Tag Archives: Creative Cloud

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Adobe Creative Cloud Subscriptions Surpass Half-Million Mark

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

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Adobe Creative Cloud Subscriptions Surpass Half-Million Mark

Free Creative Cloud Memberships Exceed 2 Million

SAN JOSE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Adobe Systems Incorporated (NAS: ADBE) today announced that Adobe® Creative Cloud™ has exceeded 500,000 paid individual members. The company also reported that free and trial memberships have exceeded 2 million. Free subscriptions are a proven on-ramp for customers to move to a paid Creative Cloud membership.

“Creative Cloud adoption continues to accelerate,” said David Wadhwani, senior vice president, Digital Media Business, Adobe. “Reaching the half-million subscription milestone in less than one year is a strong indication of customer appetite for the ongoing stream of innovation we are delivering.”

Adobe’s Creative Cloud is the go-to destination for creative professionals, satisfying their need to access all their creative tools and services as well as sync and store their work and collaborate with fellow creatives. Creative Cloud subscription growth is being driven by its attractive pricing as well as the frequent product, feature and service enhancements the company is providing. Adobe’s recent acquisition of Behance, the leading online social media platform for creatives, accelerates Adobe’s strategy to bring great community features to Creative Cloud.

About Creative Cloud

Adobe® Creative Cloud™ is a membership-based service that provides users with unlimited access to download and install all Adobe Creative Suite® desktop applications, plus other applications including Adobe Photoshop® Lightroom®, Adobe Muse™, Adobe Edge Tools & Services; game developer tools and integration with the Adobe Touch Apps*. With Creative Cloud membership, users also have access to publishing services to deliver apps and websites, cloud storage and the ability to sync to any device, and new products and exclusive updates as soon as they’re released.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated

Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

© 2013 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adobe, the Adobe logo, Creative Cloud, Creative Suite, Photoshop, Lightroom and Muse are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

* Internet connection required. Adobe online services, including the Adobe Creative Cloud service, are available only to users 13 and older and require agreement to additional terms …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Adobe Reports Strong Q1 Results

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

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Adobe Reports Strong Q1 Results

Adobe Creative Cloud Adoption Accelerates and Adobe Marketing Cloud Achieves 20 Percent Annual Revenue Growth

SAN JOSE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Adobe Systems Incorporated (NAS: ADBE) today reported financial results for its first quarter of fiscal year 2013 ended March 1, 2013.

Adobe® achieved revenue of $1.008 billion, exceeding its targeted range of $950 million to $1 billion. During the quarter, the Company continued to accelerate adoption of Adobe Creative Cloud™ as it migrates to a subscription model in its Digital Media business. Adobe also achieved strong revenue growth with Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions in its Digital Marketing business.

First Quarter Financial Highlights

  • Diluted earnings per share were $0.13 on a GAAP-basis, and $0.35 on a non-GAAP basis.
  • Operating income was $98.2 million and net income was $65.1 million on a GAAP basis. Operating income was $240.7 million and net income was $177.9 million on a non-GAAP basis.
  • Cash flow from operations was $322.0 million.
  • Deferred revenue grew by $80.5 million to a record $700.0 million.
  • Adobe ended Q1 with 479 thousand paid Creative Cloud members, an increase of 153 thousand when compared to the number of members as of the end of Q4 fiscal year 2012.
  • Adobe Marketing Cloud achieved quarterly revenue of $215.4 million, which represents 20 percent year-over-year growth.

A reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP results is provided at the end of this press release.

Executive Quotes

“Creative Cloud is quickly becoming mainstream, with the overwhelming majority of Creative purchases on Adobe.com now being Creative Cloud subscriptions,” said Shantanu Narayen, president and chief executive officer, Adobe. “With Adobe Marketing Cloud, we are the partner of choice for Chief Marketing Officers as we help our customers migrate their businesses online.”

“Adoption of Creative Cloud accelerated and we achieved strong Digital Marketing revenue …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

The "New" Adobe Looks Good Ahead of Earnings

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By Richard Saintvilus, The Motley Fool

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It’s not uncommon for tech companies to trade at expensive valuations. But when the company is trading at a 52-week high while also in the midst of a significant transition, it makes for an uncomfortable situation. Nevertheless, Adobe seems to be handling this patch pretty well.

Granted, it’s still too early to say that the company has met all expectations in execution. But I’m nonetheless pleased that the conversion to a subscription-based model has not adversely affected Adobe’s current business. While the valuation today seems pretty demanding when compared to Microsoft‘s, Adobe remains a quality company with strong leadership. That’s not to say there aren’t challenges.

What’s with the “new” Adobe?
Wall Street hates uncertainty. But it seems Adobe’s getting the benefit of the doubt, and deservedly so. The company’s back has been up against the wall. And management has been looking for a way to recharge growth in products such as Creative Suite, which is often considered too expensive when there are much cheaper alternatives available in Google Apps. Plus, Apple‘s resistance to incorporating the Flash plug-in within its products only created more doubt about Adobe’s leverage. Things needed to change.

Adobe wanted to exit its software license business and convert it to a subscriptions-based model. So far, not only are existing customers embracing the change, but new customers are signing on at a faster-than-expected rate. For instance, in the company’s third-quarter earnings report, which reflected when the transition first took shape, Adobe was able to transition roughly $29 billion more recurring revenue than it anticipated.

What’s more,it was able to grow its Creative Cloud paid subscriptions to approximately 200,000 subscribers. This is while also adding 8,000 Creative Cloud subscriptions per week. Fast-forward to the fourth quarter and Creative Cloud was able to improve that to 10,000 subscriptions per week, bringing its full-year total to 326,000 for the year. Remarkably, with recurring revenue of $153 million, management was able to exceed its own guidance by 62% above the $94 million that was projected.

All of this justifies the faith the Street is showing in the stock. The company is operating on all cylinders — and then some. The pace at which the transitioning to the “new Adobe” is impressive. In that regard, CEO Shantanu Narayen said, “We beat our Creative Cloud subscription goals and established Adobe Marketing Cloud as the leader in the exploding category of Digital Marketing during fiscal 2012. In fiscal 2013 we intend to accelerate our pace of innovation, and drive integration between Creative Cloud and Adobe Marketing Cloud.”

How do you measure success?
Mark Garrett, Adobe’s executive vice president and CFO, said that 2013 would prove to be a “stronger and more predictable” year in terms of recurring revenue with higher long-term growth. The company, however, didn’t guide as if it expects a robust first quarter — at least not when compared to prior estimates for Q1 2012. Likewise, non-GAAP earnings-per-share estimates of $0.26 were lowered by …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Adobe Earnings: An Early Look

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By Dan Caplinger, The Motley Fool

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Earnings season is winding down, with most companies already having reported their quarterly results. But there are still some companies left to report, and Adobe is about to release its quarterly earnings. The key to making smart investment decisions with stocks releasing their quarterly reports is to anticipate how they’ll do before they announce results, leaving you fully prepared to respond quickly to whatever inevitable surprises arise. That way, you’ll be less likely to make an uninformed knee-jerk reaction to news that turns out to be exactly the wrong move.

Software giant Adobe is best known for its PDF-reader and photo-editing software, but the company has a much broader reach across the creative-design, publishing, and online analytics segments. Let’s take an early look at what’s been happening with Adobe over the past quarter and what we’re likely to see in its quarterly report on Tuesday.

Stats on Adobe

Analyst EPS Estimate

$0.31

Change From Year-Ago EPS

(46%)

Revenue Estimate

$986 million

Change From Year-Ago Revenue

(5.7%)

Earnings Beats in Past 4 Quarters

2

Source: Yahoo! Finance.

Will Adobe paint a prettier picture this quarter?
Analysts have had some concerns about Adobe’s prospects in recent months, cutting their earnings estimates for the just-ended quarter by $0.02 per share and slashing nearly a dime from full fiscal-year 2013 consensus earnings. But the stock hasn’t responded badly to those fears, rising 10% since mid-December.

Among consumers, Adobe’s Acrobat PDF-reader and Photoshop image software represent the company’s most visible products. Yet among investors, Adobe is arguably best known for the battle it had with Apple over its Flash software, as Apple infamously said it would never include Flash in any of its mobile devices. In response, Adobe shifted to the more widely accepted HTML5, showing the influence that the iDevice maker had in the mobile space.

Adobe has had difficulty bouncing back both from that battle and the broader economic recession. Although Adobe has grown its revenue, profits still lag behind where they were in 2008. Moreover, last quarter, it gave disappointing guidance for 2013, pointing to expected revenue and profit declines for the fiscal year. Right now, analysts expect a 40% drop in earnings per share this year, with only a muted bounce in fiscal 2014.

Looking forward, the company is trying to join the trend toward cloud computing with its “Creative Cloud” initiative, whereby Adobe will offer monthly subscription packages rather than pricey software licenses. Yet as better-established cloud rivals salesforce.com and IBM build out their offerings, they’re likely to come up with products, either on their own or through partnerships with smaller companies, that will compete directly with Adobe’s offerings.

In its quarterly report, watch for Adobe to give a status update on its efforts to become a bigger player in the cloud-computing industry. For better or worse, Adobe appears committed to the strategy, …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Adobe Integrates Creative and Marketing Clouds

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

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Adobe Integrates Creative and Marketing Clouds

New Digital Asset Management Offering in Adobe Experience Manager Bridges Content Creation and Delivery

SALT LAKE CITY–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Adobe Summit, The Digital Marketing Conference — Adobe Systems Incorporated (NAS: ADBE) today announced the availability of a new Digital Asset Management (DAM) offering within its industry leading Adobe® Experience Manager, part of Adobe Marketing Cloud. Adobe has reimagined digital asset management with both marketers and creatives in mind, giving organizations truly unprecedented capabilities to bridge workflows and more easily deliver consistent, high-quality experiences anywhere and on any device.

Adobe Experience Manager DAM is deeply integrated with Adobe Creative Cloud™, which makes collaboration between marketers and creatives easier and stronger, and results in more efficient planning, production, search and global distribution of images, videos and other content. In addition, out-of-the box integration with Creative Cloud applications and comprehensive metadata support improves content quality, increases production speed, and ensures brand consistency and the ability to reuse assets.

The new offering also combines digital asset management capabilities with Adobe Scene7® for optimized video, dynamic media and personalized media delivery to the Web, tablets and smartphones, as well as in-store kiosks and displays and customized print products. This helps marketers get the most value from their digital assets by adapting and re-using them for rich mobile experiences, social sites and more.

By uniting the creation, management and delivery of all assets, marketers and content publishers can now support responsive design, which tailors the experience across devices, as well as manage the ever-increasing number of assets required to deliver the most personalized experience.

Adobe Experience Manager DAM includes:

  • Enterprise-grade Asset Management for creating flexible workflows, keeping multiple versions of assets, designing taxonomies, and managing metadata efficiently across organizations and external agencies.
  • New, touch-enabled user interface supports and streamlines creative and marketing workflows for tablet users.
  • Dynamic Media to serve rich experiences on demand across Web, mobile and social properties using a single set of master assets.
  • …read more
    Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
Computers

Office 365 vs. Office 2013: Should you rent or own?

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For the first time Microsoft is tempting Office users to rent, not own, software that for decades they’ve bought as a standalone program. It’s not a foreign proposition. We pay annual subscription fees for our anti-virus software. Last April, Adobe rolled out its Creative Cloud subscription package for renting Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver.

Now Microsoft has hopped on the rental bandwagon and hopes you will start forking over a yearly subscription fee. For Microsoft that beats someone buying Office 2010 and never coughing up more money for a newer version. It’s all about creating an annuity.

So, should you buy or should you rent? For individuals, there is no one answer. Let’s take a closer look at your options and consider the pros and cons. But first a run-down of what your Office options are.

Click to zoom

Originally designed for businesses, Office 365 allows you to always have the latest version of Office for a yearly subscription fee of $100. You can still buy a boxed version of Office 2013 at your local computer shop with prices starting at $140 for Office 2013 Home and Student. But Microsoft is pushing the $100 per year option for Office 365.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld