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

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So I think the team has executed against continuing to try and drive a large opportunity. The other thing I think we feel good about is the fact that both Summit as well as in the U.S. and UK, we’re looking forward to being in person because we can engage more in person with them. So hopefully, that gives you some color of why perhaps the stronger companies are showing more macro strength than other companies.

Dan Durn: And Alex, I’ll jump in on the second part of the question. As we think about RPO being up 13% year-over-year on a constant currency basis, you think about the underlying performance of deferred revenue, unbilled backlog, it’s very similar profile across both of those dimensions of the RPO. If you think about cash flow, the one thing I would point to, we all know that there has been a change in the tax regulation around capitalization of R&D expenses. We signaled at the time we set our annual targets that we would see a step-up in cash taxes starting this quarter, and that’s really what you see profiling through operating cash.

Alex Zukin: Prefect. Thank you, guys. Congrats.

Operator: We will take our next question from the line of Keith Weiss with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Keith Weiss: Hi, excellent. Thank you, guys for taking the question. A really nice quarter. I think my question is actually a deep dive into the prior two questions. Dan, maybe digging a little bit into sort of what Brad was asking. We are like, from a market perspective and an investor perspective, worrying about these kind of incremental impacts like Silicon Valley Bank and other bank failures. And you’re seeing continued like a reduction in headcount from big shops like Meta on a go-forward basis. So I think the market is getting incrementally worried about the underlying kind of macro impacts. But you guys went the other way. Like in Q1, you’re taking up your net new ARR additions for Digital Media. So can you walk us through specifically, is there anything mechanical or sort of tactical, if you will, that gives you guys the confidence that like even with the heightened kind of volatility that we’re seeing out there that you guys feel comfortable in Q1 taking up that full year guide?

And then on the other side of the equation on the free cash flow, can you just specify for us and you can give us a sense of kind of where those cash taxes are going to go over time just to help us kind of tune in our model?

Dan Durn: Yes. So let me take them in reverse order. In terms of cash taxes, there is a 5-year amortization period around the capitalization of that R&D. So you’ll see a pretty dramatic cash tax step-up initially. But over that 5-year amortization period, it will converge on the reported tax rate. And so that’s the general profile, and that’s why you see the significant step-up in Q1 just starting that process now. In terms of the environment we are in, clearly, the company is performing well. You see the diversification of our business that’s across geographies, industry sectors, product portfolio. The company is just performing well at a broad base way on the strength of that performance and the momentum we have, the visibility we have into the full year.

We think it’s the prudent thing to set expectations with investors in a way that reflects what we see as the opportunity in the company-specific performance. When I take a step back and I think about what is driving that differential performance in this environment, I think our products are mission-critical to our customers. We are on the critical path of them generating revenue. But as the world goes digital and those investments are prioritized, not only do we help companies drive top line growth, but we help them with the underlying productivity gains that go with that. It is why customers in this environment are prioritizing around things that we sell to enable their success. It addresses top line performance as well as underlying profitability of our customers.

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