Adobe spikes 4% after ‘record’ $1.46 billion revenue in Q3 2016

Adobe shared its third-quarter earnings report today, revealing (for the third quarter in a row) “record” $1.46 billion in revenue and $0.75 (non-GAAP) earnings per share. Analysts had expected slightly less: $1.45 billion in revenue and $0.72 earnings per share, on average.

Last year, Adobe reported $1.22 billion in revenue for the third quarter.

This release marks the second time Adobe has chosen to exclude Creative Cloud subscription numbers from its earnings, a helpful figure we once used to measure the growth rate of Adobe’s flagship service. Adobe told us last quarter that it made the change to focus on annual recurring revenue — that is, the money Adobe expects to make from subscriptions annually. (We’d prefer more subscription stats, not less.)

Adobe’s digital media business ended the third quarter with a combined $3.70 billion in annualized recurring revenue, counting both Creative Cloud and the relatively new Document Cloud. That figure is up from $3.41 billion in the second quarter.

Adobe’s marketing business also set a revenue record this past quarter: $404 million, or about half of the quarterly revenue brought in by Creative Cloud and Document Cloud, according to Adobe’s press release. Rounding things out, Adobe’s earnings forecast for the fourth quarter is higher than analysts expected.

During regular trading today, Adobe was up by less than one percent. After hours, the company jumped by more than four percent.

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