Adobe’s record revenue streak continues: $1.61 billion in Q4 2016

Whatever you think of 2016, it was a great year for Adobe.

Adobe posted its fourth-quarter earnings this afternoon, revealing “record” $1.61 billion in revenue and $0.90 (non-GAAP) earnings per share. Adobe’s streak of record revenues now stretches four quarters.

Analysts expected less: about $1.59 billion in revenue and $0.86 earnings per share. And Adobe beat its own expectations, which peaked at $1.6 billion in revenue and $0.89 earnings per share, reports Seeking Alpha. This time last year, Adobe reported $1.31 billion in revenue and earnings per share of $0.62.

Lest we forget, today’s earnings marks the third time Adobe has chosen not to share Creative Cloud subscriber numbers, a nice stat that once helped us measure the growth of Adobe’s flagship service. Adobe says it made the change to focus on ARR: annual recurring revenue — or the money Adobe thinks it will make from subscriptions per year. As we said last quarter, “we’d prefer more subscription stats, not less.”

Anyway.

For the entire fiscal 2016 year, Adobe made $5.85 billion in revenue (another record!). In all of 2015 it made $4.80 billion.

Adobe’s narrative is broadly the same this year and last. The company’s pivot to subscriptions worked out, its marketing business is growing (but not the star of the show), and the stock price is mostly up and to the right (since February).

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