Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript March 15, 2023

Operator: Good day and welcome to the Q1 FY 2023 Adobe Earnings Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Jonathan Vaas, VP of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Jonathan Vaas: Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. With me on the call today are Shantanu Narayen, Adobe’s Chairman and CEO; David Wadhwani, President of Digital Media; Anil Chakravarthy, President of Digital Experience; and Dan Durn, Executive Vice President and CFO. On this call, which is being recorded, we will discuss Adobe’s first quarter fiscal year 2023 financial results. You can find our press release as well as PDFs of our prepared remarks and financial results on Adobe’s Investor Relations website. The information discussed on this call, including our financial targets and product plans, is as of today, March 15 and contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainty and assumptions. Actual results may differ materially from those set forth in these statements.

For a discussion of these risks, you should review the factors discussed in today’s press release and in Adobe’s SEC filings. On this call, we will discuss GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Our reported results include GAAP growth rates as well as constant currency rates. During this presentation, Adobe’s executives will refer to constant currency growth rates, unless otherwise stated. Reconciliations are available in our earnings release and on Adobe’s Investor Relations website. Adobe Summit is just around the corner in Las Vegas at the Venetian Convention and Expo Center beginning on Tuesday, March 21. Following the Day 1 keynote, we will host a Q&A session with financial analysts and investors in attendance at 11:30 a.m. Pacific Time.

Audio of the event will be broadcast live and the replay will be available on Adobe’s IR website. More details about Summit and the agenda are available at summit.adobe.com. I will now turn the call over to Shantanu.

Shantanu Narayen: Thanks, Jonathan. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. Adobe had a strong Q1, driving record revenue across our Creative Cloud, Document Cloud and Experience Cloud businesses. We achieved $4.66 billion in revenue, representing 13% year-over-year growth. GAAP earnings per share for the quarter, was $2.71 and non-GAAP earnings per share was $3.80. Digital is reshaping how we connect and engage with the world around us. Our performance demonstrates the critical role that Adobe products are playing in fueling the global digital economy, empowering everyone everywhere to imagine, create and bring any digital experience to life. We are executing against our strategy to unleash creativity for all, accelerate document productivity and power digital businesses, delivering on our innovative product roadmap and engaging a growing universe of customers from individuals to small businesses to the largest enterprises.

Given the recent news reports, I wanted to provide an update on the process and timing of our pending acquisition of Figma. We remain excited about the opportunity to advance product design, accelerate collaborative creativity on the web, and redefine the future of creativity and productivity. The potential combination continues to be well received by customers, industry analysts and partners. In addition, we are preparing for integration as we work through the regulatory process. From the outset, we have been well prepared for all potential scenarios while realistic about the regulatory environment. We have completed the discovery phase of the U.S. DOJ second request and are prepared for next steps, whether that is an approval or a challenge.

Adobe remains confident in the facts underlying the case. And based on current process timing, we believe the transaction continues to be on track for a close by the end of 2023. It goes without saying that our Q1 success demonstrates that we continue to be ruthlessly focused on executing against our immense opportunities, independent of this combination. David, over to you.

Dan Durn: Thanks, Shantanu. Hello, everyone. We are living in a visual digital-first world where content creation and consumption are exploding and where consumers, students and businesses need to create content that stands out and elevates their online profiles. As a result, more and more people are turning to Creative Cloud, which remains a preeminent destination for creativity across imaging, design, video, illustration and animation as well as new media types like 3D and augmented reality. We continue to see strong demand for our flagship applications, including Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and Acrobat and are excited about the traction we are getting with Adobe Express. Q1 was a strong quarter for Creative Cloud.

We achieved net new Creative ARR of $307 million and revenue of $2.76 billion, which grew 13% year-over-year. Q1 highlights include strong growth in top-of-funnel traffic, which resulted in healthy new demand for creative cloud applications across all routes to market and customer segments globally from individuals to SMBs, to large enterprises, increased demand and mobile adoption in imaging with products like Photoshop and Lightroom. Lightroom Mobile is now the default photo editor for the high-end photo editing experience on the Samsung Galaxy S-23 Series, continued momentum for Premier Pro, After Effects and Frame.io, which are leaders in video editing and collaboration. Over two-thirds of films at Sundance as well as Oscar winners, Everything Everywhere All At Once and Navalny were edited with our video products.

Rapid adoption of Substance 3D by brands such as Amazon, Burberry and Louis Vuitton, the Substance 3D team was honored with a technical Oscar in recognition of 3D capabilities that are making popular films such as Spider-Man, Star Wars and Blade Runner 2049 possible. Acceleration in our Adobe Stock business driven by the demand for high-quality imaging vector, video and 3D content. Momentum for Adobe Express with significant year-over-year growth in monthly active users across segments such as students, small businesses and creative professionals. We are actively driving adoption of both new users and existing Creative Cloud subscribers who are now using Express when they want speed and ease and we look forward to an imminent release of a dramatic upgrade with enhanced performance, collaboration functionality and new authoring capabilities for video and mixed media.

Exciting introduction of new products, including our beta releases of Character Animator and Adobe Podcast. Adobe Podcast is a web-based AI-powered audio recording and editing app, perfect for the growing podcast industry. It makes every recording even those done on your phone in busy spaces, sound like they were recorded in a studio. Key customer wins in the quarter include Accenture, BBC, Disney, IBM, Infosys and Nintendo. Our innovation engine continues to fire on all cylinders to reimagine the future of creativity. Last October, we previewed some of Adobe’s generative AI technology at MAX. We have been hard at work training Adobe models on our proprietary data sets, creating APIs, envisioning new services and integrating all these capabilities into our existing applications as a creative co-pilot.

These innovations are developed and deployed in alignment with Adobe’s AI ethics principles of accountability, responsibility and transparency. Stay tuned for some exciting announcements slated for next week in conjunction with Adobe Summit. Digital documents are powering productivity at home and at work, whether users are filing a tax form, submitting a sales contract, requesting feedback on a marketing campaign or completing an online bank transaction. Adobe Document Cloud is a leader in digital documents, redefining how people view, edit, share, scan and sign documents across desktop, web and mobile. In Q1, Document Cloud had record revenue of $634 million, which represents 16% year-over-year growth and strong net new ARR of $103 million, with ending ARR growing 22% year-over-year in constant currency.

Q1 highlights include continued demand for PDF with outstanding growth in documents opened in the Acrobat Chrome extension and the new integration that will make Acrobat Reader the default PDF viewer in Microsoft Edge for over 1 billion Windows users; significant growth in monthly active users for Acrobat web, driven by search volume for PDF related verbs and a continually optimized funnel to our web offering; continued proliferation of Acrobat driven by demand for integrated functionality such as Share for Review for collaboration and Adobe Sign for e-signatures; outstanding increase in API transactions as our ecosystem and business customers continue to customize and integrate document services; strong demand across all routes to market and customer segments globally from individuals to SMBs to large enterprises.

Key customer wins include Bank of Montreal, HP, JPMorgan Chase, Ministry of Defense of Netherlands, Samsung and Verizon. Given the strong Q1, the demand for our products and our innovation roadmap, we are pleased to raise our FY €˜23 Digital Media net new ARR target. I will now pass it to Anil.

Anil Chakravarthy: Thanks, David. Hello everyone. During the 2022 holiday season, e-commerce drove a record $211 billion with 38 days of $3-plus billion in daily spend according to the Adobe Digital Economy Index. Companies across B2B and B2C need an integrated customer experience management platform that empowers them to anticipate and meet the expectations of their customers. Today, digital is especially critical in enabling companies to drive profitable growth by delivering engaging and efficient customer experiences across the entire funnel, and Adobe is uniquely positioned to power experience-led growth. Experience Cloud offers a comprehensive portfolio of products that span the entire experience life cycle from marketing planning and workflows to data insights and activation to content and commerce and customer journeys.

Built natively on Adobe Experience platform, our real-time CDP provides businesses with actionable customer profiles, leveraging data from online and off-line channels to deliver personalized experiences at scale. In Q1, we continued to drive strong growth in our Experience Cloud business, achieving $1.18 billion in revenue. Subscription revenue was $1.04 billion, both representing 14% year-over-year growth. Petco is a great example of a B2C company leveraging Adobe’s comprehensive set of products to create and deliver engaging experiences. Petco uses Creative Cloud to create content and Experience Cloud, including real-time CDP and Adobe Journey Optimizer, to orchestrate personalized experiences across their pet care ecosystem, including veterinary care, grooming, training and insurance.

On the B2B side, Qualcomm is harnessing experience cloud to deliver personalized experiences and improve marketing performance as well as Creative Cloud and Document Cloud to accelerate content velocity across its business lines. Additional Q1 highlights include high retention rates and strong demand for services, demonstrating our customers’ focus on long-term value realization; strong growth in Adobe Experience Platform and our native applications, inclusive of real-time CDP, Adobe Journey Optimizer and Customer Journey Analytics; momentum for Workfront, which is powering workflows to help teams around the globe collaborate and launch campaigns with ease and efficiency; significant wins over single product competitors in analytics, content management and CDP that underscore Adobe’s differentiation; leadership in industry analyst reports, including the Forrester Wave for Digital Intelligence Platforms, the Forrester Wave for Cross-Channel Marketing Hubs and Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms; a significant number of transformational deals, including Accenture, Carnival Aida, Costco, IBM, MetLife, Paramount, Pfizer, S&P Global, TD Bank and Tim Hortons.

The Digital Experience business had a strong start to the year. Enterprises are focused on driving revenue growth through digital channels while increasing the productivity of their investments in customer experience and marketing. Experience Cloud is uniquely positioned to help enterprise customers across the world unlock profitable growth. Next week, we are excited to host Adobe Summit, the world’s largest digital experience conference. It’s our first time coming together in person in Las Vegas since 2019. And we’ll be joined online by tens of thousands of customers, partners and developers from around the world. In addition to unveiling exciting new technology innovation across Experience Cloud, we will host inspirational C-level executives from several companies at the forefront of the digital economy.

I will now pass it to Dan.

Dan Durn: Thanks, Anil. Today, I’ll start by summarizing Adobe’s performance in Q1 fiscal 2023, highlighting growth drivers across our businesses, and I’ll finish with financial targets. Q1 was a strong start to the year for Adobe. I know the macroeconomy is on every investor’s mind right now, and you can see the resilience and diversification of Adobe’s business in our financial results. Businesses today are prioritizing investments in order to maximize returns and impact, both to drive their top line and to deliver operational efficiency. And individuals are looking to create content that enables them to connect and stand out across digital platforms. In this environment, the demand for our products continues to be strong as our solutions are mission-critical to customers in a world where digital content and engagement drive the global economy.

Our product differentiation, engine of innovation and data-driven operating model are continuing to drive Adobe’s growth. We have a world-class balance sheet, industry-leading margins, a strong cash flow profile and a proven track record. I can’t think of a company that’s better positioned as we continue to innovate in our core business and create and scale emerging businesses to drive profitable growth. In Q1, Adobe achieved record revenue of $4.66 billion, which represents 9% year-over-year growth or 13% in constant currency. Business and financial highlights included: GAAP diluted earnings per share of $2.71 and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $3.80, Digital Media revenue of $3.40 billion, net new Digital Media ARR of $410 million, Digital Experience revenue of $1.18 billion, cash flows from operations of $1.69 billion, RPO of $15.21 billion exiting the quarter and repurchasing approximately 5 million shares of our stock during the quarter.

In our Digital Media segment, we achieved Q1 revenue of $3.40 billion, which represents 9% year-over-year growth or 14% in constant currency. We exited the quarter with $13.67 billion of Digital Media ARR. We achieved Creative revenue of $2.76 billion, which represents 8% year-over-year growth or 13% in constant currency, and we added $307 million of net new creative ARR in the quarter. Q1 Creative growth drivers included new user growth, fueled by customer demand and targeted marketing campaigns, which drove increased web traffic in the quarter; adoption of our Creative Cloud All Apps offerings across customer segments and geographies; students graduating from our Education segment into the creative professional job market; continued strength in upselling our new Acrobat CC offering, which includes integrated sign capabilities; licensing of individual applications, including a strong quarter for our imaging and photography offerings; momentum in high-growth businesses, such as Substance and Stock, where we had a tremendous quarter generating new business; and with Frame, which we are successfully cross-selling into our video customer base; a fast start to the year selling into our large enterprise accounts.

Adobe achieved Document Cloud revenue of $634 million, which represents 13% year-over-year growth or 16% in constant currency. We added $103 million of net new Document Cloud ARR in the quarter. Q1 Document Cloud growth drivers included continued growth of Acrobat web, demonstrating the success of our product-led growth strategy; strength in conversion and retention rates of our Acrobat mobile customers; demand for Acrobat subscriptions across all customer segments; success generating new customer demand for Acrobat Sign in SMB and the mid-market; and strength in the enterprise, driving seat expansion for our Acrobat business. Turning to our Digital Experience segment. In Q1, we achieved revenue of $1.18 billion and subscription revenue of $1.04 billion, which represents 12% year-over-year growth or 14% in constant currency.

Q1 Digital Experience growth drivers included success closing numerous transformational deals with large enterprises that are choosing Adobe to be their end-to-end CXM platform to drive personalization at scale; momentum with our AEP and native applications with the book of business growing more than 50% year-over-year; strength with our Content and Workfront solutions as our content supply chain strategy is resonating with customers; renewal rates of our enterprise customers that continue to be strong; and sales execution across multiple geographies. Turning to the income statement and balance sheet. In Q1, we continued with our strategy of making disciplined investments to drive growth while identifying cost-saving opportunities to drive earnings.

Adobe’s effective tax rate in Q1 was 22% on a GAAP basis and 18.5% on a non-GAAP basis, in line with our expectations. For fiscal 2023, Adobe’s management is adopting a fixed long-term projected non-GAAP tax rate to assess and report on operating results, which we believe provides a clear view of Adobe’s financial performance. The fixed long-term non-GAAP rate considers our current operating structure, existing tax positions, legislation and available forecast information. This rate is based on a 3-year projection and may be adjusted for changes in the future. RPO exiting the quarter was $15.21 billion, growing 10% year-over-year or 13% when factoring in a 3 percentage point FX headwind. Our ending cash and short-term investment position exiting Q1 was $5.65 billion and cash flows from operations in the quarter were $1.69 billion.

Over the past year, we completed a thorough review of our short-term investments and marketable securities to ensure we are prepared for the current environment and with a bias towards the higher end of the investment-grade spectrum. Adobe does not hold substantial assets or securities at Silicon Valley Bank or any regional bank. In Q1, we entered into a $1.4 billion share repurchase agreement, and we currently have $5.2 billion remaining of our $15 billion authorization granted in December 2020, which goes through the end of fiscal 2024. In light of the strong start to the year and momentum across our business and factoring in the macroeconomic environment, for Q2, we’re targeting: total Adobe revenue of $4.75 billion to $4.78 billion, Digital Media net new ARR of approximately $420 million, Digital Media segment revenue of $3.45 billion to $3.47 billion, Digital Experience segment revenue of $1.21 billion to $1.23 billion, Digital Experience subscription revenue of $1.06 billion to $1.08 billion, tax rate of approximately 21.5% on a GAAP basis and 18.5% on a non-GAAP basis, GAAP earnings per share of $2.65 to $2.70 and non-GAAP earnings per share of $3.75 to $3.80 and.

As a result of the strong performance in Q1 and trajectory of the business, we are raising our fiscal 2023 net new ARR and EPS targets. For fiscal 2023, we are now targeting Digital Media net new ARR of approximately $1.70 billion, GAAP earnings per share of $10.85 to $11.15 and non-GAAP earnings per share of $15.30 to $15.60. In summary, I’m pleased with our strong top line and bottom line execution in Q1, demonstrating the momentum we’ve established for the year. Our strong engine of innovation, combined with our operational rigor, are driving profitable growth and position us well to capture the massive growth opportunities at our doorstep. Shantanu, back to you.

Shantanu Narayen: Thanks, Dan. Adobe’s Q1 results underscore our strong momentum and the significant opportunities we have across our businesses. We’re thrilled to be back in Las Vegas for Adobe Summit next week. In addition to unveiling several new innovations across Experience Cloud, Creative Cloud and Document Cloud, we will share how we are building on our decades of AI leadership to deliver generative AI technologies that redefine creativity and customer experiences. We look forward to seeing you there. Adobe’s employees around the world motivate us to continuously raise the bar and create the future. This quarter, we were named to Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work; Bloomberg’s Gender Equality Index for the 5th year in a row; and the CDP A List, which recognizes leadership and environmental impact.

Our renowned brand, mission-critical products, and vast base of customers create an unmatched advantage that will fuel our growth. Thank you, and we will now take questions. Operator?

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Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. And we will take our first question from the line of Brad Zelnick with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Brad Zelnick: Great. Thank you so much for taking the question. And congrats on a really strong start to the year. Dan, your guidance explicitly embeds assumptions for the macro environment. Can you share with us what those are and how those assumptions might have changed from a few months ago when you last guided? Thanks.

Dan Durn: Yes. Thanks, Brad. There is really no change in our view in the macro environment. I think we’re pretty clear at the time we set our annual guidance, the environment that we’re in. We see the environment that others see. I think you can see that the company is performing really well against that backdrop. So we feel good about how we’re situated, the way in which we’re engaging with customers and its broad diversified performance across that environment. And so we like how we’re set up, but there is really no change to the assumptions underlying the macro environment. We see the same environment that others do.

Brad Zelnick: Thank you.

Operator: And we will take our next question from the line of Alex Zukin with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Alex Zukin: Yes. Hi, guys. So maybe just what do you think is the driving force behind €“ so many companies are talking about longer sales cycles, difficult to closing business. You had an outstanding quarter, specifically within the enterprise. So maybe what’s driving those macro headwinds for others that you’re not seeing or your resiliency specifically? And then on the topic of metrics, every metric was strong as we looked at revenues, RPO, Digital Media ARR operating margins. But maybe just can you talk about deferred revenue in the quarter? Anything there that was a headwind, because it did look like free cash flow was a little bit lighter than what we were expecting?

Shantanu Narayen: I’ll take the first, Alex, and then maybe Dan can speak to the second. I mean, I think, as Dan said, when we look at the macroeconomic situation, and you can see strong companies actually refer to this across the board, whether it’s consumers, whether it’s small and medium businesses, whether it’s enterprises globally, I think the reality is that digital for them is an imperative. And really for companies that have innovative solutions, it’s a tailwind. I think what a lot of companies are focused on is the message that enterprises are certainly sharing is that if the prior focus was growth at any cost, certainly, they are looking for more profitable growth. And I think if you look at our solutions on the creative document or enterprise side, we help them.

We help them with growth, but we help them with profitable growth and engaging with customers. The second thing I would say is that there is a large TAM here, and so I think our job in this environment is making sure that we have an even larger pipeline that we go address and attract because there may be some difference in the closure rates. But I think if you look at it in aggregate, our job is looking at it and saying how do we differentiate ourselves. I think the one thing also I would say, Alex, is that a lot of the companies that have single product offerings, I think they are probably seeing more headwind because a certain company may not put one part of what they offer as a priority. And I think a lot of the companies are looking at it and saying if we’re engaging in digital, we might change our focus from content management to the implementation of the customer data platform or there might be a focus more on campaigns or ensuring that the advertising spend, the attribution associated with it.