Adobe Systems Incorporated ( /əˈdoʊbiː/ ə-DOH-bee) (NASDAQ: ADBE) is an American computer software company headquartered in San Jose, California, USA. The company has historically focused upon the creation of multimedia and creativity software products, with a more-recent foray towards rich Internet application software development.
Adobe was founded in December 1982[2] by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, who established the company after leaving Xerox PARC in order to develop and sell the PostScript page description language. In 1985, Apple Computer licensed PostScript for use in its LaserWriter printers, which helped spark the desktop publishing revolution. The company name Adobe comes from Adobe Creek in Los Altos, California, which ran behind the house of one of the company's founders.[2] Adobe acquired its former competitor, Macromedia, in December 2005, which added newer software products and platforms such as Coldfusion, Dreamweaver, Flash and Flex to its product portfolio.
As of August 2009, Adobe Systems has 7,564 employees,[2] about 40% of whom work in San Jose. Adobe also has major development operations in Orlando, FL; Seattle, WA; San Francisco, CA; Orem, UT; Ottawa, Ontario; Minneapolis, MN; Waltham, MA; San Luis Obispo, CA; Hamburg, Germany; Noida, India; Bengaluru, India; Bucharest, Romania; Beijing, China.
Adobe Systems Incorporated (Adobe), incorporated in October 1983, offers a range of business, Web and mobile software and services used by professionals, knowledge workers, developers, marketers, enterprises and consumers for creating, managing, delivering, optimizing and engaging with content and experiences across multiple operating systems, devices and media. The Company distributes its products through a network of distributors, value-added resellers (VARs), systems integrators, independent software vendors (ISVs) and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). It also markets and licenses its software directly to enterprise customers through its sales force and to end users through . In addition, it licenses its technology to hardware manufacturers, software developers and service providers, and provides some of its solutions through Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), also known as hosted or cloud-based offerings. Its software runs on personal computers (PC) and server-based computers, as well as various non-PC and mobile devices, depending on the product. It has operations in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Asia. On October 28, 2010 the Company completed the acquisition of Day Software Holding AG (Day), a provider of Web content management (WCM), digital asset management and social collaboration offerings. In January 2011, the Company acquired Demdex.
Creative and Interactive Solutions Segment
The Company’s Creative and Interactive Solutions segment focuses on the needs of professional customers, as well as Web and application developers. Collectively, these customers include those in professions, such as graphic designers, production artists, Web designers and developers, user interface designers, writers, videographers, motion graphic artists, prepress professionals, video game developers and mobile application developers. Its Creative Suite family of products is used by creative professionals to create printed and on-line information people see, read and interact with every day, including newspapers, magazines, Websites, Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), catalogs, advertisements, brochures, product documentation, books, memos, reports and banners. Its tools are also used to create and enhance content, including video, animation and mobile content, that is created by multimedia, film, television, audio and video producers who work in advertising, Web design, music, entertainment, corporate and marketing communications, product design, user interface design, sales training, printing, architecture and fine arts. Knowledge workers, educators, hobbyists and high end consumers also use its creative products to create and deliver content that is of creative professional quality. Its Creative Suite 4 (CS4) family of products incorporated Adobe technologies used by creative professionals into six Creative Suite editions and 13 individual creative products, providing offerings for the various creative disciplines. In May of 2010, it delivered Creative Suite 5 (CS5). CS5 provides more than 250 new and enhanced features, significant performance improvements, new integration with Omniture measurement and optimization services (or software services), and new workflow capabilities.
During the fiscal year ended December 3, 2010 (fiscal 2010), the Company released a version 10.1 update for its Flash Player. Its Creative products include Adobe Creative Suite Design Premium, Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection, Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection, Adobe Creative Suite Web Premium, CS Live Services, Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Flash Professional, Adobe Ideas, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InCopy, Adobe InDesign, Adobe InDesign Server, Adobe Visual Communicator, Business Catalyst and Ovation. Its Platform products include Adobe AIR, Adobe Flash Catalyst, Adobe Flash Lite, Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Flash Platform Services and Adobe Flex. Its Flash Media Server products include Adobe Flash Access, Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server, Adobe Flash Media Enterprise Server, Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder, Adobe Flash Media Playback, Adobe Flash Media Streaming Server, Adobe Flash Video Streaming Service and HTTP Dynamic Streaming.
The Company competes with Apple, Aviary, Avid, Corel, Microsoft, Quark, Autodesk, Bare Bones Software, FlashDevelop, JetBrains, Panic, MacRabbit, MacroMates, Oracle, IBM and Borland.
Digital Media Solutions Segment
The Company’s Digital Media Solutions segment contains its professional imaging and video products. Its offerings in the Digital Media Solutions market extend from desktop tools, to smartphone and tablet applications, to cloud-based SaaS capabilities, to real-time rich media solutions, which give business users the control to upload, manage, enhance and publish content with minimal information technology (IT) support. Its offerings also extend to the delivery of rich media through streaming media and a flexible development environment for creating and delivering media applications. During fiscal 2010, it released version 9 of its Adobe Photoshop Elements software, which is its digital imaging application targeted for amateur photographers and digital imaging hobbyists. During fiscal 2010, it released version 9 of Adobe Premiere Elements software, which is video editing software that can be used by hobbyists to enhance and share their digital video memories on digital versatile disks (DVDs). It also released a software bundle that includes the new versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements and Adobe Premiere Elements to target hobbyists who desire both applications in one package. Its free versions of applications, which run on smartphones and tablets, including Adobe Photoshop.com Mobile, is an application and available for free on devices running Google Android OS and Apple iOS. It renamed this product to Adobe Photoshop Express. The Company’s Digital Media Solutions products include Adobe After Effects, Adobe Audition, Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium, Adobe Encore, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Express, Photoshop Express Mobile, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Adobe Photoshop Extended, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Adobe Premiere Elements, Adobe Premiere Express, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Soundbooth, Adobe Story and Adobe Visual Communicator.
The Company competes with AI Soft (Japan), Apple, ArcSoft, Corel, i4, Google, Kodak, Nova Development, Magix, Microsoft, Photodex Corporation, Sonic, Pinnacle, Sony, Canon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Nikon, Phase One and Facebook.
Digital Enterprise Solutions
The focus of the Company’s Digital Enterprise Solutions business is to provide solutions to meet the needs of enterprises and governments. It categorizes its Digital Enterprise Solutions in two distinct segments: Knowledge Worker and Enterprise. As part of its Digital Enterprise Solutions focus, it addresses the needs of the knowledge worker customer. Knowledge workers include a rage of job functions, such as accountants, attorneys, architects, educators, engineers, graphic designers, insurance underwriters and stock analysts. Its Acrobat.com service provides centralized online file sharing and storage capabilities, as well as simple portable document format (PDF) creation, an online word processor, spreadsheet, and personal Web conferencing services with Adobe ConnectNow. In addition to complementing its Acrobat desktop solutions, Acrobat.com also serves as an introductory service for knowledge workers who wish to utilize PDF-creation capabilities and the Adobe Reader. In November 2010, it launched Adobe Acrobat X, the 10th version of its Acrobat family of products. Its Knowledge Worker products include Adobe Acrobat.com, Adobe Acrobat Standard, Adobe Acrobat Pro, Adobe Acrobat Pro Extended, Adobe Acrobat Suite, Adobe CreatePDF, Adobe SendNow and Adobe Reader.
The Enterprise segment of the Company’s Digital Enterprise Solutions business addresses the needs of large enterprises and governments. Its customer experience management (CEM) platform enables its customers to not only reach their constituents through new communication channels, such as mobile and social, but also to provide common infrastructure across customer touch points and processes in an enterprise. Its CEM platform provides creative and developer tools for creating applications and global Web experiences. It also provides common business user applications for managing content and messages, and, it provides a common framework to measure, optimize and target experiences for business results-across both new and traditional communication channels and devices. Its Enterprise products include Adobe CQ, Adobe CRX, Adobe LiveCycle Collaboration Service, Adobe LiveCycle Connectors for ECM, Adobe LiveCycle Content Services, Adobe LiveCycle Mosaic, Adobe Connect, Adobe LiveCycle Data Services, Adobe LiveCycle Forms, Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions, Adobe LiveCycle Output, Adobe LiveCycle PDF Generator, Adobe LiveCycle Production Print, Adobe LiveCycle Digital Signatures, Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management, Adobe LiveCycle Process Management, Adobe LiveCycle Business Activity Monitoring, LiveCycle Managed Services, Adobe Central Pro Output Server, Adobe LiveCycle Designer, Adobe Output Designer, Adobe Output Pak for mySAP.com and Adobe Web Output Pak.
The Company competes with Microsoft, AdLib, Active PDF, Apple, Global Graphics, Nuance, Software995, Sourcenext, Enfocus, Dalim, Zinio, Google, Cisco WebEx, IBM, Citrix, Oracle, Autonomy, EMC, OpenText, Alfresco, FatWire, CoreMedia, Percussion, SDL, Drupal, Joomla! and WordPress.
Omniture Segment
The Company’s Omniture business unit provides Web analytics and online business optimization products, solutions and services, which it delivers through the Omniture line of products and the Adobe Online Marketing Suite. Customers use Omniture products and services to manage and optimize online, offline, digital and multi-channel business initiatives. Customers who use its Omniture solutions include marketing professionals such as the chief marketing officer, marketing managers, online marketing managers, search engine marketers, media managers, media buyers and marketing research analysts. Customers also include Web content editors, Web analysts and Web production managers. It offers the Adobe Online Marketing Suite, powered by Omniture technology, its suite of products, solutions and services used to manage and enhance online, offline and multi-channel business initiatives, which it hosts and delivers to its customers on-demand and also provide as an on-premise solution for some products. Its Online Marketing Suite consists of an open business analytics platform, online and multi-channel analytics, and an integrated set of applications to optimize digital advertising spend and conversion. These components and services are accessed by a Web browser, and are built on a scalable and flexible computing architecture.
The components of the Company’s Online Marketing Suite are organized by five main components of its offering: Advertising Optimization, Conversion Optimization, Online Analytics, Multi-channel Analytics and Omniture Open Business Analytics Platform. The products in this segment include Adobe SearchCenter, Adobe Merchandising, Adobe Publish, Adobe Recommendations, Adobe Scene7 On-Demand, Adobe Search&Promote, Adobe SiteSearch, Adobe Test&Target, Adobe Discover, Adobe SiteCatalyst, Adobe Survey, Adobe Insight, Adobe Insight for Retail, Adobe DataWarehouse and Adobe Genesis.
The Company competes with ComScore, Google, IBM, Microsoft, WebTrends, Yahoo!, Infor, Nielsen Company, SAS Institute, Google, WPP, Autonomy, Accenture, Acxiom Digital, [x + 1], Endeca Technologies, FAST Search, ThanxMedia, Celebros, SLI Systems, Nextopia Software, Fredhopper, Truviso, Clickfox, Qliktech , AsterData, Aggregate Knowledge, Baynote, Certona, Rich Relevance, Amadesa, Marin Software, Kenshoo, SearchIgnite, Clickable, Efficient Frontier, OpinionLab, iPerceptions and Foresee Results.
Print and Publishing Segment
The Company’s Print and Publishing business segment contains products and services, which address diverse market opportunities, including e-Learning solutions, technical document publishing, Web application development and high-end printing. Its ColdFusion offering provides ways to build and deploy Internet applications. Developers can extend or integrate ColdFusion with Java or .NET applications, connect to enterprise data and applications, create and interact through Web services, or interface with short messaging service (SMS) on mobile devices or instant messaging clients. ColdFusion can also be used for business reporting, rich-forms generation, printable document generation, full-text search, and graphing and charting. Its Print and Publishing products include Adobe Authorware, Adobe Captivate, Adobe ColdFusion, Adobe ColdFusion Builder, Adobe ColdFusion in the Cloud, Adobe Contribute, Adobe Director, Adobe eLearning Suite, Adobe FrameMaker, Adobe FrameMaker Server, Adobe Font Folio, Adobe JRun, Adobe PageMaker, Adobe PDF Print Engine, Adobe PostScript, Adobe RoboHelp, Adobe Shockwave Player, Adobe Technical Communication Suite, Adobe Type Classics for Learning, Adobe Type Sets and FreeHand MX.
The Company competes with Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Global Graphics, Zoran, Techsmith, Firefly, Lectora, Articulate, ezHTMLArea, ekTron, Cisco, Interwoven, Vignette, IBM and Oracle.
Adobe solidified its position in the desktop publishing market in 1994 when it acquired Aldus, the maker of the industry-leading PageMaker desktop publishing software. Adobe and Aldus had worked in cooperation previously, and Adobe's font software was used in PageMaker. Also that year Adobe introduced After Effects, a program geared toward multimedia and film production efforts. After Effects provided tools for producing two-dimensional animation, as well as special effects and motion compositing. Adobe reported revenues of $676 million for fiscal 1994, up from $580 million the previous year.
In the mid-1990s Adobe continued to grow through acquisitions and worked to strengthen its position in the volatile software industry. The acquisition of Frame Technology Corporation, the developer of FrameMaker publishing software, proved to be an unfortunate purchase; after integrating Frame into the Adobe family of operations, Frame's sales declined heavily. Industry observers attributed the drop to Adobe's decision to get rid of Frame's technical support division. Also in 1995 Adobe bought Ceneca Communications, which developed tools for creating Web pages. The following year Adobe made additional acquisitions, including Ares Software, for about $15.5 million, and the research and development efforts of Swell Software, for about $6 million. The research project, however, was discontinued soon after the purchase. Also in 1996 Adobe spun off its pre-press division to Luminous Corporation for about $43.6 million and moved its headquarters from Mountain View to downtown San Jose. The following year Adobe divested its investment in Netscape Communications Corporation and separately acquired three software companies, spending a total of about $8.5 million.
On the software front, Adobe released PhotoDeluxe and PageMill in 1996. PhotoDeluxe, the first of its category, allowed consumers to manipulate and edit photographs on their computers. PageMill included tools for easily creating Web pages. In 1997 Adobe released upgrades of PageMaker, Illustrator, and FrameMaker. These releases, coupled with increased demand for Photoshop, PhotoDeluxe, and Acrobat products, led to total revenues of $912 million for fiscal 1997, up from $787 million the previous year. In addition, the company's balance of software revenues shifted from predominantly Macintosh-based software to Windows-based software.
Not everything was rosy at Adobe headquarters, however, and 1998 proved to be the most grueling in the company's history. In 1997 Hewlett-Packard chose to stop licensing PostScript from Adobe when it developed its own clone version of the software. By the following year Adobe was feeling the effects of Hewlett-Packard's decision, and its licensing sales suffered. The decline in Macintosh software sales hurt Adobe as well, and competitors such as Microsoft Corporation took away precious market share. In addition, because of the economic recession in Asia, sales in Japan, one of Adobe's stronger markets, fell about 40 percent. Adobe's stock price fell as well, hitting a low that was less than half of its value. Industry observers noted that Adobe had not kept up with the pace of software introductions. As the Wall Street Journal reported in 1998, 'In fast-moving industries, the quest for perfection can get in the way of cranking out good-enough products.' Adobe's methodical approach to developing software had hindered its growth and success. Adobe also had grown its work force too enthusiastically, anticipating demand that failed to materialize.
OVERALL
Beta: 1.59
Market Cap (Mil.): $16,975.03
Shares Outstanding (Mil.): 504.46
Annual Dividend: --
Yield (%): --
FINANCIALS
ADBE.O Industry Sector
P/E (TTM): 19.79 23.60 18.53
EPS (TTM): 152.95 -- --
ROI: 12.28 9.99 15.36
ROE: 16.65 13.03 16.82
Key Dates:
1982: John Warnock and Charles Geschke form Adobe Systems.
1986: Adobe goes public.
1987: Adobe releases Adobe Illustrator and establishes an international presence through its European subsidiary.
1994: Company acquires Aldus, the developer of PageMaker software.
1999: Adobe introduces InDesign, a professional publishing software package. Sales surpass $1 billion for the first time.
Name Age Since Current Position
Warnock, John 70 2001 Independent Chairman of the Board
Geschke, Charles 71 2000 Independent Chairman of the Board
Narayen, Shantanu 47 2007 President, Chief Executive Officer, Director
Garrett, Mark 53 2007 Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President
Lynch, Kevin 44 2008 Senior Vice President - Experience & Technology Organization, Chief Technology Officer
Cottle, Karen 61 2002 Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary
Wadhwani, David 39 2010 Senior Vice President, General Manager - Creative and Interactive Solutions Business Unit
Loiacono, Johnny 49 2010 Senior Vice President - Digital Media Business Unit
Thompson, Matthew 52 2006 Senior Vice President - Worldwide Field Operations
Tarkoff, Robert 42 2010 Senior Vice President - Digital Enterprise Solutions Business Unit
Rowley, Richard 54 2006 Vice President, Principal Accounting Officer, Corporate Controller
Sedgewick, Robert 64 1990 Independent Director
Daley, James 69 2001 Independent Director
Cannon, Michael 58 2003 Independent Director
Barnholt, Edward 67 2005 Independent Director
Burgess, Robert 53 2005 Independent Director
Rosensweig, Daniel 49 2009 Independent Director
Address:
345 Park Avenue
San Jose, California 95110-2704
U.S.A.
Adobe was founded in December 1982[2] by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, who established the company after leaving Xerox PARC in order to develop and sell the PostScript page description language. In 1985, Apple Computer licensed PostScript for use in its LaserWriter printers, which helped spark the desktop publishing revolution. The company name Adobe comes from Adobe Creek in Los Altos, California, which ran behind the house of one of the company's founders.[2] Adobe acquired its former competitor, Macromedia, in December 2005, which added newer software products and platforms such as Coldfusion, Dreamweaver, Flash and Flex to its product portfolio.
As of August 2009, Adobe Systems has 7,564 employees,[2] about 40% of whom work in San Jose. Adobe also has major development operations in Orlando, FL; Seattle, WA; San Francisco, CA; Orem, UT; Ottawa, Ontario; Minneapolis, MN; Waltham, MA; San Luis Obispo, CA; Hamburg, Germany; Noida, India; Bengaluru, India; Bucharest, Romania; Beijing, China.
Adobe Systems Incorporated (Adobe), incorporated in October 1983, offers a range of business, Web and mobile software and services used by professionals, knowledge workers, developers, marketers, enterprises and consumers for creating, managing, delivering, optimizing and engaging with content and experiences across multiple operating systems, devices and media. The Company distributes its products through a network of distributors, value-added resellers (VARs), systems integrators, independent software vendors (ISVs) and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). It also markets and licenses its software directly to enterprise customers through its sales force and to end users through . In addition, it licenses its technology to hardware manufacturers, software developers and service providers, and provides some of its solutions through Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), also known as hosted or cloud-based offerings. Its software runs on personal computers (PC) and server-based computers, as well as various non-PC and mobile devices, depending on the product. It has operations in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Asia. On October 28, 2010 the Company completed the acquisition of Day Software Holding AG (Day), a provider of Web content management (WCM), digital asset management and social collaboration offerings. In January 2011, the Company acquired Demdex.
Creative and Interactive Solutions Segment
The Company’s Creative and Interactive Solutions segment focuses on the needs of professional customers, as well as Web and application developers. Collectively, these customers include those in professions, such as graphic designers, production artists, Web designers and developers, user interface designers, writers, videographers, motion graphic artists, prepress professionals, video game developers and mobile application developers. Its Creative Suite family of products is used by creative professionals to create printed and on-line information people see, read and interact with every day, including newspapers, magazines, Websites, Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), catalogs, advertisements, brochures, product documentation, books, memos, reports and banners. Its tools are also used to create and enhance content, including video, animation and mobile content, that is created by multimedia, film, television, audio and video producers who work in advertising, Web design, music, entertainment, corporate and marketing communications, product design, user interface design, sales training, printing, architecture and fine arts. Knowledge workers, educators, hobbyists and high end consumers also use its creative products to create and deliver content that is of creative professional quality. Its Creative Suite 4 (CS4) family of products incorporated Adobe technologies used by creative professionals into six Creative Suite editions and 13 individual creative products, providing offerings for the various creative disciplines. In May of 2010, it delivered Creative Suite 5 (CS5). CS5 provides more than 250 new and enhanced features, significant performance improvements, new integration with Omniture measurement and optimization services (or software services), and new workflow capabilities.
During the fiscal year ended December 3, 2010 (fiscal 2010), the Company released a version 10.1 update for its Flash Player. Its Creative products include Adobe Creative Suite Design Premium, Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection, Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection, Adobe Creative Suite Web Premium, CS Live Services, Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Flash Professional, Adobe Ideas, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InCopy, Adobe InDesign, Adobe InDesign Server, Adobe Visual Communicator, Business Catalyst and Ovation. Its Platform products include Adobe AIR, Adobe Flash Catalyst, Adobe Flash Lite, Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Flash Platform Services and Adobe Flex. Its Flash Media Server products include Adobe Flash Access, Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server, Adobe Flash Media Enterprise Server, Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder, Adobe Flash Media Playback, Adobe Flash Media Streaming Server, Adobe Flash Video Streaming Service and HTTP Dynamic Streaming.
The Company competes with Apple, Aviary, Avid, Corel, Microsoft, Quark, Autodesk, Bare Bones Software, FlashDevelop, JetBrains, Panic, MacRabbit, MacroMates, Oracle, IBM and Borland.
Digital Media Solutions Segment
The Company’s Digital Media Solutions segment contains its professional imaging and video products. Its offerings in the Digital Media Solutions market extend from desktop tools, to smartphone and tablet applications, to cloud-based SaaS capabilities, to real-time rich media solutions, which give business users the control to upload, manage, enhance and publish content with minimal information technology (IT) support. Its offerings also extend to the delivery of rich media through streaming media and a flexible development environment for creating and delivering media applications. During fiscal 2010, it released version 9 of its Adobe Photoshop Elements software, which is its digital imaging application targeted for amateur photographers and digital imaging hobbyists. During fiscal 2010, it released version 9 of Adobe Premiere Elements software, which is video editing software that can be used by hobbyists to enhance and share their digital video memories on digital versatile disks (DVDs). It also released a software bundle that includes the new versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements and Adobe Premiere Elements to target hobbyists who desire both applications in one package. Its free versions of applications, which run on smartphones and tablets, including Adobe Photoshop.com Mobile, is an application and available for free on devices running Google Android OS and Apple iOS. It renamed this product to Adobe Photoshop Express. The Company’s Digital Media Solutions products include Adobe After Effects, Adobe Audition, Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium, Adobe Encore, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Express, Photoshop Express Mobile, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Adobe Photoshop Extended, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Adobe Premiere Elements, Adobe Premiere Express, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Soundbooth, Adobe Story and Adobe Visual Communicator.
The Company competes with AI Soft (Japan), Apple, ArcSoft, Corel, i4, Google, Kodak, Nova Development, Magix, Microsoft, Photodex Corporation, Sonic, Pinnacle, Sony, Canon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Nikon, Phase One and Facebook.
Digital Enterprise Solutions
The focus of the Company’s Digital Enterprise Solutions business is to provide solutions to meet the needs of enterprises and governments. It categorizes its Digital Enterprise Solutions in two distinct segments: Knowledge Worker and Enterprise. As part of its Digital Enterprise Solutions focus, it addresses the needs of the knowledge worker customer. Knowledge workers include a rage of job functions, such as accountants, attorneys, architects, educators, engineers, graphic designers, insurance underwriters and stock analysts. Its Acrobat.com service provides centralized online file sharing and storage capabilities, as well as simple portable document format (PDF) creation, an online word processor, spreadsheet, and personal Web conferencing services with Adobe ConnectNow. In addition to complementing its Acrobat desktop solutions, Acrobat.com also serves as an introductory service for knowledge workers who wish to utilize PDF-creation capabilities and the Adobe Reader. In November 2010, it launched Adobe Acrobat X, the 10th version of its Acrobat family of products. Its Knowledge Worker products include Adobe Acrobat.com, Adobe Acrobat Standard, Adobe Acrobat Pro, Adobe Acrobat Pro Extended, Adobe Acrobat Suite, Adobe CreatePDF, Adobe SendNow and Adobe Reader.
The Enterprise segment of the Company’s Digital Enterprise Solutions business addresses the needs of large enterprises and governments. Its customer experience management (CEM) platform enables its customers to not only reach their constituents through new communication channels, such as mobile and social, but also to provide common infrastructure across customer touch points and processes in an enterprise. Its CEM platform provides creative and developer tools for creating applications and global Web experiences. It also provides common business user applications for managing content and messages, and, it provides a common framework to measure, optimize and target experiences for business results-across both new and traditional communication channels and devices. Its Enterprise products include Adobe CQ, Adobe CRX, Adobe LiveCycle Collaboration Service, Adobe LiveCycle Connectors for ECM, Adobe LiveCycle Content Services, Adobe LiveCycle Mosaic, Adobe Connect, Adobe LiveCycle Data Services, Adobe LiveCycle Forms, Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions, Adobe LiveCycle Output, Adobe LiveCycle PDF Generator, Adobe LiveCycle Production Print, Adobe LiveCycle Digital Signatures, Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management, Adobe LiveCycle Process Management, Adobe LiveCycle Business Activity Monitoring, LiveCycle Managed Services, Adobe Central Pro Output Server, Adobe LiveCycle Designer, Adobe Output Designer, Adobe Output Pak for mySAP.com and Adobe Web Output Pak.
The Company competes with Microsoft, AdLib, Active PDF, Apple, Global Graphics, Nuance, Software995, Sourcenext, Enfocus, Dalim, Zinio, Google, Cisco WebEx, IBM, Citrix, Oracle, Autonomy, EMC, OpenText, Alfresco, FatWire, CoreMedia, Percussion, SDL, Drupal, Joomla! and WordPress.
Omniture Segment
The Company’s Omniture business unit provides Web analytics and online business optimization products, solutions and services, which it delivers through the Omniture line of products and the Adobe Online Marketing Suite. Customers use Omniture products and services to manage and optimize online, offline, digital and multi-channel business initiatives. Customers who use its Omniture solutions include marketing professionals such as the chief marketing officer, marketing managers, online marketing managers, search engine marketers, media managers, media buyers and marketing research analysts. Customers also include Web content editors, Web analysts and Web production managers. It offers the Adobe Online Marketing Suite, powered by Omniture technology, its suite of products, solutions and services used to manage and enhance online, offline and multi-channel business initiatives, which it hosts and delivers to its customers on-demand and also provide as an on-premise solution for some products. Its Online Marketing Suite consists of an open business analytics platform, online and multi-channel analytics, and an integrated set of applications to optimize digital advertising spend and conversion. These components and services are accessed by a Web browser, and are built on a scalable and flexible computing architecture.
The components of the Company’s Online Marketing Suite are organized by five main components of its offering: Advertising Optimization, Conversion Optimization, Online Analytics, Multi-channel Analytics and Omniture Open Business Analytics Platform. The products in this segment include Adobe SearchCenter, Adobe Merchandising, Adobe Publish, Adobe Recommendations, Adobe Scene7 On-Demand, Adobe Search&Promote, Adobe SiteSearch, Adobe Test&Target, Adobe Discover, Adobe SiteCatalyst, Adobe Survey, Adobe Insight, Adobe Insight for Retail, Adobe DataWarehouse and Adobe Genesis.
The Company competes with ComScore, Google, IBM, Microsoft, WebTrends, Yahoo!, Infor, Nielsen Company, SAS Institute, Google, WPP, Autonomy, Accenture, Acxiom Digital, [x + 1], Endeca Technologies, FAST Search, ThanxMedia, Celebros, SLI Systems, Nextopia Software, Fredhopper, Truviso, Clickfox, Qliktech , AsterData, Aggregate Knowledge, Baynote, Certona, Rich Relevance, Amadesa, Marin Software, Kenshoo, SearchIgnite, Clickable, Efficient Frontier, OpinionLab, iPerceptions and Foresee Results.
Print and Publishing Segment
The Company’s Print and Publishing business segment contains products and services, which address diverse market opportunities, including e-Learning solutions, technical document publishing, Web application development and high-end printing. Its ColdFusion offering provides ways to build and deploy Internet applications. Developers can extend or integrate ColdFusion with Java or .NET applications, connect to enterprise data and applications, create and interact through Web services, or interface with short messaging service (SMS) on mobile devices or instant messaging clients. ColdFusion can also be used for business reporting, rich-forms generation, printable document generation, full-text search, and graphing and charting. Its Print and Publishing products include Adobe Authorware, Adobe Captivate, Adobe ColdFusion, Adobe ColdFusion Builder, Adobe ColdFusion in the Cloud, Adobe Contribute, Adobe Director, Adobe eLearning Suite, Adobe FrameMaker, Adobe FrameMaker Server, Adobe Font Folio, Adobe JRun, Adobe PageMaker, Adobe PDF Print Engine, Adobe PostScript, Adobe RoboHelp, Adobe Shockwave Player, Adobe Technical Communication Suite, Adobe Type Classics for Learning, Adobe Type Sets and FreeHand MX.
The Company competes with Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Global Graphics, Zoran, Techsmith, Firefly, Lectora, Articulate, ezHTMLArea, ekTron, Cisco, Interwoven, Vignette, IBM and Oracle.
Adobe solidified its position in the desktop publishing market in 1994 when it acquired Aldus, the maker of the industry-leading PageMaker desktop publishing software. Adobe and Aldus had worked in cooperation previously, and Adobe's font software was used in PageMaker. Also that year Adobe introduced After Effects, a program geared toward multimedia and film production efforts. After Effects provided tools for producing two-dimensional animation, as well as special effects and motion compositing. Adobe reported revenues of $676 million for fiscal 1994, up from $580 million the previous year.
In the mid-1990s Adobe continued to grow through acquisitions and worked to strengthen its position in the volatile software industry. The acquisition of Frame Technology Corporation, the developer of FrameMaker publishing software, proved to be an unfortunate purchase; after integrating Frame into the Adobe family of operations, Frame's sales declined heavily. Industry observers attributed the drop to Adobe's decision to get rid of Frame's technical support division. Also in 1995 Adobe bought Ceneca Communications, which developed tools for creating Web pages. The following year Adobe made additional acquisitions, including Ares Software, for about $15.5 million, and the research and development efforts of Swell Software, for about $6 million. The research project, however, was discontinued soon after the purchase. Also in 1996 Adobe spun off its pre-press division to Luminous Corporation for about $43.6 million and moved its headquarters from Mountain View to downtown San Jose. The following year Adobe divested its investment in Netscape Communications Corporation and separately acquired three software companies, spending a total of about $8.5 million.
On the software front, Adobe released PhotoDeluxe and PageMill in 1996. PhotoDeluxe, the first of its category, allowed consumers to manipulate and edit photographs on their computers. PageMill included tools for easily creating Web pages. In 1997 Adobe released upgrades of PageMaker, Illustrator, and FrameMaker. These releases, coupled with increased demand for Photoshop, PhotoDeluxe, and Acrobat products, led to total revenues of $912 million for fiscal 1997, up from $787 million the previous year. In addition, the company's balance of software revenues shifted from predominantly Macintosh-based software to Windows-based software.
Not everything was rosy at Adobe headquarters, however, and 1998 proved to be the most grueling in the company's history. In 1997 Hewlett-Packard chose to stop licensing PostScript from Adobe when it developed its own clone version of the software. By the following year Adobe was feeling the effects of Hewlett-Packard's decision, and its licensing sales suffered. The decline in Macintosh software sales hurt Adobe as well, and competitors such as Microsoft Corporation took away precious market share. In addition, because of the economic recession in Asia, sales in Japan, one of Adobe's stronger markets, fell about 40 percent. Adobe's stock price fell as well, hitting a low that was less than half of its value. Industry observers noted that Adobe had not kept up with the pace of software introductions. As the Wall Street Journal reported in 1998, 'In fast-moving industries, the quest for perfection can get in the way of cranking out good-enough products.' Adobe's methodical approach to developing software had hindered its growth and success. Adobe also had grown its work force too enthusiastically, anticipating demand that failed to materialize.
OVERALL
Beta: 1.59
Market Cap (Mil.): $16,975.03
Shares Outstanding (Mil.): 504.46
Annual Dividend: --
Yield (%): --
FINANCIALS
ADBE.O Industry Sector
P/E (TTM): 19.79 23.60 18.53
EPS (TTM): 152.95 -- --
ROI: 12.28 9.99 15.36
ROE: 16.65 13.03 16.82
Key Dates:
1982: John Warnock and Charles Geschke form Adobe Systems.
1986: Adobe goes public.
1987: Adobe releases Adobe Illustrator and establishes an international presence through its European subsidiary.
1994: Company acquires Aldus, the developer of PageMaker software.
1999: Adobe introduces InDesign, a professional publishing software package. Sales surpass $1 billion for the first time.
Name Age Since Current Position
Warnock, John 70 2001 Independent Chairman of the Board
Geschke, Charles 71 2000 Independent Chairman of the Board
Narayen, Shantanu 47 2007 President, Chief Executive Officer, Director
Garrett, Mark 53 2007 Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President
Lynch, Kevin 44 2008 Senior Vice President - Experience & Technology Organization, Chief Technology Officer
Cottle, Karen 61 2002 Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary
Wadhwani, David 39 2010 Senior Vice President, General Manager - Creative and Interactive Solutions Business Unit
Loiacono, Johnny 49 2010 Senior Vice President - Digital Media Business Unit
Thompson, Matthew 52 2006 Senior Vice President - Worldwide Field Operations
Tarkoff, Robert 42 2010 Senior Vice President - Digital Enterprise Solutions Business Unit
Rowley, Richard 54 2006 Vice President, Principal Accounting Officer, Corporate Controller
Sedgewick, Robert 64 1990 Independent Director
Daley, James 69 2001 Independent Director
Cannon, Michael 58 2003 Independent Director
Barnholt, Edward 67 2005 Independent Director
Burgess, Robert 53 2005 Independent Director
Rosensweig, Daniel 49 2009 Independent Director
Address:
345 Park Avenue
San Jose, California 95110-2704
U.S.A.
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