Adobe Beats Wall Street Expectations

For the three months ending May 31, Adobe says it earned $54.3 million, or 22 cents a share. In the same period last year, Adobe posted a net income of $61.3 million, or 25 cents a share.

Excluding one-time charges, Adobe reported pro forma earnings of $67.4 million, or 27 cents per share--down from pro forma earnings of $84.5 million, or 34 cents per share, for the comparable period last year.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company, the leader in desktop publishing software and the nation's second-largest PC software company, says revenue for the three months was $317.4 million, down about 8 percent from $344.1 million in the year-ago period.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial/First Call had expected Adobe to earn 25 cents a share on revenue of $316.3 million.

"Despite a continuing soft economy, we had a solid quarter with a strong release of Photoshop," says Bruce Chizen, Adobe's president and CEO, referring to the company's latest version of its popular photo editing program.

For the current quarter, Adobe said it is targeting revenue of $300 million to $320 million and earnings per share of 24 cents to 27 cents.

Wall Street analysts were projecting earnings of 26 cents per share on revenue of $328.2 million for the current quarter.

Shares of Adobe fell $1.12, or 3 percent, to close at $36.19 in regular trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market before the earnings report was released. The stock was up 80 cents to $36.99 in after-hours trading.

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