the Center

Customer Experience Orchestration president Chakravarthy said Adobe aims to lead agentic software across creativity, productivity and customer experience. He emphasized interfaces that work through Adobe products or third-party environments, including ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot.

Chakravarthy said model flexibility, enterprise data and context, and customer value are core requirements. He cited CX Enterprise Coworker as an example of combining agents with Adobe’s experience platform.

Chakravarthy also said Adobe is building agentic capabilities on existing assets, including its PDF expertise and user base. Adobe plans to showcase more innovation at MAX in November.

ADBE Favors Freemium Before Pricing

Chakravarthy said Adobe is directing more users into freemium funnels, then using engagement and AI-usage signals to determine conversion into paid ARR. Creative freemium MAU topped 100 million and grew more than 70% year over year.

Firefly ending ARR across the app and credit packs rose 40% sequentially. Chairman and CEO Narayen said video usage and robust AI-credit consumption inside core Creative Cloud applications were helping drive activity.

In Q&A, Wolfe Research and Evercore ISI analysts pressed on deferred pricing and net new ARR. Narayen said user adoption mattered more than short-term pricing relief, while Chakravarthy tied the ARR pattern to routing more traffic into freemium.

Adobe Lifts Full-Year Guidance, Explains Q4 Outlook

Interim CFO Day raised fiscal 2026 revenue guidance to $26.576-$26.626 billion and non-GAAP earnings guidance to $24.45-$24.50 per share. Adobe maintained its 10.2% target for year-over-year ending ARR growth.

For the fiscal fourth quarter, Interim CFO Day guided revenues of $6.80-$6.85 billion and non-GAAP earnings of $6.30-$6.35 per share, assuming a non-GAAP operating margin of about 44%.

A Citi analyst asked why the full-year revenue increase did not fully match the third-quarter upside. Interim CFO Day said a fourth-quarter foreign-exchange headwind was the only incremental factor, with no underlying business change.

ADBE Addresses RPO and Monetization Questions

A Griffin Securities analyst pressed management on RPO growth of 8% and cRPO growth of 9%. Interim CFO Day said the pattern was consistent with ARR trends and Adobe’s greater freemium emphasis.

Interim CFO Day also said RPO and cRPO typically step up in the fourth quarter and remain relatively flat for the next three quarters. Management expects a seasonally strong enterprise finish.

A Piper Sandler analyst asked which AI pricing model Adobe expects to become primary. Chakravarthy said Adobe will tailor monetization to customer context and usage, including credits, premium tiers, per-seat pricing and usage-based contracts.

Adobe Enters the Transition With Q4 in Focus

Chakravarthy said his near-term priorities are executing the fiscal 2026 plan, preparing for MAX and building the leadership team before taking over as CEO.

Management’s closing emphasis was on expanding users, deepening AI engagement and converting engagement into durable revenue and ARR, alongside a strong enterprise finish.

Zacks Signals for ADBE

ADBE carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). Its Value Score is B, while its Growth, Momentum and VGM Scores are A, indicating stronger characteristics across those style dimensions. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Under the Zacks framework, Style Scores complement rather than override the Zacks Rank. The Rank therefore provides a less favorable near-term signal despite strong Style Scores and can change as analysts revise estimates after the just-reported results.

Key Takeaways Adobe is expanding Acrobat into AI-powered creation, editing, collaboration and document workflows.Acrobat AI Assistant paid MAUs rose more than 150%, while ARR grew about threefold year over year.Adobe uses its freemium funnel and search strategy to drive AI adoption, engagement and conversions. Adobe (ADBE - Free Report) is expanding Acrobat from a traditional PDF-reading and editing tool into an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered document productivity platform, strengthening its prospects across business professionals and consumers. The company’s Productivity Agent combines Acrobat’s document intelligence with Adobe Express’ AI-first creation capabilities, allowing users to understand, create and share information through conversational workflows. The expansion broadens ADBE’s productivity offering as Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) and Alphabet (GOOGL - Free Report) continue to expand their AI capabilities across workplace productivity and document-related workflows. Adobe itself expects competition to intensify as generative and agentic AI expands into document productivity, understanding and AI-enabled workflows.

The Productivity Agent can transform documents into presentations, podcasts and social content, support conversational PDF editing and power sharing capabilities through PDF Spaces. Users can also create branded PDF Spaces with customizable AI assistants for sales prospecting, content marketing and research delivery. These capabilities expand Acrobat beyond basic document management into content consumption, creation and collaboration, increasing its relevance across a broader range of workplace tasks.

Growing adoption suggests that Adobe’s AI strategy is gaining traction. Acrobat and Express monthly active users (MAUs) increased from more than 700 million to more than 850 million year over year in the second quarter of fiscal 2026. Acrobat AI Assistant paid MAUs surged more than 150%, while lifetime AI users in Acrobat tripled. Acrobat AI Assistant annual recurring revenues (ARR) grew approximately threefold year over year. Business Professionals & Consumers subscription revenues reached $1.85 billion, rising 15% in constant currency, reflecting continued strength in Acrobat.

Adobe is leveraging Acrobat’s large freemium funnel to boost conversion opportunities. The company’s users span desktop Reader, Chrome and Microsoft Edge extensions and mobile devices. Adobe analyzes engagement across these free surfaces and introduces monetization opportunities around high-intent actions such as editing and redacting PDFs. The same conversion infrastructure is being extended to Acrobat AI Assistant, Express and Firefly.

AI is changing how customers discover document tools. Adobe noted that user intent increasingly begins with searches such as “summarize this PDF.” The company is using search engine optimization, search engine marketing and Semrush capabilities to direct more search traffic to Acrobat. Adobe.com traffic remains strong, while management believes friction-free onboarding can accelerate user acquisition, deepen engagement and increase customer lifetime value, though the strategy may weigh on near-term ARR.

ADBE Faces Tough CompetitionMicrosoft is intensifying competition with Adobe through Microsoft 365 Copilot, which now combines chat, Cowork, Autopilot and Code to support multistep, enterprise-wide workflows. Paid Copilot seats exceeded 30 million, with net seat additions more than doubling sequentially. Conversations per user nearly doubled year over year, while customers with more than 50,000 seats increased more than sevenfold. Microsoft is moving directly into PDF-centric workflows, with Copilot able to analyze PDFs and generate Power BI dashboards integrated across Fabric, OneLake, GitHub and Agent 365.

Alphabet is challenging Adobe through Gemini’s integration across Google Workspace and Google Cloud. Gemini Enterprise enables businesses to build agents, automate processes and connect enterprise systems, with nearly 90% of Fortune 100 companies using the platform. Gemini Flash supports high-quality summarization and content generation, capabilities that overlap with Acrobat’s document-understanding functionality. In the second quarter of fiscal 2026, the Gemini app reached 950 million MAUs, while AI Mode surpassed 1 billion MAUs, giving Google substantial distribution to capture document-related user intent before users enter Adobe’s Acrobat ecosystem.

ADBE’s Share Price Performance, Valuation & EstimatesShares of Adobe have declined 27.1% year to date against the broader Zacks Computer and Technology sector’s 18.6% growth.

ADBE Stock’s Price Performance
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

ADBE stock is trading at a discount, with a forward 12-month price-to-earnings ratio of 9.51 compared with the broader sector’s 20.73. Adobe has a Value Score of B.

ADBE’s Valuation
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Adobe’s earnings is currently pegged at $6.08 per share, unchanged over the past 30 days, suggesting 14.5% year-over-year growth.

Adobe Inc (NASDAQ:ADBE) looks to give investors a reason for a share rebound when it reports third-quarter financial results Thursday after market close.

Here are the earnings estimates, what experts are saying ahead of the report, and key items to watch.

Adobe Q3 Earnings EstimatesAnalysts expect Adobe to report third-quarter revenue of $6.69 billion, up from $5.99 billion in last year’s third quarter, according to data from Benzinga Pro.

The company beat analyst estimates for revenue in six straight quarters and in nine of the last 10 quarters overall.

Analysts expect Adobe to report third-quarter earnings per share of $6.09, up from $5.31 in last year’s third quarter.

The company has beaten analyst estimates for earnings per share in six straight quarters and in nine of the last 10 quarters overall.

Read Next

What Experts are SayingFreedom Capital Markets Chief Market Strategist Jay Woods cautions that Adobe shares have struggled after recent earnings.

"They have only traded higher twice out of [their] last 12 quarterly reports. The average move has been +/- 5.6%," Woods wrote in a weekly newsletter.

Adobe stock is down 23% year-to-date, and as Woods points out, the stock is down 70% from its March 2024 three-year high.

Woods also highlights that Adobe has lost its Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer in the last six months, recently naming a CEO replacement.

"When they report, they don’t just need an earnings beat, they need to change the narrative, as Wall Street continues to question whether AI is an opportunity or an existential threat to its future growth."

Woods said investors "need a reason to believe again."

Looking at the technicals for Adobe stock, Woods says the "upside appears far greater."

"Risk/reward definitely skews to taking a shot at that upside potential."

Here are recent analyst ratings on Adobe stock and their price targets:

Stifel: Maintained Hold rating, raised price target from $200 to $225 Barclays: Maintained Equal-Weight rating, raised price target from $250 to $295 RBC Capital: Maintained Outperform rating, raised price target from $285 to $315 Citigroup: Maintained Neutral rating, raised price target from $228 to $301 Key Items to WatchAdobe recently named Anil Chakravarthy as its new CEO effective Dec. 1. Chakravarthy currently leads Adobe’s Customer Experience business. The new CEO is said to have the experience to lead Adobe in the AI-driven era.

Chakravarthy has been with Adobe since 2020. Before that, he served as CEO of Informatica for four years. Past work experience also includes roles at Symantec, VeriSign and McKinsey & Co.

News of Chakravarthy’s hiring as CEO didn’t excite investors, with Woods writing that the stock sold off 6.7% on the news.

Adobe’s second-quarter results showed revenue up 13% year over year and total annualized recurring revenue tripling year over year.

The company also reported $22.27 billion in remaining performance obligations at the end of the second quarter. Investors and analysts will be looking for that figure to grow in the new quarter.

With concerns of AI replacing Adobe products, investors and analysts will also be looking for commentary on "AI-driven demand." The company cited strong AI-driven demand in the second quarter, leading to higher full-year guidance.

A beat and a raise are likely the minimum to excite investors about the future, given concerns over AI and the company’s management turnover.

Adobe Stock Price ActionAdobe stock is down 0.6% to $255.65 on Wednesday versus a 52-week trading range of $190.12 to $370.86. Adobe stock is down 23.3% year-to-date in 2026.

Read Next

Photo: jejim / Shutterstock

© 2026 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

Adobe (ADBE -6.73%) has picked its next CEO. The company said on Sept. 3 that Anil Chakravarthy, the insider who runs its customer experience orchestration business, will become president and CEO on Dec. 1.

Shantanu Narayen, who has run Adobe since 2007, will move to executive chair the same day. The news landed after the market closed, and shares fell 6.7% the next day to $266.51 as of this writing -- about 28% below the stock's 52-week high.

A change at the top is rare here: Adobe has handed the CEO job over exactly once in the past 19 years. Bruce Chizen resigned as CEO as of Nov. 30, 2007, and Narayen (then Adobe's president and chief operating officer) took over the next day.

Chakravarthy steps in 19 years later to the day.

Here's what the stock did after that first handover.

Image source: Getty Images.

The last handover came at a terrible timeThe Adobe that Chizen passed along was thriving. Fiscal 2007 revenue rose 23% year over year to about $3.2 billion, and net income climbed 43% to about $724 million.

But the business ran on software licenses back then. Customers bought Creative Suite and Acrobat outright, and revenue depended on their appetite for the next upgrade.

That appetite was about to vanish. Narayen's first trading day as CEO ended with the stock at about $42.

Twelve months later, shares closed at $21, a loss of about half. They went on to trade below $16 by March 2009. Two full years after the handover, the stock still sat around $36, down about 15%.

Was the new CEO the problem?Narayen had little to do with that first-year collapse, in my view. After all, the Great Recession began in December 2007, the very month he took over. The S&P 500 (^GSPC -0.38%) itself lost about 45% during his first 12 months.

Adobe's business model made a bad stretch worse. When corporate budgets froze, customers skipped the upgrade, and the damage showed up on a delay. Revenue growth decelerated to 13% in fiscal 2008. Then revenue fell 18% in fiscal 2009 to about $2.9 billion, and net income dropped by more than half that year.

Zooming out makes the same point. From about $42 at the handover, shares have gained more than 500% over Narayen's nearly 19 years. And the company he hands over is targeting $26.5 billion to $26.6 billion of revenue this fiscal year -- more than eight times fiscal 2007's total.

The next CEO starts in a better spotThe differences this time mostly favor the incoming CEO. Narayen isn't leaving. Chizen, by contrast, exited the top job and stayed on as a strategic advisor for a year.

Narayen also telegraphed the change back in March, saying he would step down once the board picked a successor. And Chakravarthy, for his part, ran Informatica as its CEO from 2015 to 2020 before joining Adobe.

The business is arguably stronger, too.

Chakravarthy takes over $27.1 billion of annualized recurring revenue. In Adobe's fiscal second quarter of 2026, which ended May 29, revenue grew 13% year over year, reaching a record $6.62 billion. Management raised its full-year targets in June.

Another recession could still hurt. But subscription revenue doesn't vanish the way skipped upgrades did in 2008.

Not everything favors him, though. Friday's sell-off wasn't only about who got the job. David Wadhwani, who ran Adobe's creativity and productivity business and was reportedly a contender for the job, is leaving the company.

And the worry that artificial intelligence will disrupt software makers, which has weighed on the stock since 2024, hasn't gone anywhere. Narayen, not Chakravarthy, will still be CEO for Thursday's fiscal third-quarter report, due Sept. 10.

Premium Feature

Moneyball Superscore

80/100

Today's Change

(

-6.73

%) $

-19.24

Current Price

$

266.51

Ultimately, I think this record says more about entry prices than about new CEOs. Investors who bought shares on Narayen's first trading day as CEO paid about 26 times adjusted earnings for the fiscal year that had just ended, right as a recession was starting. Today, shares sell for about 9.5 times the fiscal 2027 earnings that analysts project, even though revenue is still growing at a double-digit rate.

Of course, Chakravarthy could still stumble, and the executive departures add uncertainty. But the last handover suggests the first year gets decided by the economy and the starting valuation, not the new CEO.

I wouldn't sell Adobe over this transition. If anything, at this price, I'd rather buy than sell.

Adobe on Thursday named Anil Chakravarthy as its next CEO, succeeding Shantanu Narayen, who announced he would step down earlier this year.

Chakravarthy, who most recently served as president of Adobe's customer experience orchestration and worldwide field operations, will take the helm Dec. 1, the company said. He will also join Adobe's board.

Narayen will become executive chair and "work closely" with Chakravarthy during the transition, Adobe said. Narayen said last March he would leave his role after joining the company in 1998 and serving as the head of Adobe for 18 years.

"Adobe's opportunity ahead is limitless with our track record in creating new market vategories and world-class products," Narayen said in a statement. "Anil is an experienced transformational leader who leads with values, integrity and a deep knowledge of our business."

Shares of Adobe fell about 2% in extended trading.

This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.

Read more CNBC tech newsOpenAI begins rolling out Astra model after warning of its advanced cyber capabilitiesHugging Face approached Nvidia's Huang weeks ahead of $12.9B acquisition, CEO tells CNBCHow Meta will pull off massive changes to its social media appsAnthropic's distillation battle turns to the dark web as China concerns swell

Adobe has acquired India-based marketing intelligence startup Rilo in a deal involving licensing and team acquisition, TechCrunch learned and the company confirmed. This is Adobe’s second acquisition from India after it bought video platform Rephrase.ai in 2023. The companies didn’t disclose the deal’s terms.

Beyond confirming the deal, Adobe declined to comment.

The acquisition gives Adobe a small team and technology focused on automating marketing workflows, which have been changing as companies use AI to build tools to automate the creation, deployment, and tracking of campaigns, get action items from meetings or calls to complete tasks, and increase brand visibility on platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. Rilo’s technology could bolster Adobe’s existing products as the company targets its larger customers.

Founded by IIT batchmates Georgi Boby and Dhruv Jaglan in 2025, Rilo raised $1 million from investors including Peak XV, DeVC, and Day Zero Ventures at a $10 million valuation. A source told TechCrunch that investors will get an exit from this deal, and Adobe will integrate some of Rilo’s IP along with the six-member team.

The company worked on letting go-to-market teams create custom workflows, including competitor intelligence, content repurposing and distribution, and sales call analysis. It also allowed teams to set up custom workflows comparable to tools like Claude Cowork and ChatGPT Work.

Post-acquisition, Rilo will shut down and won’t be available to its customers.

Rilo co-founders Dhruv Jaglan and Georgi BobyImage Credits:Rilo “We’re very excited that Rilo has been acquired by Adobe in such a short span of time,” Rahul Gupta, managing partner, Day Zero Ventures told TechCrunch over email. “Their workflow builder product was way ahead of the curve and shall be extremely valuable to a giant like Adobe in enhancing customer experience and productivity.”

Adobe made a marquee marketing acquisition last year by buying SEO optimization company Semrush for $1.9 billion.

DeVC’s Rahul Mathur told TechCrunch that Rilo could fit into Adobe’s CX and marketing suite to handle complex workflows and give customers visibility into actions they take on the creative company’s platform.

Rivals like Canva have also bolstered their marketing portfolio with acquisitions and new launches. Meanwhile, Amazon, Google, and Meta have built their own AI-powered marketing rails.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

Ivan covers global consumer tech developments at TechCrunch. He is based out of India and has previously worked at publications including Huffington Post and The Next Web.

You can contact or verify outreach from Ivan by emailing [email protected] or via encrypted message at ivan.42 on Signal.

Key Takeaways Adobe's CXO portfolio gains traction as enterprises adopt AI-driven marketing tools.ADBE's CXO AI-first ARR surged fourfold year over year in second-quarter fiscal 2026.Adobe sees 80% of AEP and AEM customers using agentic capabilities. Adobe (ADBE - Free Report) is benefiting from expanding enterprise adoption of its Customer Experience Orchestration (CXO) portfolio as companies increasingly use artificial intelligence (AI) to automate marketing, personalize customer interactions and scale content creation. Adobe is positioning Adobe Experience Platform (AEP), GenStudio, Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) and CX Enterprise as key components of this strategy. Growing adoption could help Adobe capture a larger share of enterprise marketing spending while strengthening its competitive position against the likes of Salesforce (CRM - Free Report) and Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) .

Enterprise demand for Adobe’s CXO offerings remains encouraging. GenStudio’s ending annualized recurring revenues (ARR) increased more than 25% year over year in the second quarter of fiscal 2026, while subscription revenues from AEP and native applications rose more than 30%. Ending ARR across GenStudio, AEP and applications, and AEM and agentic web offerings increased more than 20%. Notably, Customer Experience Orchestration AI-first ARR surged fourfold year over year, indicating rising monetization of Adobe’s agentic marketing capabilities.

Agentic AI adoption provides another growth avenue. More than 80% of AEP and AEM customers are using agentic capabilities, while more than 1,500 customer trials are underway across Adobe LLM Optimizer, Sites Optimizer and Brand Concierge. Adobe launched CX Enterprise, an end-to-end agentic AI system designed to manage the customer lifecycle from prospect acquisition through conversion and loyalty. CX Enterprise Coworker had more than 150 leading enterprises participating in its early-adoption program ahead of general availability.

Adobe’s expanding ecosystem could improve adoption. CX Enterprise integrates with Microsoft Copilot, Anthropic, OpenAI and Google Gemini, while Adobe’s NVIDIA partnership brings CX Enterprise Coworker capabilities to NVIDIA’s enterprise-agent platform. Leading agencies including dentsu, Havas, Omnicom, Publicis, Stagwell and WPP are standardizing on Adobe’s AI-powered capabilities. Adobe’s acquisition of Semrush expands its CXO portfolio through search-engine optimization and generative-engine optimization capabilities that complement AEM and its agentic web offerings.

ADBE Faces Tough CompetitionSalesforce is strengthening its competitive position through Agentforce, Data 360, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud and Slack. Agentforce ARR reached $1.5 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2027, while accounts with agents in production increased 70% sequentially. Customers generated 3.2 billion Agentforce workload units, up 97% sequentially, and bookings for Agentforce One Edition and Agentforce for Apps more than doubled. Salesforce is seeing encouraging adoption of its next-generation marketing offering, while Data 360 continues to gain momentum. This integrated data, applications and agentic architecture positions Salesforce to compete with Adobe’s CXO strategy.

Microsoft is increasing competitive pressure through Dynamics 365, Copilot and Agent 365. Agent 365 already has nearly 40 million agents registered across tens of thousands of companies, while Microsoft 365 Copilot surpassed 30 million paid seats. Microsoft is redesigning Dynamics 365 for an agent-first environment and has exposed more than 650,000 Model Context Protocol actions across sales, finance, supply chain, HR and customer service. Customer-service credit consumption increased fourfold sequentially, while Dynamics 365 revenues rose 13% year over year. Microsoft’s vast enterprise installed base and integration of CRM, ERP, Copilot and AI agents could limit Adobe’s ability to capture a larger share of enterprise CXO spending.

ADBE’s Share Price Performance, Valuation & EstimatesShares of Adobe have declined 16.7% year to date, underperforming the broader Zacks Computer and Technology sector’s 17.1% growth.

ADBE Stock’s YTD Price Performance
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

ADBE stock is trading at a discount, with a forward 12-month price-to-earnings ratio of 10.95X compared with the broader sector’s 20.76X. Adobe has a Value Score of B.

ADBE’s Valuation
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Adobe’s earnings is currently pegged at $6.08 per share, unchanged over the past 30 days, suggesting 14.50% year-over-year growth.

Bank of New York Mellon Corp bought a new stake in Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE – Free Report) in the second quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The institutional investor bought 4,655,489 shares of the software company’s stock, valued at approximately $954,468,000. Bank of New York Mellon Corp owned 1.17% of Adobe as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other hedge funds have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in ADBE. SWAN Capital LLC raised its position in Adobe by 43.1% in the 3rd quarter. SWAN Capital LLC now owns 103 shares of the software company’s stock valued at $36,000 after purchasing an additional 31 shares during the last quarter. Logan Capital Management Inc. raised its holdings in shares of Adobe by 0.3% in the third quarter. Logan Capital Management Inc. now owns 9,789 shares of the software company’s stock valued at $3,453,000 after buying an additional 32 shares during the last quarter. Vista Capital Partners Inc. boosted its stake in shares of Adobe by 5.8% during the second quarter. Vista Capital Partners Inc. now owns 624 shares of the software company’s stock worth $241,000 after buying an additional 34 shares during the period. Klingman & Associates LLC grew its holdings in shares of Adobe by 3.5% during the fourth quarter. Klingman & Associates LLC now owns 1,104 shares of the software company’s stock worth $386,000 after buying an additional 37 shares during the last quarter. Finally, WPG Advisers LLC increased its position in Adobe by 45.9% in the 4th quarter. WPG Advisers LLC now owns 124 shares of the software company’s stock valued at $43,000 after acquiring an additional 39 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 81.79% of the company’s stock.

More Adobe News Here are the key news stories impacting Adobe this week:

Positive Sentiment: Expanded Firefly AI capabilities: Adobe made Firefly’s AI-generated music, voiceovers, speech and sound-effects tools generally available. The production-oriented features could strengthen Adobe’s position in creative software, increase user engagement and create additional monetization opportunities. Adobe Firefly adds AI music, voiceovers and sound effects Positive Sentiment: Improving AI investor sentiment: Bank of America raised its price target for Adobe, citing the company’s potential to monetize artificial intelligence. This reflects growing optimism that Adobe’s broad creative and document ecosystem can benefit from AI demand. ServiceNow, Adobe, Workday stocks get BofA PT boost Positive Sentiment: Recovery thesis remains intact: Recent commentary highlights Adobe’s relatively low valuation, strong free-cash-flow generation and potential for a sustained recovery as its AI strategy develops. Another analysis describes the shares as undervalued despite the recent rally. Adobe: Strong Recovery Is Just Beginning Neutral Sentiment: AI strategy is still being evaluated: Adobe is broadening access to AI tools through a freemium approach and has paused price increases to expand its user base. The strategy may support double-digit recurring-revenue growth, but investors need proof that wider adoption will translate into durable paid revenue. Is Adobe Below Fair Value On Its Freemium AI Push? Negative Sentiment: Conflicting Bank of America signal: Although BofA increased its target from $190 to $220, it retained an “underperform” rating. The target remains below the prevailing share price, signaling concern that Adobe’s AI progress may not yet justify the stock’s recovery. Benzinga analyst update Analyst Ratings Changes ADBE has been the subject of a number of recent research reports. Oppenheimer reaffirmed a “market perform” rating on shares of Adobe in a research report on Friday, June 12th. Citigroup restated a “market perform” rating on shares of Adobe in a research note on Friday, June 12th. UBS Group downgraded Adobe from a “buy” rating to an “equal weight” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 21st. Evercore set a $225.00 price objective on shares of Adobe and gave the company an “in-line” rating in a research report on Friday, June 12th. Finally, CLSA started coverage on shares of Adobe in a research report on Monday, July 20th. They set an “outperform” rating and a $300.00 price objective for the company. Seven research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, twenty-one have given a Hold rating and five have given a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $270.96. Read Our Latest Stock Analysis on ADBE

Insider Transactions at Adobe In related news, Director David A. Ricks bought 10,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Thursday, June 25th. The stock was bought at an average cost of $194.51 per share, with a total value of $1,945,100.00. Following the completion of the acquisition, the director owned 17,655 shares in the company, valued at approximately $3,434,074.05. This represents a 130.63% increase in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. Also, CAO Jillian Forusz sold 416 shares of Adobe stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, July 29th. The shares were sold at an average price of $264.33, for a total transaction of $109,961.28. Following the sale, the chief accounting officer owned 3,824 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,010,797.92. The trade was a 9.81% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Company insiders own 0.20% of the company’s stock.

Adobe Stock Down 0.1% ADBE opened at $272.22 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.42, a current ratio of 0.75 and a quick ratio of 0.75. Adobe Inc. has a 12 month low of $190.12 and a 12 month high of $370.86. The stock has a market capitalization of $108.21 billion, a P/E ratio of 15.57, a P/E/G ratio of 0.92 and a beta of 1.40. The business has a 50 day simple moving average of $231.18 and a 200-day simple moving average of $244.78.

Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE – Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, June 11th. The software company reported $5.96 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $5.82 by $0.14. Adobe had a return on equity of 65.11% and a net margin of 28.69%.The firm had revenue of $6.62 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $6.45 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business posted $5.06 earnings per share. Adobe’s revenue was up 12.7% compared to the same quarter last year. Adobe has set its FY 2026 guidance at 24.350-24.450 EPS and its Q3 2026 guidance at 6.050-6.100 EPS. On average, equities analysts anticipate that Adobe Inc. will post 19.81 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Adobe Profile (Free Report)

Adobe Inc, founded in 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke and headquartered in San Jose, California, is a global software company that develops tools and services for creative professionals, marketers and enterprises. Under the leadership of CEO Shantanu Narayen, who has led the company since 2007, Adobe has evolved from a provider of desktop publishing tools into a cloud-centric provider of digital media and digital experience solutions.

The company’s core offerings are organized around digital media and digital experience.

Featured Stories Five stocks we like better than Adobe 3 Energy Stocks Raising Dividends as the Sector Surges 5 Reasons the S&P 500 Could Keep Rallying Through Year-End Walmart’s Post-Earnings Drop Could Be a Buying Opportunity The Trade Desk’s Earnings Miss Raises a Bigger Question About Its AI Future Want to see what other hedge funds are holding ADBE? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE – Free Report).

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Aurora Investment Counsel acquired a new position in Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE – Free Report) in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm acquired 7,764 shares of the software company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,592,000.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Edmond DE Rothschild Holding S.A. acquired a new stake in Adobe in the second quarter worth about $1,450,000. United Bank acquired a new position in shares of Adobe during the second quarter valued at about $295,000. Madison Asset Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of Adobe during the second quarter valued at about $7,105,000. Csenge Advisory Group purchased a new position in shares of Adobe in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $245,000. Finally, Shepherd Financial Partners LLC purchased a new position in shares of Adobe in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $523,000. 81.79% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Adobe Stock Up 3.5% ADBE stock opened at $272.47 on Thursday. The company has a market capitalization of $108.31 billion, a P/E ratio of 15.59, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.89 and a beta of 1.40. Adobe Inc. has a 12 month low of $190.12 and a 12 month high of $370.86. The firm’s fifty day simple moving average is $230.10 and its 200-day simple moving average is $244.93. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.42, a current ratio of 0.75 and a quick ratio of 0.75.

Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE – Get Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, June 11th. The software company reported $5.96 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $5.82 by $0.14. Adobe had a net margin of 28.69% and a return on equity of 65.11%. The firm had revenue of $6.62 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $6.45 billion. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $5.06 earnings per share. The firm’s revenue was up 12.7% compared to the same quarter last year. Adobe has set its FY 2026 guidance at 24.350-24.450 EPS and its Q3 2026 guidance at 6.050-6.100 EPS. As a group, equities research analysts forecast that Adobe Inc. will post 19.81 earnings per share for the current year. Insider Activity at Adobe In related news, CAO Jillian Forusz sold 416 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, July 29th. The shares were sold at an average price of $264.33, for a total value of $109,961.28. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief accounting officer directly owned 3,824 shares in the company, valued at $1,010,797.92. The trade was a 9.81% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, Director David A. Ricks purchased 10,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, June 25th. The shares were purchased at an average cost of $194.51 per share, for a total transaction of $1,945,100.00. Following the completion of the acquisition, the director directly owned 17,655 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $3,434,074.05. This represents a 130.63% increase in their position. The SEC filing for this purchase provides additional information. 0.20% of the stock is owned by insiders.

More Adobe News Here are the key news stories impacting Adobe this week:

Positive Sentiment: Adobe’s recent rally has been supported by improving short-term momentum and a broader rotation out of semiconductor stocks into lagging technology names. The company is also viewed by some analysts as undervalued after its earlier decline. Netflix, Salesforce, and Adobe Rally as Investors Rotate Out of Semiconductors and Into Beaten Down Stocks Is It Too Late to Buy Adobe Inc After Rally? GF Value Says Undervalued Positive Sentiment: Adobe’s freemium strategy for AI-powered tools— including holding off on some price increases to expand its user base—could accelerate adoption and support the company’s goal of double-digit annual recurring-revenue growth. Analysts also continue to favor Adobe over DocuSign, citing its stronger competitive position. Is Adobe Below Fair Value On Its Freemium AI Push? Neutral Sentiment: A dispute involving Rebel Creamery’s packaging design created with Adobe Illustrator has led to a court-ordered rebrand and Rebel’s Chapter 11 filing. The matter concerns an Adobe software user and does not appear to create a material financial impact for Adobe. How a DIY Adobe Illustrator Design Landed Rebel Creamery in a $23.8 Million Fight Negative Sentiment: Bank of America raised its price target but retained an “underperform” rating. Its new target remains materially below Adobe’s recent trading level, signaling concern that the rally may have outpaced the company’s near-term fundamentals. Bank of America Raises Adobe Price Target While Maintaining Underperform Rating Analyst Ratings Changes Several research firms have weighed in on ADBE. Phillip Securities downgraded shares of Adobe from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Monday, June 29th. Wells Fargo & Company decreased their price target on shares of Adobe from $330.00 to $250.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a report on Friday, June 12th. Mizuho lowered their price objective on shares of Adobe from $270.00 to $245.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research note on Friday, June 12th. TD Cowen dropped their price objective on shares of Adobe from $310.00 to $285.00 and set a “hold” rating on the stock in a report on Monday, June 8th. Finally, Citigroup reissued a “market perform” rating on shares of Adobe in a research report on Friday, June 12th. Seven research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, twenty-one have assigned a Hold rating and five have assigned a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $270.96.

Read Our Latest Analysis on ADBE

Adobe Profile (Free Report)

Adobe Inc, founded in 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke and headquartered in San Jose, California, is a global software company that develops tools and services for creative professionals, marketers and enterprises. Under the leadership of CEO Shantanu Narayen, who has led the company since 2007, Adobe has evolved from a provider of desktop publishing tools into a cloud-centric provider of digital media and digital experience solutions.

The company’s core offerings are organized around digital media and digital experience.

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Posted by Defense World Staff on Aug 10th, 2026

Deane Retirement Strategies Inc. cut its stake in shares of Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE – Free Report) by 15.7% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 23,361 shares of the software company’s stock after selling 4,351 shares during the quarter. Adobe makes up approximately 2.0% of Deane Retirement Strategies Inc.’s portfolio, making the stock its 23rd biggest position. Deane Retirement Strategies Inc.’s holdings in Adobe were worth $4,791,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other hedge funds have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in ADBE. HF Advisory Group LLC raised its holdings in Adobe by 16.8% during the second quarter. HF Advisory Group LLC now owns 5,529 shares of the software company’s stock worth $1,134,000 after purchasing an additional 794 shares in the last quarter. Chemistry Wealth Management LLC raised its stake in Adobe by 117.2% during the 2nd quarter. Chemistry Wealth Management LLC now owns 1,803 shares of the software company’s stock worth $370,000 after acquiring an additional 973 shares in the last quarter. Hennion & Walsh Asset Management Inc. lifted its position in Adobe by 4.3% in the second quarter. Hennion & Walsh Asset Management Inc. now owns 7,585 shares of the software company’s stock valued at $1,555,000 after acquiring an additional 313 shares during the last quarter. Crumly & Associates Inc. boosted its stake in Adobe by 16.4% in the second quarter. Crumly & Associates Inc. now owns 2,219 shares of the software company’s stock valued at $455,000 after acquiring an additional 312 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Seilern Investment Management Ltd grew its holdings in shares of Adobe by 1.6% during the second quarter. Seilern Investment Management Ltd now owns 179,896 shares of the software company’s stock worth $36,882,000 after purchasing an additional 2,876 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 81.79% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth ADBE has been the subject of a number of research analyst reports. Sanford C. Bernstein decreased their target price on Adobe from $447.00 to $379.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research report on Friday, June 12th. Wells Fargo & Company cut their price target on Adobe from $330.00 to $250.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research report on Friday, June 12th. Bank of America reissued an “underperform” rating and issued a $190.00 price objective on shares of Adobe in a report on Tuesday, July 7th. Oppenheimer reaffirmed a “market perform” rating on shares of Adobe in a report on Friday, June 12th. Finally, Citigroup reiterated a “market perform” rating on shares of Adobe in a research note on Friday, June 12th. Seven equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, twenty-one have assigned a Hold rating and six have assigned a Sell rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $271.30.

Check Out Our Latest Stock Report on Adobe

Insider Buying and Selling In other Adobe news, Director David A. Ricks acquired 10,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, June 25th. The shares were purchased at an average price of $194.51 per share, with a total value of $1,945,100.00. Following the completion of the acquisition, the director directly owned 17,655 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $3,434,074.05. The trade was a 130.63% increase in their position. The acquisition was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, CAO Jillian Forusz sold 416 shares of the stock in a transaction on Wednesday, July 29th. The stock was sold at an average price of $264.33, for a total value of $109,961.28. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief accounting officer owned 3,824 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,010,797.92. The trade was a 9.81% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. 0.20% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Key Headlines Impacting Adobe Here are the key news stories impacting Adobe this week:

Positive Sentiment: Adobe launched a unified ChatGPT plug-in that brings more than 70 creative and productivity tools—including Photoshop, Lightroom, Acrobat, image, video and PDF capabilities—directly into OpenAI’s chatbot. The integration could make Adobe’s products easier to access, expand usage and position the company as an AI enabler rather than an AI casualty. Adobe Debuts ChatGPT App Featuring All Its Programs Positive Sentiment: Recent coverage highlights Adobe’s valuation after its sharp sell-off. The company is still producing double-digit revenue growth, stable margins and substantial free cash flow, while its latest quarterly results exceeded earnings and revenue expectations. A recovery in investor sentiment or a valuation re-rating could provide significant upside. Buy the Dip or Run: 3 Software Stocks Down 50% Face Their Moment of Truth Positive Sentiment: Zacks characterized ADBE as both a long-term growth candidate and a strong value stock, reflecting its depressed valuation relative to historical levels and continuing earnings potential. Why Adobe Systems Is a Top Growth Stock for the Long-Term Neutral Sentiment: Akamai’s strong cloud and security results offer an indirect positive signal because Adobe is among its customers, but the report does not provide new information about Adobe’s financial performance. Akamai Beats Quarterly Estimates on Cloud Infrastructure Demand Negative Sentiment: Adobe remains one of the software companies targeted by AI-disruption concerns. AI-native competitors could pressure pricing, customer retention and growth, and promotional commentary warns of insider selling, talent departures and business-model changes. These claims are not confirmed in the supplied reporting, but they underscore the key risk investors are monitoring. These Are the Four Signs a Company Is About to Be Destroyed by AI Adobe Stock Performance Shares of ADBE opened at $265.21 on Monday. The stock has a market capitalization of $105.42 billion, a P/E ratio of 15.17, a P/E/G ratio of 0.89 and a beta of 1.40. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.42, a quick ratio of 0.75 and a current ratio of 0.75. Adobe Inc. has a 1 year low of $190.12 and a 1 year high of $370.86. The company’s fifty day moving average is $228.08 and its two-hundred day moving average is $246.75.

Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE – Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Thursday, June 11th. The software company reported $5.96 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $5.82 by $0.14. The company had revenue of $6.62 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $6.45 billion. Adobe had a net margin of 28.69% and a return on equity of 65.11%. The business’s revenue was up 12.7% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the business earned $5.06 EPS. Adobe has set its FY 2026 guidance at 24.350-24.450 EPS and its Q3 2026 guidance at 6.050-6.100 EPS. On average, sell-side analysts predict that Adobe Inc. will post 19.81 earnings per share for the current year.

Adobe announced that its board has approved a share repurchase program on Tuesday, April 21st that authorizes the company to buyback $25.00 billion in outstanding shares. This buyback authorization authorizes the software company to reacquire up to 24.9% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares buyback programs are typically an indication that the company’s management believes its shares are undervalued.

About Adobe (Free Report)

Adobe Inc, founded in 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke and headquartered in San Jose, California, is a global software company that develops tools and services for creative professionals, marketers and enterprises. Under the leadership of CEO Shantanu Narayen, who has led the company since 2007, Adobe has evolved from a provider of desktop publishing tools into a cloud-centric provider of digital media and digital experience solutions.

The company’s core offerings are organized around digital media and digital experience.

Read More Five stocks we like better than Adobe Albemarle’s Blowout Quarter Shows Why Lithium Still Matters Can DICK’S Turn Foot Locker Into a Winner? Why Dutch Bros Plunged Despite a Q2 Earnings Beat and Record Revenue Take-Two’s Q1 Results Leave GTA 6 Bulls Stuck in the Fog of War Want to see what other hedge funds are holding ADBE? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE – Free Report).

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Posted by Defense World Staff on Jul 22nd, 2026

Andra AP fonden lowered its position in Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE – Free Report) by 46.6% during the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 63,189 shares of the software company’s stock after selling 55,251 shares during the period. Andra AP fonden’s holdings in Adobe were worth $15,360,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently bought and sold shares of the business. Western Pacific Wealth Management LP acquired a new stake in Adobe during the 4th quarter valued at approximately $26,000. Measured Wealth Private Client Group LLC acquired a new position in shares of Adobe in the 3rd quarter valued at $26,000. Beacon Financial Strategies CORP purchased a new stake in shares of Adobe during the 4th quarter worth about $28,000. Marquette Asset Management LLC grew its holdings in Adobe by 72.3% in the fourth quarter. Marquette Asset Management LLC now owns 81 shares of the software company’s stock valued at $28,000 after purchasing an additional 34 shares during the period. Finally, TrustBank acquired a new stake in Adobe in the 4th quarter valued at $28,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 81.79% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes Several equities analysts have issued reports on ADBE shares. Barclays decreased their price objective on shares of Adobe from $275.00 to $250.00 and set an “equal weight” rating on the stock in a report on Friday, June 12th. Mizuho reduced their price target on shares of Adobe from $270.00 to $245.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research report on Friday, June 12th. Citizens Jmp reaffirmed a “market perform” rating on shares of Adobe in a research note on Friday, June 12th. Stifel Nicolaus reiterated a “hold” rating and issued a $200.00 price objective (down from $350.00) on shares of Adobe in a report on Friday, June 12th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company cut their price objective on Adobe from $330.00 to $250.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research note on Friday, June 12th. Seven equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, twenty-one have issued a Hold rating and six have issued a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $271.30.

Check Out Our Latest Report on Adobe

Insiders Place Their Bets In related news, CAO Jillian Forusz sold 755 shares of Adobe stock in a transaction on Thursday, April 30th. The shares were sold at an average price of $246.25, for a total transaction of $185,918.75. Following the sale, the chief accounting officer directly owned 3,521 shares in the company, valued at $867,046.25. This trade represents a 17.66% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Also, CEO Shantanu Narayen sold 75,000 shares of Adobe stock in a transaction on Tuesday, April 28th. The shares were sold at an average price of $243.54, for a total transaction of $18,265,500.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 359,538 shares in the company, valued at approximately $87,561,884.52. This represents a 17.26% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. 0.20% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

More Adobe News Here are the key news stories impacting Adobe this week:

Negative Sentiment: Morgan Stanley lowered Adobe to Underweight, saying multiple strategic transitions are happening at once and that AI disruption could make it harder for the company to reaccelerate growth. Adobe stock has been crushed by AI fears. Now Morgan Stanley has cut its rating to underweight Negative Sentiment: More Wall Street downgrades and commentary around Adobe’s AI exposure are adding to the selling pressure, with some analysts saying peers may offer cleaner AI monetization and faster growth. ADBE Stock Drops After Morgan Stanley Downgrade – Sees ‘Cleaner Growth And AI Monetization Elsewhere’ Neutral Sentiment: Adobe continues to push into AI with new features in its experimental Project Indigo camera app, highlighting that it is still investing in product innovation even as investors worry about competitive threats. Adobe crams multiple AI tools into its experimental camera app Neutral Sentiment: Some coverage argues Adobe still looks attractive on valuation and that one analyst sees meaningful upside from current levels, but that view is being outweighed today by broader AI-related concern. ADBE stock is falling again but here’s why one Wall Street analyst sees a 31% upside Adobe Stock Performance NASDAQ ADBE opened at $227.16 on Wednesday. The stock’s fifty day moving average is $228.08 and its two-hundred day moving average is $253.81. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.42, a quick ratio of 0.75 and a current ratio of 0.75. The firm has a market capitalization of $90.30 billion, a P/E ratio of 13.00, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.79 and a beta of 1.43. Adobe Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $190.12 and a fifty-two week high of $376.16.

Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE – Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, June 11th. The software company reported $5.96 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $5.82 by $0.14. Adobe had a net margin of 28.69% and a return on equity of 65.11%. The firm had revenue of $6.62 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $6.45 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned $5.06 EPS. Adobe’s revenue was up 12.7% on a year-over-year basis. Adobe has set its FY 2026 guidance at 24.350-24.450 EPS and its Q3 2026 guidance at 6.050-6.100 EPS. On average, research analysts anticipate that Adobe Inc. will post 19.81 earnings per share for the current year.

Adobe announced that its board has approved a share buyback program on Tuesday, April 21st that permits the company to buyback $25.00 billion in outstanding shares. This buyback authorization permits the software company to purchase up to 24.9% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback programs are usually an indication that the company’s board believes its shares are undervalued.

Adobe Profile (Free Report)

Adobe Inc, founded in 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke and headquartered in San Jose, California, is a global software company that develops tools and services for creative professionals, marketers and enterprises. Under the leadership of CEO Shantanu Narayen, who has led the company since 2007, Adobe has evolved from a provider of desktop publishing tools into a cloud-centric provider of digital media and digital experience solutions.

The company’s core offerings are organized around digital media and digital experience.

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Aviance Capital Partners LLC raised its stake in Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE – Free Report) by 34.6% during the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 11,066 shares of the software company’s stock after acquiring an additional 2,846 shares during the quarter. Aviance Capital Partners LLC’s holdings in Adobe were worth $2,690,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of the company. Western Pacific Wealth Management LP purchased a new stake in Adobe in the fourth quarter worth $26,000. Measured Wealth Private Client Group LLC purchased a new position in shares of Adobe during the 3rd quarter valued at $26,000. Beacon Financial Strategies CORP purchased a new position in shares of Adobe during the 4th quarter valued at $28,000. Marquette Asset Management LLC grew its stake in shares of Adobe by 72.3% during the 4th quarter. Marquette Asset Management LLC now owns 81 shares of the software company’s stock worth $28,000 after acquiring an additional 34 shares during the period. Finally, TrustBank bought a new position in shares of Adobe during the 4th quarter worth $28,000. 81.79% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Adobe Stock Performance NASDAQ:ADBE opened at $237.25 on Friday. The business’s fifty day moving average is $228.58 and its 200 day moving average is $256.19. The firm has a market cap of $94.31 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 13.57, a PEG ratio of 0.80 and a beta of 1.43. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.42, a quick ratio of 0.75 and a current ratio of 0.75. Adobe Inc. has a 52-week low of $190.12 and a 52-week high of $376.16.

Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE – Get Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, June 11th. The software company reported $5.96 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $5.82 by $0.14. The business had revenue of $6.62 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $6.45 billion. Adobe had a return on equity of 65.11% and a net margin of 28.69%.The firm’s revenue was up 12.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the company earned $5.06 EPS. Adobe has set its FY 2026 guidance at 24.350-24.450 EPS and its Q3 2026 guidance at 6.050-6.100 EPS. Research analysts predict that Adobe Inc. will post 19.81 EPS for the current year.

Adobe announced that its Board of Directors has initiated a share buyback program on Tuesday, April 21st that allows the company to repurchase $25.00 billion in outstanding shares. This repurchase authorization allows the software company to buy up to 24.9% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock repurchase programs are typically a sign that the company’s board believes its stock is undervalued.

Insider Activity In other news, Director David A. Ricks bought 10,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, June 25th. The shares were acquired at an average price of $194.51 per share, with a total value of $1,945,100.00. Following the acquisition, the director owned 17,655 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $3,434,074.05. The trade was a 130.63% increase in their position. The acquisition was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. Also, CFO Daniel Durn sold 1,336 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, April 20th. The stock was sold at an average price of $248.02, for a total transaction of $331,354.72. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer owned 42,833 shares in the company, valued at $10,623,440.66. This represents a 3.02% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. Insiders have sold a total of 77,091 shares of company stock valued at $18,782,773 over the last ninety days. 0.20% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Analyst Ratings Changes ADBE has been the subject of several recent research reports. BMO Capital Markets decreased their price objective on Adobe from $285.00 to $230.00 and set a “market perform” rating for the company in a report on Friday, June 12th. Stifel Nicolaus reiterated a “hold” rating and set a $200.00 target price (down from $350.00) on shares of Adobe in a research report on Friday, June 12th. KeyCorp reduced their target price on shares of Adobe from $235.00 to $195.00 and set an “underweight” rating for the company in a research note on Friday, June 12th. Sanford C. Bernstein lowered their price target on shares of Adobe from $447.00 to $379.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research report on Friday, June 12th. Finally, Bank of America restated an “underperform” rating and set a $190.00 price target on shares of Adobe in a research note on Tuesday, July 7th. Six investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, twenty-two have issued a Hold rating and five have given a Sell rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $275.00.

Read Our Latest Research Report on ADBE

More Adobe News Here are the key news stories impacting Adobe this week:

Positive Sentiment: Multiple reports highlight Adobe’s attractive valuation, with some investors viewing the selloff as creating a buying opportunity and even raising the possibility that the company could become a takeover target. Is Adobe (ADBE) a Takeover Target? Rumors Are Swirling Positive Sentiment: Adobe was compared favorably with Autodesk on revenue trends, with Adobe showing larger scale and consistent quarter-over-quarter growth over the last eight quarters, which supports the case for durable business momentum. Adobe vs. Autodesk: What Revenue Trends Reveal About These Software Stocks Positive Sentiment: Several pieces frame Adobe as a potential beneficiary of the market’s reassessment of software stocks, arguing that AI is pressuring recurring-revenue models but that strong companies like Adobe are adapting and may emerge as relative winners. How to Find the Bargains in the Software Stock Wreckage Positive Sentiment: Commentary on Adobe’s “compelling valuation” and “generational buying opportunity” suggests investors are increasingly seeing the stock as undervalued despite intensifying competition. Adobe: Compelling Valuation Even Amid Intensifying Competition Positive Sentiment: Broader software-sector analysis also points to Adobe as having real competitive moats that AI may not easily replace, reinforcing confidence in the company’s long-term positioning. Alpha Buying: The Real Moats AI Can’t Replace Neutral Sentiment: Additional coverage on e-commerce and digital media trends mentions Adobe’s AI-related efforts, including its acquisition of Rephrase.AI, but the article is more about industry innovation than a direct catalyst for the stock. E-Commerce Update – AI Transforming Digital Retail Through Innovation and Connectivity Negative Sentiment: One article noted that an open-source browser-based PDF toolkit can replace Adobe Acrobat, highlighting ongoing competitive pressure in one of Adobe’s core product areas. I replaced Adobe Acrobat with a 10x faster, browser-based open-source PDF toolkit Adobe Company Profile (Free Report)

Adobe Inc, founded in 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke and headquartered in San Jose, California, is a global software company that develops tools and services for creative professionals, marketers and enterprises. Under the leadership of CEO Shantanu Narayen, who has led the company since 2007, Adobe has evolved from a provider of desktop publishing tools into a cloud-centric provider of digital media and digital experience solutions.

The company’s core offerings are organized around digital media and digital experience.

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Adobe Inc. ADBE shares rose about 4.6% on Tuesday even after Bank of America reinstated coverage of the software company with an Underperform rating.

The brokerage argued that generative artificial intelligence is weakening Adobe's competitive position despite the stock trading near the lower end of its historical valuation range.

Bank of America set a price target of $190, valuing the company at seven times its projected 2027 enterprise value to free cash flow (EV/FCF), below the roughly 9.7-times average multiple for a broader group of software companies.

The brokerage said Adobe's valuation alone is not sufficient to support a more constructive investment stance as the company faces increasing competition from AI-native products.

Bank of America analysts, led by Tal Liani, said the key issue facing Adobe is whether the company can accelerate growth in an AI-driven software market.

The analysts wrote that the central question is whether Adobe "can reaccelerate growth in the age of AI."

While Adobe has seen adoption of its AI offerings, the brokerage said those products have yet to generate a meaningful financial contribution.

According to the report, AI-first annual recurring revenue (ARR) currently accounts for less than 2% of Adobe's total ARR.

The bank forecasts total revenue growth slowing from 10.5% in 2025 to 8.8% in 2027, with "no clear path to near-term reacceleration."

The report also noted that AI-related competitive risks vary across Adobe's customer base.

Casual users and non-professional creators are viewed as more vulnerable because AI-generated content can often replace paid subscriptions.

Professional and enterprise customers are expected to remain more resilient because they require precision and integrated workflows.

However, the analysts cautioned that "not all professional users need the full Adobe workflow," leaving some professionals and single-application users exposed to lower-cost AI alternatives.

Leadership transition and product pressures remain in focusBank of America also highlighted challenges facing Adobe Stock, the company's marketplace for images and videos.

Management has said Adobe Stock has declined for two consecutive quarters, although it did not disclose specific figures.

The brokerage said the weakness reflects the broader risk that free or inexpensive AI tools could reduce demand for Adobe's higher-margin legacy offerings while limiting future seat expansion.

The analysts also pointed to recent executive changes as another source of uncertainty.

They said the simultaneous departures of CEO Shantanu Narayen and CFO Dan Durn "heightens risk around strategy, continuity, and leadership stability" as Adobe navigates its AI transition.

Although the bank expects Adobe to maintain strong profitability, including a free cash flow margin approaching 39% by 2028, it believes there is "limited multiple expansion without clear evidence of AI monetization and growth acceleration."

Historical data also suggests that buying large pullbacks in Adobe shares has produced inconsistent results.

Since 2010, the stock has experienced 12 declines of at least 20% within a 30-day period.

Only six of those events generated positive returns over the following year. The median one-year return after those declines was negative 4%, while investors experienced a median maximum drawdown of 17% before any recovery.

Despite that track record, Adobe's underlying financial performance remains solid.

The company reported 11.5% revenue growth over the last 12 months, with a three-year average growth rate of 11%. It also generated an operating cash flow margin of 41.6%, highlighting strong profitability and cash generation.

Creative Freemium monthly active users increased from 50 million to 90 million year over year.

Adobe currently trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of about 12, compared with roughly 25 for its peer benchmark, although Bank of America maintained that stronger evidence of AI-driven growth will be needed before adopting a more positive view on the stock.

Adobe on Thursday said it is acquiring Topaz Labs, which offers AI models for video and image enhancement, and that it will make it a part of its creative business.

Topaz Labs, which won an Emmy last year for its production tech, has existed for more than two decades, making tools for enhancing videos and images. In recent years, the company has released its own models: Astra for AI video upscaling and Wonder for image retouching and enhancement. The startup has also worked on a technology that makes it easier to run large video models on consumer-grade GPUs.

Adobe, which already offers some of Topaz’s tools in its Creative Cloud suite, said it will integrate Topaz’s models into its Firefly AI app as well as other parts of its image and video editing suites. Adobe said Topaz’s offerings will be available as stand-alone services through its website.

Deepa Subramaniam, VP of product marketing for Creative Cloud at Adobe, said professionals who want to combine real-life footage with AI clips can use Topaz’s products for tasks like sharpening details, reducing noise, or restoring archival footage.

“Topaz Labs brings deep expertise in optimizing large, complex AI models to run directly on device, a capability that will allow Adobe to deliver faster, more responsive experiences for customers and make advanced AI more accessible and cost-effective for creatives. In addition, Topaz Labs is trusted by professionals of all creative crafts – from designers and video professionals to photographers and enterprise creative teams,” Subramaniam said in an emailed statement.

Adobe has been in fierce competition with Canva and DaVinci Resolve-owner Blackmagic Design in the image and video editing space. Adobe has been stuffing AI into all of its apps and has also created an AI-centric media editing studio with Firefly. By acquiring startups like Topaz Labs, Adobe wants to keep its users from turning to other software for video editing and enhancements, encouraging them to stick to its ecosystem.

Adobe said the transaction will close in the second half of 2026.

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Ivan covers global consumer tech developments at TechCrunch. He is based out of India and has previously worked at publications including Huffington Post and The Next Web.

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