Adobe Q4 earnings beat Street, as does outlook

NEW YORK: Software maker Adobe Systems Inc on Monday posted earnings for its latest quarter that exceeded analyst expectations, and it provided a rosy outlook.

Investors pumped the stock up by $1.66, or 5.7 percent, to $30.85 in extended trading, after the release of the results.

The maker of Photoshop, Acrobat and Flash software earned $269 million, or 53 cents per share, in the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended Dec. 3. In the same period last year, it posted a loss of $32 million, or 6 cents per share, weighed down by tax effects and restructuring costs.

Adjusted earnings were 56 cents per share in the latest quarter, surpassing the average forecast of 52 cents per share among analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

Adobe says revenue jumped 33 percent to $1.01 billion from $757 million last year. It was Adobe's first billion-dollar quarter.

Adobe, which is based in San Jose, California, says it expects to earn 54 cents to 59 cents per share in the current quarter, excluding items, on revenue $1 billion to $1.05 billion. Analysts were expecting 51 cents, on $992 billion of revenue.

For the full year, Adobe earned $775 million, or $1.47 per share, on $3.8 billion of revenue. In the previous year, it earned $387 million, or 73 cents per share, on $2.95 billion of revenue. In the regular trading session, shares increased 40 cents, or 1.4 percent, to close Monday at $29.19.