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Market Update : 
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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I will now discuss Adobe''s revenue in Q4 by business segment. Creative Solutions segment revenue was $508.7 million, compared to $570.5 million in Q4 of fiscal 2007 and $493.6 million last quarter. On a year-over-year basis, this represents a decline of 11% as demand for our new CS4 products was impacted by the global economic crisis. Business Productivity solutions segment revenue was $278 million, compared to $246.4 million in Q4 of fiscal 2007, and $283.5 million last quarter. On a year-over-year basis, this represents 13% growth. Within Business Productivity Solutions, our Knowledge Worker revenue was $199 million in Q4 of fiscal 2008, compared to $192.1 million in Q4 of fiscal 2007 and $218 million last quarter. On a year-over-year basis, this represents 4% growth. The other component of our Business Productivity segment is our Enterprise business. In Q4, Enterprise revenue was a record $79 million compared to $54.3 million in Q4 of fiscal 2007 and $65.5 million last quarter. On a year-over-year basis, this represents 45% growth. Mobile & Device segment revenue was $48.2 million compared to $13.5 million in Q4 of fiscal 2007 and $27.5 million last quarter. Revenue in mobile and device was strong due to demand for Flash Lite and renewal of several agreements with major OEMs. Finally, other segment revenue was $80.4 million, compared to $80.8 million in Q4 of fiscal 2007 and $82.7 million last quarter.

Turning to our geographic segments, results on a percent of revenue basis were as follows: the Americas, 46%; Europe, 34%; and Asia, 20%. The global economic situation affected demand for our products in all geographies, particularly North America and Europe. Employees at the end of the fourth quarter totaled 7,544 versus 7,623 at the end of the third quarter. The reason for the decline was due to the departure of summer interns. The recently announced reduction of approximately 600 employees or 8% of our global workforce, occurring in fiscal 2009 will begin to affect our headcount and operating expenses run-rate in Q1. Our trade DSO in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008 was 46 days. This compares to 32 days in Q4 of fiscal 2007 and 34 days last quarter. DSO was higher in Q4 than in recent quarters due to the shipment of CS4 in the second half of the quarter. In regard to our global channel inventory position, we ended the quarter within company policy. During the quarter, cash flow from operations was $338 million. Our ending cash and short-term investment position was $2 billion, the same as the end of last quarter.

In Q4, we repurchased a total of 6.2 million shares at a total cost of $206.3 million. During the fiscal year, we repurchased a total of 58.3 million shares at a total cost of $2.14 billion. We will continue to utilize this program to return excess cash to shareholders and offset dilution from employee stock programs. This concludes my discussion of our financial results. I would now like to comment on our financial targets for the first quarter of fiscal 2009.

We are targeting a Q1 revenue range of $800 million to $850 million. Given the current economic climate and normal seasonality, we expect revenue in each of our business segments to decline sequentially. In our mobile business, we expect revenue of approximately $10 million to $12 million, due primarily to the transition to the open screen project. In addition, we are targeting a GAAP operating margin range of 26% to 28% and a non-GAAP operating margin range of 37% to 38%. These margin targets reflect the cost-savings and impact of our restructuring activities, as applicable. We are targeting our Q1 share count to be 530 million to 534 million shares. For non-operating income, we are targeting a range of $3 million to $5 million on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis. For our GAAP and non-GAAP effective tax rates, with the reinstatement of the R&D tax credit, we are targeting approximately 24%. These targets lead to a GAAP earnings per share range of $0.30 to $0.35 per share and a non-GAAP earnings per share range of $0.43 to $0.47.

As a reminder, all of our targets assume a baseline of existing economic and currency conditions in our major markets. This concludes my section. I would now like to turn the call back over to Shantanu.

Shantanu Narayen

Thanks Mark. I will spend the next few minutes reviewing highlights from Q4. During the quarter, we shipped a new Creative Suite 4 product family in English, French, and German. CS4 is a milestone release of our industry-leading design and development software for virtually every creative workflow and represents our most comprehensive software release ever. Industry and press response to CS4 has been excellent. Design Premium and Master Collection suites both received excellent ratings from CNET and Photoshop received a perfect five out of five rating, and an Editor’s Choice award from PC Magazine. We believe CS4 is a stellar release, with new product innovations, time-saving features, and workflow enhancements that will improve productivity. These capabilities will generate opportunities for Adobe to up-sell and cross-sell in our existing customer base and expand our reach to new customer segments and markets.

While customer feedback has been positive, given the current economic climate, we believe CS4 adoption in the short-term will be muted when compared to prior cycles. This is reflected in our early results, with CS4 revenue down more than 20% when compared to the equivalent CS3 period. In Q1, we will be shipping the Japanese version as well as many of the other languages. We will be focusing on enhanced demand generation programs to drive awareness and adoption in 2009.

Dynamic media continues to be a key growth focus for Adobe. In November, we announced Version 3.5 of Flash Media Server. This new release, combined with the latest advancements in Flash Player and our CS4 authoring tools, are helping to deliver breakthrough interactive content, applications, and video on the web. Recent high profile wins include Disney.com, the number one ranked kid’s entertainment and family community destination on the web, which is leveraging Adobe video solutions to create and deliver rich, interactive experiences. Over the past several months, Disney.com has experienced record online traffic levels, as viewers logged on to watch full-length movies delivered via the Adobe Flash platform. Telecom Italia, which has chosen the Cisco content delivery system with Internet streaming platform, powered by Adobe Flash streaming technology to deliver live television channels and on-demand content through it’s web portal, and MLB.com, the official website of Major League Baseball, which has selected the Flash Platform to deliver all of its live and on-demand video offerings for two years beginning in 2009. In addition, MLB.com will provide a downloadable rich Internet application built using Adobe AIR, so baseball fans can access additional features outside the web browser.

In our hobbyist business, we shipped version 7 of Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements in Q4, updates to the world’s best-selling consumer photo-editing and video-editing software products. In our Business Productivity Solutions segment, our year-over-year growth was driven by solid performance in both our Knowledge Worker business and our enterprise business. LiveCycle achieved record revenue with 45% year-over-year growth. Our engagement value proposition is resonating with our enterprise customers, even in this tough spending environment. In our mobile business, we announced that OpenTV, a leading provider of advanced television services, will integrate Flash as an additional application environment, further enhancing web browsing capabilities in the living room and strengthening the development of rich applications and user interfaces.

In our Platform business, we released Flash Player 10 in October. Interactive designers and developers can leverage new expressive features and visual performance improvements to deliver the most compelling web applications, interactive content and high quality video to users across multiple browsers in all major operating systems. In November, we held our annual MAX conference in San Francisco, followed by MAX Europe in early December. MAX was an enormous success with record attendance. We made several exciting announcements related to the Adobe Flash platform. These include Adobe Flash Catalyst in a technology collaboration to optimize and enable Flash Player and Adobe AIR for ARM powered devices. As the breadth of our solutions increases, we are rapidly becoming a strategic partner to larger enterprise customers. This is enabling Adobe to drive more revenue per customer across their organizations. For example, BBC in the U.K. signed a broad agreement with Adobe that includes LiveCycle for finance and production process and rights management, Flash and AIR for its next generation online video content, creative tools and services for content development and production, and Acrobat Connect integration for training, support, and collaboration. Our field organization will continue to drive these strategic enterprise level agreements as part of our go-to-market strategy.

In closing, as we enter fiscal 2009, we will continue to make strategic investments that will position us well for the future while managing our business to ensure consistent profitability. Our strategic priorities are advancing the Adobe Flash platform as the preferred solution for how the world engages with ideas and information; investing in our core businesses, including Creative Suite and Acrobat, to maintain our leadership position through innovation and continue our expansion into new customer segments and geographical markets; and focusing on our growth businesses, which include LiveCycle, Connect Pro, Scene 7, and Dynamic Media as areas we believe have significant potential for future growth.

While 2009 will be a challenging year because of the macroeconomic environment, we believe the key market trends driving our business remain intact. By continuing to innovate and deliver through solid execution, we believe Adobe is well-positioned for future growth.

Thank you for joining us today. Now I will turn the call back over to Mike.

Mike Saviage

Thanks, Shantanu. Before we get to Q&A, we wanted to update you on some changes being made to our business segments as we enter fiscal year 2009. We are breaking out our former other segment into two separate segments called Platform and Print & Publishing. We are also combining our former Mobile & Device Solutions segment with our newly named Platform segment. These segment-reporting changes reflect changes we have made internally in terms of how we manage these businesses. We will continue to report our Creative Solutions business as we have in the past, and we will continue to report our business productivity solutions business into two distinct segments, Knowledge Worker and Enterprise, as we have done in the past. Our investor data sheet will reflect these changes starting with our Q1 FY2009 earnings report in March, and we’ll show adjusted segment revenue for prior reported periods.

In regard to today’s earnings report, we have posted several new documents on our investor relations webpage today. They include today’s earnings release and our updated investor data sheet, which also includes a listing of the new fiscal 2009 segment classifications by product area. To access these documents and other investor relation information, you can go to our website at www.adobe.com/adbe. For those who wish to listen to a play-back of today’s conference call, a web-based Acrobat Connect archive of the call will be available from the IR page on Adobe.com later today. Alternatively, you can listen to a phone replay by calling 888-203-1112. Use conference ID number 1394828. Again, that phone number is 888-203-1112, with ID number 1394828. International callers should dial 719-457-0820. The phone play-back service will be available beginning at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time today and ending at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time on Friday, December 19, 2008.

We would now be happy to take your questions, operator.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator


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