Subscription shift is still a work in progress

Article Excerpt

ADOBE SYSTEMS INC. $52 (Nasdaq symbol ADBE; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 502.3 million; Market cap: $26.1 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 6.1; No dividends paid since June 2005; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.adobe.com) earned $164.4 million, or $0.32 a share, in its fiscal 2013 third quarter, which ended August 30, 2013. That’s down 43.5% from $291.2 million, or $0.58 a share, a year earlier. Revenue fell 7.9%, to $995.1 million from $1.1 billion. The company is doing a good job of selling its Creative Cloud package of photo-editing and desktop-publishing programs as a subscription service instead of a one-time purchase. It added 331,000 Creative Cloud subscribers during the third quarter, compared to 221,000 in the second quarter. It now has 1.03 million subscribers and should reach its goal of 1.25 million by the end of fiscal 2013. However, the stock trades at 35.9 times Adobe’s likely 2013 earnings of $1.45 a share. That’s a high p/e ratio for…