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When it comes to Adobe, there are 5 main concerns that to me are alarming.
1. ARR Revenue Growth has been decelerating since Jan 2024. Arguably the most important metric to measure Adobe is their ARR (annual recurring revenue) Growth. Adobe’s ARR shifted from acceleration to deceleration In Q1 2024 and has gone down every quarter since. Their latest earnings report shows the ARR artificially accelerating to 13%, but this is not the true number. This ARR acceleration happened because of one item, the Semrush acquisition. If you remove Semrush, their true ARR growth 10.5% and projected to end the year at 8% ARR growth (organic). Thats a 40% drop from where their ARR growth was in Q1 2024, showing a sharp deceleration.
2. The pivot to freemium services. The Adobe CEO states that they are intentionally sacrificing ARR in the short term, in order to grow monthly active users in the long term. This raises a red flag. If they were confident enough in their products being worth the price, why are they now giving them away for free? When companies start giving away free products or discounting products, that shows a lack of confidence in the business. This is a good indication that their MOAT is under attack. Canva already has a big head start with 265 million monthly active users vs Adobe’s 90 freemium users.
3. They paused raising subscription costs in the 2nd half of 2026. For a company that has generated revenue growth by raising subscription prices year over year, they have all the sudden pivoted from that strategy? There’s an old saying by Warren Buffet that if the company you are invested in has to do a prayer circle before they raise prices, it’s probably not a business worth buying. This shows, at minimum a level of uncertainty and possibly a lack of confidence that users will continue to pay a premium for their products.
4. No one knows how much of their revenue is consumer vs enterprise. The age old argument for adobe is that most of their revenue comes from enterprises and professionals who can’t switch out off their products (I.e. Coca Cola is not going to start using Canva to create their ads in order to save money). While this is probably true, we don’t know the true consumer revenue number. Judging from the ARR deceleration in the business, it is probably more than the average investor would expect. Even if it is 5-7 billion per year, that is a huge chunk of their 27 billion in total annual revenue.
5. The CEO is leaving and there is no replacement. When the CEO of a company (especially one who has been running the business for 18 years) randomly leaves this should raise some red flags. There was no leadership change plan implemented. This was completely out of the blue with no named CEO to replace him. It is possible that the company has lost faith in his leadership and the direction he has taken the company is as of late. No one can say for sure, but it’s definitely not a good sign.
I understand that the valuation is beyond cheap (trading at an 8 forward P/E). The business has high margins of 89% and is buying back 25 billion worth of shares through 2030 (over 1/4 of the current market cap). On paper, the numbers look great, but if the intrinsic value of the business keeps dropping then this becomes a value trap. If the company is buying back shares at 250 per share, and the company drops down to 200, then it’s like they are buying shares on a melting ice cube. It looks better on paper because earnings per share go up in the short term, but if the fundamentals (ARR) don’t change then they are still buying back shares on a deteriorating business. It might slow down the process but it doesn’t stop it. The only thing that will turn this business around is if they can show that they can stop the bleeding and keep ARR consistent for a few quarters without decelerating, or if they could accelerate ARR (even better). Over the last 2.5 years there has been no evidence of that.
While the bull thesis is still there, there has been no evidence in the quarter financials or conference calls to support a positive shift in ARR