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Adobe Systems Q4 Earnings Call Transcript
Author: 123jump.com Staff
123jump.com
Last Update: 9:02 AM ET December 27 2008


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Adobe reported fourth quarter revenues of $915.3 million and full year 2008 revenues of $3.58 billion. The company expects revenue and earnings per share in the range of $800 million to $850 million and 30 cents to 35 cents in the first quarter of fiscal 2009.

 
Good afternoon. I recognize you only have a few weeks of CS4 data and it may be too early to really draw any conclusions, but I thought I would ask about what the preliminary data tells you. In particular, have you seen any trends on the upgrade side, either most of the upgraders coming out of the CS3 base or some of the older customers that you were hoping to get upgraded? Any trends with respect to the suites that might be different than what you saw in CS3, and anything with respect to some of the price increases that already went through in terms of what you think they might have done potentially to demand?

Shantanu Narayen

Well Adam, as you pointed out correctly, it is pretty early in the cycle. We try to give some data as it relates to the overall macroeconomic impact and we said that we had seen a little over 20% decline cycle-over-cycle, and we did normalize it for the fact that, as you know, we shipped Master Collection and the video products all simultaneously this time, as opposed to CS3. Where we are pleased is the Master Collection revenue continues to actually do fairly well, reflecting interest in the suites and the entire workflow. But as we see more data, we will certainly share more results. But it’s still a little early to draw any conclusions.

Adam Holt - Morgan Stanley

If I could just turn then to the Acrobat business, down sequentially in the quarter, was this in line with your plans for the quarter and how sensitive do you think that business is to the broader corporate CapEx spending declines that we are seeing?

Shantanu Narayen

Adam, when we think about the Acrobat business, first we continue to be pleased by the fact that we are actually driving revenue and driving more adoption of Acrobat, and I think it just speaks to the fact that people are exchanging more information and PDF clearly is the best format to do that. The Acrobat business is being driven primarily by exchange of information, by collaboration and more so now by the specialized use cases that we have, 3D in the manufacturing market, redaction, for example, in the legal market. And also Acrobat Professional continues to do fairly well. If you double-click on the Acrobat business as well, again it’s really licensing that’s driving a big part of the revenue in our field organization and the shrink business, which I think has more impact from the macroeconomic environment, is getting impacted. We’ve had a couple of years of transferring from shrink to driving licensing and driving the larger deals and compliance, and that’s the kind of same focus you would expect to see us do not only in the Acrobat but also in the Creative business, Adam.

Adam Holt - Morgan Stanley

Okay, and if I could just end, and at the risk of dragging you through the business segments, the Enterprise business was again one of the faster growing segments at plus 46%. Could you maybe give us a little bit of insight into why that continues to be so strong and how you expect that to fare as we head into the slower part of the first half of next year?

Shantanu Narayen

Sure. So LiveCycle was really pleasing in terms of the results that we got and I think it just reflects a couple of things, Adam. First is it’s a large available opportunity, as we’ve been stating. I think the entire category of engagement applications and the consumerization of IT that we’ve been talking about is taking stock. It demonstrates maturity, frankly, from Adobe in terms of both the product as well as the go-to-market that we’ve been perfecting over the years. And in the past, driving revenue growth was certainly the investment that we made in sales and marketing, the leverage that we have with partners in the enterprise space, and increasing the productivity of our existing resources. So while the available opportunity we still continue to be really excited about, strategically what we are thinking about for 2009 is rather than invest way ahead of the curve, we want to make sure that we focus on both the partner leverage and increasing the productivity of our existing sales and marketing resources, rather than investing too much ahead of the curve. And so we would expect a little bit more muted growth in 2009 but as we see the economy start to come out of its funk, we will start to again invest because we believe in the fundamental value proposition associated with that market. The last thing I would say is that the business actually did well, both in financial services, in manufacturing, as well as in government. I think, moving people from, inefficient paper-based processes to automated processes is resonating with our customers.

Adam Holt - Morgan Stanley

Terrific thank you.

Operator

And we’ll go next to Ross MacMillan with Jeffries.

Ross MacMillan - Jeffries & Company

Thanks. Three questions, firstly on backlog, Mark, did you have a backlog number?

Mark Garrett

So again, backlog is not indicative of future performance and it is factored into our guidance. We ended Q4 with a minimal amount of shippable backlog but deferred revenue you’ll see on the balance sheet did go up $43 million to $275 million.

Ross MacMillan - Jeffries & Company


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