Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Shantanu Narayen: Yes, Sterling, maybe I can speak to that. I mean, first, it’s nice to see that since the deal was announced, the excitement associated with both what we can do as combined companies as well as, as you can see from our results, the interest in the core business. And so, we’re excited overall associated with it. Certainly, as the regulatory bodies are looking at it. We can focus on thinking about strategically. We are getting a lot of great feedback from customers. But these are two separate independent companies. And as it relates to our own cost structure as well as our technology, we feel really good about all the prioritizations we’ve made. And so, we feel like we’re uniquely positioned when it closes to immediately take advantage of it.

Operator: We’ll move on to our next question from Brad Zelnick with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Brad Zelnick: My congrats as well on a strong finish to the year. Following up on Sterling’s question, it’s good to hear the Figma close process is moving forward as expected. Can you give us an update on how their business is trending, just relative to your commentary at the time the deal was announced, especially given the evolution of the macro environment since then? Thanks.

Shantanu Narayen: Brad, as you know, they’re a private company. And so, we’re certainly not at liberty to talk about it. And they have to continue to execute on their opportunity by themselves.

Brad Zelnick: Okay. Understood. Thank you, Shantanu.

Operator: We’ll move on to our next question from Mark Murphy with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Mark Murphy: Thank you very much. And I’ll add my congrats. So Shantanu, the amount of energy and excitement in the audience was quite impressive down at the MAX conference. And I’m wondering which of the innovations that you unveiled has created the most enthusiasm, which you might — you think might also be monetizable? And I’m wondering whether it could be generative AI or that Share for Review capability, the intertwine capability or anything else really coming to the forefront.

Shantanu Narayen: Well, Mark, firstly, thanks for being there, and it’s clear that you were also looking at all of the cool new innovative stuff that was delivered. I always worry about questions like that because it’s, you know, which of my children do I love the most. But let me just speak to, I think, thematically, what David and Scott showed, which is the core applications. We just continue to make sure the core applications are more accessible, more productive, more fun. And so I think that’s one area, thematically, that the team has done an outstanding job of making sure that we continue to deliver innovative capabilities. You mentioned Intertwine and Illustrator. I think the second thing, thematically, we talk about how do we get more people into the franchise.

David also referred to that when he answered the two questions on Express, which is, the more we get people into the franchise, whether it’s through our trial products, whether it’s through Express, whether it’s through participating in the collaborative process. I think that only adds to the available market for Adobe. And so, I think the work that we’re doing in collaboration is really continuing to democratize what we can do. So, I’m pretty excited about that. I think the AI and the sneaks that you talked about, that really — the potential for that when you see whether it was the individual fonts that were being done or whether your ability through a text, to be able to get your content done exactly the way it is. I’m sure you’ve been tracking also what’s happened, Mark, in terms of the chat GPT and what you can do with respect to text.

So, I think that entire space, our vision has always been anybody who has a creative idea, how do you get that creative idea to life. And so, I think moving from the hundreds of millions to billions of people who can use it. You’re right, that has profound impact in terms of getting more people on our platform. And I think you’ll see us be quite aggressive about delivering more of that functionality in an augmented way, perhaps first starting with Express. But I think we’re excited about all of that. And the Frame acquisition certainly also is off. I think David and Dan spoke to Substance. So, we feel really good about the multiple growth drivers.

David Wadhwani: If I can adjust a little bit to that. The three examples you brought are really interesting examples because intertwine is an example of the ongoing innovation in our existing flagship application. So that continues to drive an keep people engaged and onboarding into the applications and keep those — keeps everything fresh and differentiated. Share for Review that initial release, while still early, we’ve been amazed by the repeat use of that once people start using it. And that represents a great growth loop for us. Because, as you know, anyone that gets shared a document, whether it’s a Photoshop document or an Illustrator document or any other document is also an opportunity as a stakeholder to turn into a future user of Adobe products, whether it happens to be the Photoshop document to Photoshop usage or whether it happens to be driving people to try Adobe Express.

So, those growth loops are really interesting and important to us as well. And I just wanted to make sure people saw that opportunity.

Operator: The next question will come from Jay Vleeschhouwer with Griffin Securities. Please go ahead.