Adobe's AI-first ARR passing $500M and growing more than 150% year over year is a strong answer to the belief that AI will only hurt the company. AI is still a small part of the business, but the quarter was a really solid beat and raise. x.com 

Adobe's cash generation and growing AI subscriptions give its tentative turnaround fundamental support. It has $10.59B in free cash flow; revenue and EPS are expected to grow at double-digit rates through 2028, while AI-first ARR is up 150% year over year and Firefly ARR 40% quarter over quarter. Its Stage 1 base is attempting to break a long downtrend. x.com 

Adobe remains the best example of what not to buy because AI has had minimal impact and its backlog is slowing rapidly. Management chose user acquisition over monetization, as Duolingo did, leaving open whether users stay when prices rise; for now, waiting to monetize looks the same as being unable to. Free or cheaper tools that match its specialist subscriptions could cut usage, RPO and cash generation. When acceleration and margin expansion are everywhere, owning neither makes little sense. … Show more

Adobe is expanding the top of its funnel with freemium users, now over 100M and growing 70% a year, aiming to convert them into paying customers and move into a segment historically served largely by Canva. That strategy should bear fruit over time. x.com 

Adobe is priced like an AI casualty at 11x forward earnings, yet its AI business is working. Q2 revenue grew 13% to $6.62B, guidance rose to $26.5-$26.6B of revenue and $24.35-$24.45 of EPS, and AI-first ARR more than tripled to over $500M. Part of the ARR slowdown is deliberate, deferring Creative Cloud pricing changes to push freemium, a choice that can reverse. At 14-16x forward the stock would be $340-$390. Risks: a two-year multiple compression, a CFO exit and a CEO search. x.com 

Adobe's creative moat is under direct siege from frontier AI models, and a leadership change away from its creative franchise compounds the risk. Agent workflows disintermediate Creative Cloud at the low-to-mid end, and Adobe is spending to retain users rather than add net new subscriptions. Incoming CEO Anil Chakravarthy comes from enterprise customer experience while creative chief David Wadhwani leaves, while Creative and Marketing is 71%+ of subscription revenue. A $160 target stands. x.com  … Show more

Adobe is a bit undervalued, though not significantly, at 13x earnings with 13% revenue growth. Its falling profit margin is concerning, and AI threats are growing as image generation improves. x.com 

Adobe is priced below its Covid-crash intraday low even though it now makes 3x more money with 20% fewer shares, and its best run of profit growth has come during the AI era. It beat last quarter's guidance and raised its full-year outlook, yet trades around 10x current, a low price for growth that should destroy the bear narrative. It also bought back 9.5M shares for over $2.3B. x.com  x.com 

Adobe printed its first visible cost consequence of generative AI: cost of subscription revenue grew 24.1% versus 13.7% subscription revenue growth, cutting gross margin from 89.28% to 88.71%. Application companies rent compute rather than build data centers, so going compute-heavy shows up in cost of revenue while capex stays near 1.3% of sales. Nine-month margin is flat and the cost line isn't broken out, so this is one quarter; two or three more would confirm a trend. It trades at 14x. x.com 

Adobe's post-earnings drop looks like irrational sentiment, not a fundamental problem. Revenue and EPS beat, Q3 and full-year guidance rose, and AI-related revenue grew over 300% year over year, showing AI is becoming a growth engine rather than destroying Adobe. It keeps buying back stock at scale, and given its profitability and growth the valuation isn't expensive; long term it remains an undervalued software company. x.com