KPIs for the ADBE Long Investor

For the long ADBE holder it's been painful for many years. The market story is that ADBE is an AI loser, although this isn't necessarily showing up in the fundamentals, which are all growing. Management is aggressively buying back shares, and so on a per share basis things are great. However, the market disagrees. [I recently wrote](https://thepursuitofcompounding.substack.com/p/the-adobe-investors-paradox-narrative?r=xy3ae) about the important KPIs to watch, to see if the market narrative matches the numbers (which so far it hasn't). Here is what I came up with; I'm looking for further feedback on them. 1. **RPO (Remaining Performance Obligations):** If this metric starts to decline, then it’s a clear sign Enterprise spend is looking elsewhere. 2. **AI-influenced Annual Recurring Revenue (AI-ARR):** If Adobe is truly integrating AI into their product offerings, then investors will see a clear measure of **AI’s direct contribution** to its recurring revenue. AI-ARR increased to **$8 billion for Fiscal 2025**, up from **$3.5 billion in Fiscal 2024.** 3. **Operating Margins:** If margins compress and stay compressed, then it implies Adobe is spending too much on GPU compute to deliver AI features without having the pricing power to pass those costs on to customers.