Adobe posts record revenue, surge in profit

Adobe Systems posted record revenue for its first quarter of fiscal 2018 along with a surge in profit, and offered Wall Street a rosy outlook, a strong financial performance that caused the tech company’s shares to rocket higher Thursday afternoon.

In extended trades after the stock markets closed for the day on Thursday, Adobe soared 3.7 percent.

“Adobe’s outstanding growth is driven by enabling our customers to be more creative, work smarter and transform their businesses,” said Shantanu Narayen, Adobe’s chief executive officer.

For the fiscal quarter that ended in early March, profit totaled $583.1 million on revenue of $2.08 billion. Compared with the similar three-month period of a year ago, profit was up 46.3 percent and revenue was up 23.6 percent.

Excluding certain onetime items, per- share profit for the first quarter was $1.55 a share, compared with Wall Street’s expectations of $1.44. Analysts had anticipated revenue would total $2.05 billion.

Adobe has enticed Wall Street because revenue has soared after the company transitioned its offerings to the cloud. So far in 2018, Adobe shares have jumped 24.9 percent, while the tech-focused Nasdaq has risen 8.4 percent.

“Fiscal year 2018 is off to a strong start for Adobe as we continue to successfully execute against our strategy,” Narayen said in comments to analysts during a conference call to discuss the earnings results.

Wall Street also embraced Adobe’s shares after the digital media and marketing software giant offered an outlook for 2018 that surpassed analysts’ predictions.

“We drove strong performance across our product offerings and geographies during the quarter,” Mark Garrett, Adobe’s chief financial officer, said during the conference call.