Adobe's 8x P/E signals that its outlook numbers are unreliable, its capital allocation is poor and it is likely a casualty of AI. It spent all its free cash flow buying back shares at $400 and is on a direct collision course with AI; no one can say its products will be as crucial as in the last two decades. Unlike Meta in 2022, whose ads business was never impaired, there are too many unknowns. It could work or stagnate for years, so it sits in the too-hard bucket even if multiples scream buy. … Show more

Adobe is not re-accelerating: management guides growth down to 9-10% with operating margins falling, and more pressure lies ahead. That makes buying every dip at about 16x earnings a mistake, even as @qualtrim points to 12% revenue growth and a 47.4% operating margin. x.com  x.com 

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 best avoided because a very low valuation comes with a highly uncertain future, making the situation amazingly complex. x.com 

Adobe fails a 20% annual hurdle rate, so it is a pass despite being fine. At 10% growth on a 12-16x multiple, projected returns are only 9-17% a year, and every dollar in a merely fine idea is a dollar unavailable for the best opportunities. Opportunity cost, inflation and the risk-free rate all set the bar each holding must clear. 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 faces an existential AI question: if anyone can edit an image or generate a video with a text prompt, what is Photoshop for? Image and video generation is changing faster than almost any field but code, threatening the complex interfaces Creative Cloud was built on, and Adobe relies on Google, OpenAI, Midjourney and others for frontier models. Canva and startups are attacking pieces of the suite. Pixel-perfect editing and Firefly's $250M ARR, up 75% a quarter, are the bull case. x.com 

Adobe looks cheap only if stock-based compensation is ignored: its 7x 2026 P/E becomes 11x including SBC, as Intuit goes from 9x to 14x and Salesforce from 10x to 19x. Blindly ignoring those real economic costs to shareholders is partly why software was in a bubble. x.com 

Adobe's risk is greatly reduced here: the stock sits at its 200-month moving average and 0.65 Fibonacci support, in a bullish descending wedge after a clean three-wave pullback, while generating $10.1 billion of free cash flow a year. The story now hinges on whether Adobe can pivot fast enough to compete with ChatGPT. x.com 

Adobe could easily go the way of PayPal, its best analog: a mature consumer-facing large-cap tech company that attempted a poorly received large acquisition as growth stalled, then changed executives. Growth is likely to decelerate further amid pricing pressure, buybacks won't matter much in the short term, and more talent will leave once a CEO is picked. The stock is only optically cheap. x.com  x.com