ADBE
Wall Street is fiddling with the knobs
Adobe is set to report third-quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday, Sept. 10, and analysts are busy rearranging their expectations like they’re trying to squeeze into one more suitcase before a flight.
The consensus calls for earnings of $6.09 a share on $6.70 billion in revenue, both up from a year ago. That’s the easy part. The trickier part is that Wall Street has been updating targets all over the place:
- Barclays kept an Equal-Weight rating and lifted its target to $295
- Citi stayed Neutral and raised its target to $301
- Jefferies held at Hold and moved its target to $285
- B of A stayed Underperform but bumped its target to $220
- Morgan Stanley went the other way, downgrading Adobe to Underweight and cutting its target to $240
The CEO shuffle is still hanging over the stock
This report lands just days after Adobe said Anil Chakravarthy will become president and CEO on Dec. 1, with longtime chief Shantanu Narayen moving into the executive chair role. That kind of handoff doesn’t usually scream calm-and-cozy for investors, especially when it arrives right before a big earnings check-in.
Why you should care
Adobe doesn’t need a drama-filled earnings call. Investors will be watching for three things: whether revenue momentum is holding up, whether management sounds confident about the next stretch, and whether the CEO transition changes the company’s AI story at all.
Shares slipped 0.9% to $254.86 on Wednesday, which is not exactly a vote of thunderous enthusiasm.
Big picture: Adobe is still a software heavyweight, but this quarter is doing double duty — it’s an earnings test and a first look at how much patience Wall Street has left for the leadership plot twist.