The markets for our products, services and solutions are rapidly evolving and intensely competitive. We expect competition to continue to intensify. Our competitors range in size from diversified global companies with significant sales and research and development resources, broad brand awareness, long operating histories or access to large customer bases to small, specialized companies whose narrow focuses may allow them to be more effective in deploying technical, marketing and financial resources. Our competitors may develop products, services or solutions that are similar to ours or that achieve greater acceptance, may undertake more far-reaching and successful product development efforts or marketing campaigns, or may adopt more aggressive pricing policies. As a result, current and potential customers may select the products, services or solutions of our competitors. Further, our future success depends on our continued ability to effectively appeal to businesses and consumers. New industry standards, evolving distribution models, limited barriers to entry, short product life cycles, customer price sensitivity, global market conditions and the frequent entry of new products or competitors may create downward pressure on pricing and gross margins and adversely affect our renewal, upsell and cross-sell rates as well as our ability to attract new customers. In addition, we expect to face more competition as AI continues to be integrated into the markets in which we compete. Our competitors or other third parties may incorporate AI into their offerings more successfully than we do and achieve greater and faster adoption, which could impair our ability to compete effectively and adversely affect our business and financial results. Further, we expect the markets for standalone AI offerings to be highly competitive and rapidly evolving. For example, we face increasing competition from companies offering text-to-image generative AI technology that may compete directly with our own creative offerings. If we are not able to provide products, services and solutions that compete effectively, we could experience reduced sales and our business could be adversely affected. For additional information regarding our competition and the risks arising out of the competitive environment in which we operate, see the section titled “Competition” contained in Part I, Item 1 of this report.


ADBE Risks Related to Our Ability to Grow Our Business

If our reputation or our brands are damaged, our business and financial results may be adversely affected.


We believe our reputation and brands have been, and we expect them to continue to be, important to our business and financial results. Maintaining and enhancing our brands may require us to make substantial investments and these investments may not be successful. There are numerous ways that our reputation or brands could be damaged, including, among other things, introduction of new products, features or services that do not meet customer expectations, our position on or approach to new and evolving technologies, backlash from customers, government entities or other stakeholders that disagree with our product offering decisions or public policy positions, significant litigation or regulatory actions that negatively reflect on our business practices, our action or inaction or actual or perceived failure to meet our commitments on environmental, social and governance, ethical or political issues, public scrutiny regarding our handling of user privacy, data practices or content, data security breaches or compliance failures, or our approach to AI. Further, our brands may be negatively affected by uses of our products, services or solutions, particularly our AI offerings, in ways that are out of our control, such as to create or disseminate content that is deemed to be misleading, deceptive or intended to manipulate public opinion, or for illicit, objectionable or illegal ends, or by our failure to respond appropriately and in a timely manner to such uses. Such uses may result in controversy or claims related to defamation, rights of publicity, illegal content, intellectual property infringement, harmful content, misinformation and disinformation, harmful bias, misappropriation, data privacy, derivative uses of third-party AI and personal injury torts. If we fail to appropriately respond to objectionable content created using our products, services or solutions or shared on our platforms, our users may lose confidence in our brands. Entry into markets with weaker protection of brands or changes in the legal systems in countries in which we operate may also impact our ability to protect our brands. If we fail to maintain, enhance or protect our brands, or if we incur excessive expenses in our efforts to do so, our business and financial results may be adversely affected.


ADBE Risks Related to the Operation of Our Business

Service interruptions or failures of our or third-party information technology systems may impair the availability of our products, services and solutions, which may expose us to liability, damage our reputation and harm our future financial results.


Much of our business, including our online store at adobe.com and our Creative Cloud, Document Cloud and Experience Cloud solutions, relies on hardware and services that are hosted, managed and controlled directly by us or third-party service providers to be available to customers and users without disruption. We do not have redundancy for all our systems, many of our critical applications (“apps”) reside in only one of our data centers, and our disaster recovery planning may not account for all eventualities. If any critical third-party service provider of hosting or content delivery services is negatively affected or becomes unavailable to us for any reason, we may not be able to deliver the corresponding products, services or solutions to our customers and users. Failure of our systems or those of our third-party service providers could disrupt our business operations and those of our customers, subject us to reputational harm, require costly and time-intensive notifications, and cause us to lose customers, users and future business. Occasionally, we migrate data among data centers and to third-party hosted environments. If a transition among data centers or to third-party service providers encounters unexpected interruptions, unforeseen complexity or unplanned disruptions despite precautions undertaken during the process, this may impair our delivery of products, services and solutions to customers and result in increased costs and liabilities, which may harm our operating results, reputation and our business.


It is also possible that hardware or software failures or errors in our systems (or those of our third-party service providers) could result in data loss or corruption, cause the information that we collect or maintain to be incomplete or contain inaccuracies that our customers regard as significant, or cause us to fail to meet committed service levels or comply with applicable notification requirements or other relevant contractual obligations to our customers. Furthermore, our ability to collect and report data may be delayed or interrupted by a number of factors, including access to the internet, the failure of our network or software systems, security breaches or significant variability in visitor traffic on customer websites. We may also find, on occasion, that we cannot deliver data and reports to our customers in near real-time due to factors such as significant spikes in customer activity on their websites or failures of our network or software (or that of a third-party service provider). If we fail to plan infrastructure capacity appropriately and expand it proportionally with the needs of our customer and user base, and we experience a rapid and significant demand on the capacity of our data centers or those of third parties, service outages or performance issues could occur, which may impact our customers. Such a strain on our infrastructure capacity may subject us to regulatory and customer notification requirements, violations of service level agreement commitments or financial liabilities and result in customer dissatisfaction or harm our business. If we supply materially inaccurate information or experience significant interruptions in our systems, our reputation could be harmed, we could lose customers and we could be found liable for damages or incur other losses.


Security incidents, improper access to or disclosure of our customers’ data or other cyber incidents may harm our reputation and materially and adversely affect our business.


Our products, services and solutions collect, store, manage and otherwise process third-party data, including our customers’ data and our own data. Such products, services and solutions as well as our technologies, systems and networks have been subject to, and may in the future be subject to, cyberattacks, computer viruses, ransomware or other malware, fraud, worms, social engineering, denial-of-service attacks, malicious software programs, insider threats and other cybersecurity incidents that have in the past, and may in the future, result in the unauthorized access, disclosure, acquisition, use, loss or destruction of sensitive personal or business data belonging to us and our customers.


Cybersecurity incidents can be caused by human error from our workforce or that of our third-party service providers, by malicious third parties, acting alone or in groups, or by more sophisticated organizations, including nation-states and state-sponsored organizations. Such risks may be elevated in connection with geopolitical tensions, including the Russia-Ukraine war. Certain unauthorized parties have in the past managed, and may in the future manage, to overcome our security measures and those of our third-party service providers to access and misuse systems and software by exploiting defects in design or manufacture, including bugs, vulnerabilities and other problems that unexpectedly compromise the security or operation of a product or system. Further, malicious third parties have in the past attempted, and may in the future attempt, to fraudulently induce our employees or users of our products, services or solutions to disclose sensitive, personal or confidential information via illegal electronic spamming, phishing or other tactics, and this risk is heightened in our current hybrid model working environment. Malicious actors may engage in fraudulent or abusive activities through our products, services and solutions, including unauthorized use of accounts through stolen credentials, use of stolen credit cards or other payment vehicles, failure to pay for services accessed, or other activities that violate our terms of service. While we actively combat such fraudulent activities, we have experienced, and may in the future experience, impacts to our revenue from such activities. Further, unauthorized parties may also gain physical access to our facilities and infiltrate our information systems or attempt to gain


logical access to our products, services or information systems to access content and data. The loss of or unauthorized access to data, such as resulting from computer viruses, worms, ransomware or other malware may harm our systems, expose us to litigation or regulatory investigation and subject us to costly and time-intensive notification requirements.


We devote significant resources to address security vulnerabilities through engineering more secure products, enhancing security and reliability features in our products and systems, code hardening, conducting rigorous penetration tests, deploying updates to address security vulnerabilities, regularly reviewing our service providers’ security controls, reviewing and auditing our products, services and solutions against information security control frameworks, providing resources, such as security training, to our workforce, and continually assessing and improving, as appropriate, our incident response process. Despite our preventative efforts, there is no assurance that our security measures will provide full effective protection from such events. The costs to prevent, eliminate, mitigate or remediate cybersecurity or other security problems and vulnerabilities are significant and may reduce our operating margins. Further, our efforts to address these problems, including notifying affected third parties when appropriate, have in the past been, and may in the future be, unsuccessful or delayed, which could result in business interruptions, cessation of service and loss of existing or potential customers.


Maintaining the security of our products, services and solutions is a critical issue for us and our customers. It is impossible to predict the extent, frequency or impact cybersecurity issues may have on us. Breaches of our security measures and the accidental loss, inadvertent disclosure or unauthorized dissemination of proprietary information or sensitive, personal or confidential data about us, our employees, our customers or their end users, including the potential loss or disclosure of such information or data could expose us, our employees, our customers or other individuals affected to a risk of loss or misuse of this information. Actual or perceived security vulnerabilities or incidents may result in claims or litigation and liability or fines (and have in the past led to such claims), costly and time-intensive notice requirements, governmental inquiry or oversight or a loss of customer confidence, any of which could harm our business and damage our brand and reputation. Our customers may also adopt security measures to protect their computer systems and their instances of our software from attack and may suffer a cybersecurity attack on their own systems, unrelated to our systems. Even if such breach is unrelated to our security systems, solutions or programs, such breach could cause us reputational harm and require us to incur significant economic and operational consequences to adequately assess and respond to their breach, and to implement additional safeguards designed to protect against future breaches.


While we maintain insurance to cover operational risks, such as cyber risk and technology outages, our insurance may not be sufficient to cover all liability described herein. These risks will likely increase as we expand our hosted offerings, integrate our products, services and solutions and store and process more data. Moreover, delayed sales, lower margins or lost customers resulting from disruptions caused by cyberattacks, overly burdensome preventative security measures or failure to fully meet information security control certification requirements could materially and adversely affect our financial results, stock price and reputation.


If we are unable to develop, manage and maintain critical third-party relationships, such as our sales, partner and distribution channels, suppliers and service providers, our revenue and business may be adversely affected.


We contract with a number of software distributors and other third parties to distribute our products, services and solutions, none of which are individually responsible for a material amount of our total net revenue in any recent period. Successfully managing our distribution channels and sales partners to reach various customers for our products, services and solutions is a complex and global process. If an agreement with one of our distributors or partners was terminated, any prolonged delay in securing a replacement distributor or partner could have a negative impact on our results of operations. We also face legal risk and potential reputational harm from the activities of these independent third parties including, but not limited to, export control violations, workplace conditions, corruption and anti-competitive behavior.


If our partner and distribution channels are not effective or if we stop or change our partner or distribution channels, we may lose sales opportunities, customers and revenue. We rely on third-party distribution platforms and are subject to changes in pricing structure, terms of service, privacy practices and other policies at the discretion of the platform provider. Any adverse changes to the terms with such third-party distribution platforms which we rely on to distribute our products, services and solutions may adversely affect our financial results. Additionally, our distribution channels may not continue to market or sell our products, services and solutions effectively and may favor products, services and solutions of other companies.


We sell many products, services and solutions through our direct sales force. Risks associated with this sales channel include challenges related to hiring, retaining and motivating our direct sales force, and substantial amounts of ongoing training for sales representatives. Our business could be harmed if our direct sales expansion efforts do not generate the corresponding efficiencies and revenue we anticipated from such investment. In addition, the loss of key sales employees could impact our customer relationships and future ability to sell to certain accounts covered by such employees.


We rely on third-party service providers and technologies to deliver our products, services and business operations and to operate critical business systems, such as cloud-based infrastructure, data center facilities, encryption and authentication technology and company email, communications with customers. If such third parties are negatively affected, if we fail to effectively develop, manage and maintain our relationships with such third parties, or if we are unable to renew our agreements with them on favorable terms or at all, our expenses could significantly increase, and we and our customers may experience service interruptions. Any disruption or damage to, or failure of our systems generally, including the systems of our third-party platform providers, could result in interruptions in our services and harm our business. Further, interruptions in our services caused by us or our third-party service providers may cause us to issue credits or pay penalties, cause customers to make warranty or other claims against us or to terminate their subscriptions or contracts, and adversely affect our attrition rates and our ability to attract new customers, all of which may adversely affect our financial results. Our business and reputation would also be harmed if our customers and potential customers believe our services are unreliable.


We face various risks associated with our operating as a multinational corporation, and global adverse economic conditions may harm our business and financial condition.


We derive a large portion of our total revenue from, and have significant operations, outside of the United States. As a multinational corporation, we are subject to a number of risks, including from global adverse economic conditions, that are uncertain and beyond our control and that make forecasting operating results and decisions about future investments difficult, such as: •inflation and actions taken by central banks to counter inflation, including increasing interest rates; •international and regional economic, political and labor conditions, including any instability or security concerns abroad, such as uncertainty caused by economic sanctions, downturns and recessions, trade disputes, armed conflicts and wars; •tax laws (including U.S. taxes on foreign subsidiaries); •increased financial accounting and reporting burdens and complexities; •changes in, or impositions of, legislative or regulatory requirements, including antitrust and competition regulations; •changes in laws governing the free flow of data across international borders; •inadequate local infrastructure and difficulties in managing and staffing international operations; •costs, potential liability, delays or loss of sales resulting from trade restrictions imposed by the United States and other countries, as well as trade laws, including but not limited to economic sanctions and export controls; •costs and delays associated with developing products in multiple languages; and •operating in locations with a higher rate of corruption and fraudulent business practices.


Additionally, third parties we do business with and our customers have international operations and are also subject to the above risks. Adverse changes in global economic conditions have in the past resulted and may in the future result in our customers’ and business partners’ insolvency, inability to obtain credit to finance or purchase our products, services and solutions, or a delay in paying or an inability to pay their obligations to us. Other third parties, such as our service providers, suppliers and distributors, may be unable to deliver or be delayed in delivering critical services, products or technologies that we rely on, and our business and reputation may be harmed. Our customers’ spending rate and demand for our products, services and solutions may also be adversely affected by the above risks. If our global sales are reduced, delayed or canceled because of any of the above risks, our revenue may decline.


Further, a disruption in global financial markets could impair our banking partners, on which we rely for operating cash management, capital market transactions and derivative programs. Such disruption could also negatively impact our customers’ ability to pay us due to delays or inability to access their existing cash.


As of December 1, 2023, our investment portfolio consisted of asset-backed securities, corporate debt securities, money market funds, time deposits, U.S. agency securities and U.S. Treasury securities. These investments are subject to credit, liquidity, market, and interest rate risks as well as economic downturns or events that affect global or regional financial markets that may cause the value of our investments to decline, requiring impairment charges, which could adversely affect our financial condition.


If we are unable to recruit and retain key personnel, our business may be harmed, and our hybrid work model may present challenges, which could adversely impact our business.


Much of our future success depends on the continued service, availability and performance of our senior management and highly skilled personnel across all levels of our organization. Our senior management has acquired specialized knowledge and skills with respect to our business, and the loss of any of these individuals could harm our business, especially if we are not successful in developing adequate succession plans. Our efforts to attract, develop, integrate and retain highly skilled employees may be compounded by intensified restrictions on travel, immigration or the availability of work visas. The technology industry is often subject to substantial and continuous competition for talent, particularly with cybersecurity and AI backgrounds, and demand for cutting-edge or unique skill sets can be highly competitive, both of which are heightened with the increased availability of hybrid or remote working arrangements. We face an increasingly difficult challenge to attract and retain highly qualified security personnel to assist us in combating security threats. We may experience higher compensation costs to retain and recruit senior management and highly skilled personnel that may not be offset by improved productivity or increased sales. Our hybrid work environment may also present operational and workplace culture challenges, which could negatively affect our ability to execute against our business objectives and retain and recruit personnel.


We continue to hire personnel in countries where exceptional technical knowledge and other expertise are offered at lower costs, which increases the efficiency of our global workforce structure and reduces our personnel-related expenditures. Nonetheless, as globalization continues, competition for talent in those countries has increased, which may impact our ability to retain these employees and increase our compensation-related expenses.


Some of our enterprise offerings have extended and complex sales cycles, which may increase our costs and make our sales cycles unpredictable.


As we continue to target large enterprise customers for certain of our offerings, including Adobe Experience Cloud in our Digital Experience business and our Enterprise Term License Agreements in our Digital Media business, we may face increased costs, longer sales cycles, greater competition and less predictability in completing our sales. For our enterprise customers, the evaluation process may be longer and more involved, and require us to invest more in educating our customers about our products, services and solutions, particularly because the decision to use our products, services and solutions is often an enterprise-wide decision. We may be required to submit more robust proposals, participate in extended proof-of-concept evaluation cycles and engage in more extensive contract negotiations. In addition, our enterprise customers often demand more complex configurations and additional integration services and product features. Adverse macroeconomic conditions have caused, and may cause in the future, delays in our enterprise customers’ purchasing decisions. Due to these factors, we often must devote greater sales support to certain enterprise customers, which increases our costs and time required to complete a sale, without assurance that potential customers will ultimately purchase our solutions. We also may be required to devote more services resources to implementation, which increases our costs, without assurance that customers receiving these services will renew or renew at the same level. Since the sales cycles for our enterprise offerings are multi-phased and complex, it is often unpredictable when a given sales cycle will close. Our revenue from enterprise customers may be affected by longer-than-expected sales and implementation cycles, extended collection cycles, potential deferral of revenue and alternative licensing arrangements. Additionally, our enterprise sales pattern has historically been uneven, where a higher percentage of a quarter’s total sales occur during the final weeks of each quarter, which is common in our industry.


ADBE Risks Related to Laws and Regulations

We are subject to risks associated with compliance with laws and regulations globally, which may harm our business.


We are a global company subject to varied and complex laws, regulations and customs, both domestically and internationally. These laws and regulations relate to a number of aspects of our business, including trade compliance, import and export control, anti-boycott, economic sanctions and embargoes, data and transaction processing security, payment card industry data security standards, consumer protection, records management, user-generated content hosted on websites we operate, privacy practices, data residency, corporate governance, antitrust and competition, employee and third-party complaints, anti-corruption, gift policies, conflicts of interest, securities regulations and other regulatory requirements affecting trade and investment. The application of these laws and regulations to our business is often unclear and may at times conflict. For example, we are subject to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other anti-corruption and anti-bribery laws, but in other foreign countries, particularly those with developing economies, it is common to engage in practices that would be prohibited under such acts. We cannot provide assurance that our employees, contractors, agents, business partners and vendors will not take actions in violation of our internal policies, U.S. laws or other applicable international laws. Compliance with these laws and regulations may involve significant costs or require changes in our business practices that result in reduced revenue and profitability. Non-compliance could also result in fines, damages, criminal sanctions against us, our officers or our employees, prohibitions on the conduct of our business and damage to our reputation.


In addition, approximately 50% of our employees are located outside the United States. Accordingly, we are exposed to changes in laws governing our employee relationships in various U.S. and foreign jurisdictions, including laws and regulations regarding wage and hour requirements, fair labor standards, employee data privacy, unemployment tax rates, workers’ compensation rates, citizenship requirements and payroll and other taxes, which likely would have a direct impact on our operating costs.


Increasing regulatory focus on privacy and security issues and expanding laws and regulatory requirements could impact our business models and expose us to increased liability.


We are subject to global data protection, privacy and security laws, regulations and codes of conduct that relate to our various business units and data processing activities, which may include sensitive, confidential, and personal information. These laws, regulations and codes are inconsistent across jurisdictions and are subject to evolving and differing (sometimes conflicting) interpretations. Government officials and regulators, privacy advocates and class action attorneys are increasingly scrutinizing how companies collect, process, use, store, share and transmit personal data. This scrutiny can result in new and shifting interpretations of existing laws, thereby further impacting our business. For example, the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) in the European Economic Area, and the United Kingdom continues to be interpreted by European and UK courts in novel ways leading to shifting requirements, country specific differences in application and uncertain enforcement priorities. More recently enacted laws, such as the Personal Information Protection Law in China, and new and emerging state laws in the United States on privacy, data and related technologies, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act, the California Privacy Rights Act, the Colorado Privacy Act and the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act, as well as industry self-regulatory codes and regulatory requirements, create new privacy and security compliance obligations and expand the scope of potential liability, either jointly or severally with our customers and suppliers. As a security example, pursuant to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Rules on Cybersecurity Risk Management, Strategy, Governance, and Incident Disclosure we are required to make certain disclosures related to material cybersecurity incidents and the reasonably likely impact of such an incident on Form 8-K and will be required to make certain other cybersecurity disclosures on Form 10-K. Determining whether a cybersecurity incident is notifiable or reportable may not be straightforward and any such mandatory disclosures could be costly and lead to negative publicity, loss of customer confidence in the effectiveness of our security measures, diversion of management’s attention and governmental investigations.


While we have invested in readiness to comply with applicable requirements, the dynamic and evolving nature of these laws, regulations and codes, as well as their interpretation by regulators and courts, may affect our ability (and our enterprise customers’ ability) to reach current and prospective customers, to respond to both enterprise and individual customer requests under the laws (such as individual rights of access, correction and deletion of their personal information), to implement our business models effectively and to adequately address disclosure requirements. These laws, regulations and codes may also impact our innovation and business drivers in developing new and emerging technologies (for example, AI and machine learning) and may impact demand for our offerings and force us to bear the burden of more onerous obligations in our contracts. Perception of our practices, products, services or solutions, even if unfounded, as a violation of individual privacy, data protection rights or cybersecurity requirements, subjects us to public criticism, lawsuits, investigations, claims and other proceedings by regulators, industry groups or other third parties, all of which could disrupt or adversely impact our business and reputation and expose us to increased liability, fines and other punitive measures including prohibition on sales of our products, services or solutions, restrictive judicial orders and disgorgement of data. Additionally, we collect and store information on behalf of our business customers and if our customers fail to comply with contractual obligations or applicable laws, it could result in litigation or reputational harm to us.


Transferring personal information across international borders is complex and subject to legal and regulatory requirements as well as active litigation and enforcement in a number of jurisdictions around the world, each of which could have an adverse impact on our ability to process and transfer personal data as part of our business operations. For example, European data transfers outside the European Economic Area are highly regulated and litigated. The mechanisms that we and many other companies rely upon for European data transfers (for example, Standard Contractual Clauses and the EU - US Data Privacy Framework) are the subject of legal challenge, regulatory interpretation and judicial decisions by the Court of Justice of the European Union. The suitability of Standard Contractual Clauses for data transfer in some scenarios has recently been the subject of legal challenge, and while the United States and the European Union reached agreement on the EU - US Data Privacy Framework, there are legal challenges to that data transfer mechanism as well. We continue to closely monitor for developments related to valid transfer mechanisms available for transferring personal data outside the European Economic Area (including the EU - US Data Privacy Framework) and other countries that have similar trans-border data flow requirements and adjust our practices accordingly. The open judicial questions and regulatory interpretations related to the validity of transfers using Standard Contractual Clauses have resulted in some changes in the obligations required to provide our services in the European Union and could expose us to potential sanctions and fines for non-compliance. Several other countries, including China, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Hong Kong and Japan, have also established specific legal requirements for cross-border transfers of personal information and certain countries have also established specific legal requirements for data


localization (such as where personal data must remain stored in the country). If other countries implement more restrictive regulations for cross-border data transfers or do not permit data to leave the country of origin, such developments could adversely impact our business and our enterprise customers’ business, our financial condition and our results of operations in those jurisdictions.


Our intellectual property portfolio is a valuable asset and we may not be able to protect our intellectual property rights, including our source code, from infringement or unauthorized copying, use or disclosure.


Our patents, trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights and other intellectual property are valuable assets to us. Infringement or misappropriation of such intellectual property could result in lost revenues and ultimately reduce their value. We protect our intellectual property by relying on federal, state and common law rights in the United States and internationally, as well as a variety of administrative procedures and contractual restrictions. Despite our efforts, protecting our intellectual property rights and preventing unauthorized use of our intellectual property are inherently difficult. For instance, we actively combat software piracy, but we continue to lose revenue due to illegal use of our software. Third parties may illegally copy and sell counterfeit versions of our products. To the extent counterfeit installations and sales replace otherwise legitimate ones, our operating results could be adversely affected. We apply for patents in the United States and in foreign countries, but we are not always successful in obtaining patent protection or in obtaining such protection timely to meet our business needs. Our patents may be invalidated or circumvented. Moreover, due to challenges in detecting patent infringement pertaining to generative AI technologies, it may be more difficult to protect our generative AI and related innovations with patents. Additionally, if we use generative AI in the creation of our source code, we may not be able to rely on copyright to protect such intellectual property. Further, the laws of some foreign countries do not provide the same level of intellectual property protection as U.S. laws and courts and could fail to adequately protect our intellectual property rights. If unauthorized disclosure of our source code occurs through security breach, cyber-attack or otherwise, we could lose future trade secret protection for that source code. Such loss could make it easier for third parties to compete with our products by copying functionality, which could cause us to lose customers and could adversely affect our revenue and operating margins. If we cannot protect our intellectual property against unauthorized copying, use, or other misappropriation, our business could be harmed.


We are, and may in the future become, subject to litigation, regulatory inquiries and intellectual property infringement claims, which could result in an unfavorable outcome and have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operation and cash flows.


We are subject to various legal proceedings (including class action lawsuits), claims and regulatory inquiries that are not yet resolved and additional claims, enforcement actions and inquiries may arise in the future. Any proceedings, actions, claims or inquiries initiated by or against us, whether successful or not, may be time consuming; result in costly litigation, damage awards, consent decrees, injunctive relief or increased costs of business; require us to change our business practices or products; result in negative publicity; require significant amounts of management time; result in the diversion of significant operational resources, or otherwise harm our business and financial results.


Additionally, we are currently, and may in the future be subject to claims, negotiations and complex, protracted litigation relating to disputes regarding the validity or alleged infringement of third-party intellectual property rights, including patent rights. Intellectual property disputes and litigation are typically costly and can be disruptive to our business operations by diverting the attention of management and key personnel. Third-party intellectual property disputes, including those initiated by patent assertion entities, could subject us to significant liabilities, require us to enter into royalty and licensing arrangements on unfavorable terms, prevent us from offering certain products, services or solutions, subject us to injunctions restricting our sales, cause severe disruptions to our operations or the markets in which we compete, or require us to satisfy indemnification commitments with our customers, including contractual provisions under various license arrangements and service agreements. In addition, we have incurred, and may in the future incur, significant costs in acquiring the necessary third-party intellectual property rights for use in our products, in some cases to fulfill contractual obligations with our customers. Any of these occurrences could significantly harm our business.


We have not prevailed, and may not in the future prevail, in every lawsuit or dispute. For further information about specific litigation and proceedings, see the section titled “Legal Proceedings” contained in Part II, Item 8, Note 16 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements of this report.


Changes in tax rules and regulations or interpretations thereof may adversely affect our effective tax rates.


We are a U.S.-based multinational company subject to tax in multiple domestic and foreign tax jurisdictions. Significant judgment is required in determining our current provision for income taxes and deferred tax assets or liabilities. Tax laws in the United States as well as other countries and jurisdictions in which we conduct business are subject to change as new laws are passed and/or new interpretations are made available, which may have a material impact on our business. These countries, governmental bodies, such as the European Commission of the European Union, and intergovernmental economic


organizations, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, have made or could make unprecedented assertions about how taxation is determined and, in some cases, have proposed or enacted new laws that are contrary to the way in which rules and regulations have historically been interpreted and applied.


Changes in our operating landscape, such as changes in laws or interpretations of tax rules, could adversely affect our effective tax rates and/or cause us to respond by making changes to our business structure, which could adversely affect our operations and financial results. Our future effective tax rates are likely to be unfavorably affected by changes in the tax rates in jurisdictions where our income is earned, changes in jurisdictions in which our profits are determined to be earned and taxed, changes in the valuation of our deferred tax assets and liabilities, changes in or interpretation of tax rules and regulations in the jurisdictions in which we do business, or unexpected negative changes in business and market conditions that could reduce certain tax benefits. An increase in our effective tax rate would reduce our profitability.


Moreover, we are subject to the examination of our income tax returns by domestic and foreign tax authorities. We regularly assess the likelihood of outcomes resulting from these examinations to determine the adequacy of our provision for income taxes and have reserved for potential adjustments that may result from these examinations. While we believe our tax estimates are reasonable, we cannot provide assurance that the final determination of any of these examinations will not have an adverse effect on our financial position and results of operations.


Contracting with government entities exposes us to additional risks inherent in the government procurement process.


We provide products, services and solutions, directly and indirectly, to a variety of domestic and foreign government entities, which introduces certain risks and challenges not present in private commercial agreements, including varying governmental budgeting processes, fluctuations due to government spending cuts and shutdowns, highly competitive and lengthy bidding process that may be subject to political influence and adherence to complex procurement regulations and other government-specific contractual requirements. We incur significant up-front time and costs without any assurance that we will win a contract. Operating within a highly regulated industry, we have been and may in the future be subject to audits and investigations relating to our government contracts and any violations could result in termination of contracts and various civil and criminal penalties and administrative sanctions, including payment of fines and suspension or debarment from future government business, as well as harm to our reputation and financial results. We have made, and may continue to make, significant investments to support future sales opportunities in various government sectors, including to obtain various security authorizations and certifications. Such processes are complex, lengthy and can often be delayed. Furthermore, requirements may change, or we may be unable to achieve or sustain one or more government authorizations or certifications, which could affect our ability to sell to government entities until we meet any revised requirements.


ADBE Risks Related to Financial Performance

If there is a change in subscriptions or renewals in a reporting period, this could cause our financial results to suffer and may not be immediately reflected in our revenue and financial results for that period because we recognize revenue over the subscription term.


Our offerings are typically subscription-based, pursuant to product and service agreements. We generally recognize revenue from our subscription offerings ratably over the terms of their subscription agreements, which typically range from 1 to 36 months. As a result, most of the subscription revenue we report each quarter is the result of subscription agreements entered into during previous quarters. Lower sales and subscriptions, reduced demand for our products, services and solutions, and increases in our attrition rate in any given period may not be fully reflected in our results of operations until future periods. Our subscription model could also make it difficult for us to rapidly increase our revenue from subscription-based or hosted services through additional sales in any period, as revenue from new customers will be recognized over the applicable subscription term. Our renewal rates may decline or fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, including our customers’ level of satisfaction, our ability to continue enhancing features and functionality, reliability of our offerings, prices of ours and competitors’ offerings, the actual or perceived information security of our systems and services, decreases in the size of our customer base, changes as a result of regulatory or legal requirements, changes in the composition of our customer base and reductions in our customers’ spending levels or declines in customer activity. If our customers do not renew their subscriptions or if they renew on terms less favorable to us, our revenue may decline. Further, such impact on our revenue may not be immediately reflected in our financial results in the period in which our renewal rates changed and may adversely affect our financial results in future periods. If any of our assumptions about revenue from our subscription-based offerings prove incorrect, our actual results may suffer and vary from those anticipated.


We are subject to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates and may not be able to effectively hedge our exposure.


Our operating results and performance metrics are subject to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates due to the global scope of our business. Geopolitical and economic events, including war, trade disputes, economic sanctions and


emerging market volatility, and associated uncertainty have caused, and may in the future cause, currencies to fluctuate. Accordingly, amounts reported as annualized recurring revenue, a performance metric which we measure at currency rates that are set at the beginning of each fiscal year and held constant throughout the year, may vary from actual revenue recognized in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States.


We attempt to mitigate a portion of these foreign currency exchange risks to our operating results through foreign currency hedging based on our judgment of the appropriate trade-offs among risk, opportunity and expense. We regularly review our hedging program and make adjustments that we believe are appropriate. Our hedging activities have not, and may not in the future, offset more than a portion of the adverse financial impact, including on our actual revenue recognized, resulting from unfavorable movement in foreign currency exchange rates, which could adversely affect our financial condition, business performance or results of operations.


If our goodwill or intangible assets become impaired, then we could be required to record a significant charge to earnings.


We test goodwill for impairment at least annually. We review our goodwill and intangible assets for impairment when events or changes in circumstances indicate the carrying value may not be recoverable, including declines in stock price, market capitalization or reduced future cash flow estimates and slower growth rates in our industry. Depending on the results of our review, we may be required to record a significant charge to earnings in our consolidated financial statements during the period in which any impairment of our goodwill or intangible assets was determined, negatively impacting our results of operations.


Our existing and future debt obligations may adversely affect our financial condition and future financial results.


As of December 1, 2023, we had $3.65 billion in senior unsecured notes outstanding and a $3 billion commercial paper program with no amounts outstanding. We also had a $1.5 billion senior unsecured revolving credit agreement and $3.5 billion delayed draw term loan agreement, both of which were undrawn. Subsequent to December 1, 2023, the delayed draw term loan agreement was terminated. This debt or future additional indebtedness may adversely affect our financial condition and future financial results by, among other things: •requiring the dedication of a portion of our expected cash flows from operations to service our debt, thereby reducing the amount of expected cash flows available for other purposes, including capital expenditures and acquisitions; •increasing our vulnerability to adverse changes in our business and general economic and industry conditions; and •limiting our ability to obtain future financing for working capital, capital expenditures, future acquisitions, general corporate or other purposes, which may also impact our ability to service and repay outstanding indebtedness as it becomes due.


Our senior unsecured notes, commercial paper program and revolving credit agreement impose restrictions on us and require us to maintain compliance with specified covenants. Our ability to comply with these covenants may be affected by events beyond our control. If we breach any of the covenants and do not obtain a waiver from the noteholders or lenders, then, subject to applicable cure periods, any outstanding debt may be declared immediately due and payable.


In addition, changes by any rating agency to our credit rating may negatively impact the value and liquidity of both our debt and equity securities, as well as the potential costs associated with a refinancing of our debt. Under certain circumstances, if our credit ratings are downgraded or other negative action is taken, the interest rate payable by us under our revolving credit agreement could increase. Downgrades in our credit ratings could also restrict our ability to obtain additional financing in the future and affect the terms of any such financing.


ADBE General Risk Factors

Catastrophic events, including events associated with climate change, may disrupt our business and adversely affect our financial condition and results of operations.


ADBE General Risk Factors

Our business relies on our network infrastructure and enterprise apps, internal technology systems and websites. A disruption, infiltration or failure of our systems, data centers or operations, or those of our third-party service providers due to a major earthquake, other natural disasters, including climate-related events (such as drought, water security, heat waves, cold waves, wildfires and poor air quality), power shutoff or loss, telecommunications failure, epidemic, pandemic, war, terrorist attack or other catastrophic event, could cause interruptions to our systems and business operations, damage to critical infrastructure, loss of intellectual property, data security breaches and data loss. Our corporate headquarters, significant research and development activity, certain of our data centers and other critical business operations are in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Salt Lake Valley Area, both of which are near major earthquake faults. A catastrophic event, particularly one that may


ADBE General Risk Factors

disrupt our data centers or our critical activities, could prevent us from conducting normal business operations and providing our products, services and solutions, which could adversely affect our business. A catastrophic event could negatively impact a country or region in which we sell and, in turn, decrease demand for our products, services and solutions, which could negatively impact our business. Climate-related catastrophic events that may harm our business are also increasing in frequency and severity. We may be subject to additional climate-related regulations and reporting requirements and changing market dynamics and stakeholder expectations regarding climate change and our environmental impacts, all of which may impact our business, financial condition and results of operations.


ADBE General Risk Factors

The occurrence of an epidemic or a pandemic, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, has had and may continue to have an adverse effect on our operating results. The extent to which epidemics and pandemics impact our financial condition or results of operations will depend on many factors outside of our control and whether there is a material impact on the businesses or productivity of our customers, employees, suppliers and other partners. A global pandemic may also intensify the other risks described in this Part I, Item 1A of this report.


ADBE General Risk Factors

Our stock price may be volatile and your investment could lose value.


ADBE General Risk Factors

Our stock price has been and may continue to be volatile and subject to fluctuations. All factors described in this Part I, Item 1A of this report, some of which are beyond our control, may affect our stock price, including: •shortfalls in or changes to estimates, recommendations or expectations about our revenue, margins, earnings, annualized recurring revenue or other key performance metrics set forth in guidance we provide or provided by financial analysts; •changes in investor and analyst valuation models for our stock; •changes in unearned revenue, remaining performance obligations and revenue recognized at a point in time, all of which may impact implied growth rates; •developments related to products or services, technological advancements, strategic alliances, acquisitions or significant transactions by us or our competitors; •changes in the amounts or frequency of stock repurchases; •the loss of large customers or our inability to retain or increase sales to existing customers or attract new customers; •changes to our management team, including recruitment or departure of key personnel; •variations in our or our competitors’ results of operations, changes in the competitive landscape generally and developments in our industry; •general economic, political or market conditions; and •other events, such as significant litigation and regulatory actions.


ADBE General Risk Factors

In addition, the market for technology stocks or the stock market in general has experienced, and may in the future experience, extreme fluctuations, which has caused, and may in the future cause, our stock price to decline for reasons unrelated to our financial performance. Volatility in our stock price has increased, and in the future may increase, our susceptibility to securities class action litigation, which could result in substantial costs and divert management’s attention and resources, which may adversely affect our business.


ADBE UNRESOLVED STAFF COMMENTS

None.


ADBE CYBERSECURITY

Not applicable.


ADBE PROPERTIES

Our corporate headquarters is located in San Jose, California where we occupy approximately 1.7 million square feet of office space. We own all of our San Jose, California properties which we use for research, product development, sales, marketing and administrative purposes. We own and lease properties in various locations throughout the United States which we also use for research, product development, sales, marketing and administrative purposes, and data centers.


ADBE PROPERTIES

Outside of the United States, we own and lease properties throughout Europe, Middle East and Africa (“EMEA”) and Asia-Pacific (“APAC”) for research, product development, sales, marketing and administrative purposes. The largest properties we occupy outside of the United States are our Bangalore, India and Noida, India offices which are approximately 0.7 million and 0.5 million square feet, respectively. We own and lease these properties in India.


ADBE PROPERTIES

During fiscal 2023, we continued to operate under a hybrid work model. We believe our existing facilities, both owned and leased, are in good operating condition and suitable for the conduct of our business.


ADBE PROPERTIES

See Note 18 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for further information regarding our lease obligations.


ADBE LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

The material set forth in the section titled “Legal Proceedings” in Note 16 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements is incorporated herein by reference.


ADBE MINE SAFETY DISCLOSURES

Not applicable.


ADBE MINE SAFETY DISCLOSURES

MARKET FOR REGISTRANT’S COMMON EQUITY, RELATED STOCKHOLDER MATTERS AND ISSUER PURCHASES OF EQUITY SECURITIES


ADBE Market Information for Common Stock

Our common stock is traded on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “ADBE.”


ADBE Stockholders

According to the records of our transfer agent, there were 905 holders of record of our common stock on January 5, 2024. Because many of such shares are held by brokers and other institutions on behalf of stockholders, we are unable to estimate the total number of stockholders represented by these record holders.


ADBE Dividends

We do not anticipate paying any cash dividends in the foreseeable future.


ADBE Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

Below is a summary of stock repurchases for the three months ended December 1, 2023. See Note 14 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for information regarding our stock repurchase programs. Period####Total Number of Shares Repurchased####Average Price Paid Per Share####Total Number of Shares Purchased as Part of Publicly Announced Plans####Approximate Dollar Value that May Yet be Purchased Under the Plans (1)## ##########(in millions, except average price per share)######## ##Beginning repurchase authority############$##3,483## ##September 2 — September 29, 2023################ ##Shares repurchased##0.6##$##538.26####0.6##$##(333)## ##September 30 — October 27, 2023################ ##Shares repurchased##0.6##$##521.39####0.6##$##(328)##(2) ##October 28 — December 1, 2023################ ##Shares repurchased##0.6##$##536.94####0.6##$##(318)##(2) ##Total##1.8########1.8##$##2,504##


ADBE _________________________________________

(1)In December 2020, the Board of Directors granted authority to repurchase up to $15 billion in our common stock through the end of fiscal 2024.


(2)In September 2023, we entered into a structured stock repurchase agreement with a large financial institution whereupon we provided them with a prepayment of $1 billion. As of December 1, 2023, approximately $354 million of the prepayment remained under this agreement.


ADBE [RESERVED]

MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS


ADBE [RESERVED]

The following discussion should be read in conjunction with our Consolidated Financial Statements and Notes thereto. Discussion regarding our financial condition and results of operations for fiscal 2022 as compared to fiscal 2021 is included in Item 7 of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 2, 2022, filed with the SEC on January 17, 2023.


ADBE CRITICAL ACCOUNTING POLICIES AND ESTIMATES

In preparing our Consolidated Financial Statements in accordance with GAAP and pursuant to the rules and regulations of the SEC, we make assumptions, judgments and estimates that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenue and expenses, and related disclosures of contingent assets and liabilities. We base our assumptions, judgments and estimates on historical experience and various other factors that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances. Actual results could differ materially from these estimates under different assumptions or conditions. We evaluate our assumptions, judgments and estimates on a regular basis. We also discuss our critical accounting policies and estimates with the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors.


We believe that the assumptions, judgments and estimates involved in the accounting for revenue recognition and income taxes have the greatest potential impact on our Consolidated Financial Statements. These areas are key components of our results of operations and are based on complex rules requiring us to make judgments and estimates, and consequently, we consider these to be our critical accounting policies. Historically, our assumptions, judgments and estimates relative to our critical accounting policies have not differed materially from actual results.


ADBE Revenue Recognition

Our contracts with customers may include multiple goods and services. For example, some of our offerings include both on-premise and/or on-device software licenses and cloud services. Determining whether the software licenses and the cloud services are distinct from each other, and therefore performance obligations to be accounted for separately, or not distinct from each other, and therefore part of a single performance obligation, may require significant judgment. We have concluded that the on-premise/on-device software licenses and cloud services provided in our Creative Cloud and Document Cloud subscription offerings are not distinct from each other such that revenue from each offering should be recognized ratably over the subscription period for which the cloud services are provided. In reaching this conclusion, we considered the nature of our promise to Creative Cloud and Document Cloud customers, which is to provide a complete end-to-end creative design or document workflow solution that operates seamlessly across multiple devices and teams. We fulfill this promise by providing access to a solution that integrates cloud-based and on-premise/on-device features that, together through their integration, provide functionalities, utility and workflow efficiencies that could not be obtained from either the on-premise/on-device software or cloud services on their own.


ADBE Revenue Recognition

Cloud-based features that are integral to our Creative Cloud and Document Cloud offerings and that work together with the on-premise/on-device software include, but are not limited to: Creative Cloud Libraries, which enable customers to access their work, settings, preferences and other assets seamlessly across desktop and mobile devices and collaborate across teams in real time; shared reviews which enable simultaneous editing and commenting of digital assets across desktop, mobile and web; automatic cloud rendering of a design which enables it to be worked on in multiple mediums; and Sensei, Adobe’s cloud-hosted artificial intelligence and machine learning framework, which enables features such as automated photo-editing, photograph content-awareness, natural language processing, optical character recognition and automated document tagging.


ADBE Accounting for Income Taxes

We use the asset and liability method of accounting for income taxes. Under this method, income tax expense is recognized for the amount of taxes payable or refundable for the current year. In addition, deferred tax assets and liabilities are recognized for the expected future tax consequences of temporary differences between the financial reporting and tax bases of assets and liabilities, and for operating loss and tax credit carryforwards. Significant judgment is required in determining our current provision for income taxes and deferred tax assets or liabilities. We record a valuation allowance to reduce deferred tax assets to an amount for which realization is more likely than not.


ADBE Accounting for Income Taxes

Our assumptions, judgments and estimates relative to the current provision for income taxes take into account our interpretation and application of current tax laws and possible outcomes of current and future examinations conducted by domestic and foreign tax authorities. We have established reserves for income taxes to address potential exposures involving tax positions that could be challenged by tax authorities. We regularly assess the likelihood of outcomes resulting from these examinations to determine the adequacy of our provision for income taxes and associated reserves. To the extent that the final


ADBE Accounting for Income Taxes

determination of any of these examinations is different from the amounts recorded, such differences will affect the provision for income taxes and the effective tax rate in the period in which such determination is made.


ADBE Recent Accounting Pronouncements

See Note 1 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for information regarding recent accounting pronouncements that are of significance or potential significance to us.


ADBE Overview of 2023

For our fiscal 2023, we experienced strong demand across our Digital Media and Digital Experience offerings, driven by our innovative product roadmap. As we execute on our long-term growth initiatives and deliver product innovation, we have continued to experience growth in software-based subscription revenue across our portfolio of offerings.


ADBE Digital Media

In our Digital Media segment, we are a market leader with Creative Cloud, our subscription-based offering which provides desktop tools, mobile apps and cloud-based services for designing, creating and publishing rich content and immersive 3D experiences. Creative Cloud includes Adobe Express, a web and mobile app designed to enable a broad spectrum of users, including novice content creators, communicators and creative professionals, to create, edit and customize content quickly and easily with content-first, task-based solutions. In September 2023, we released Adobe Firefly, a group of creative generative AI models designed to generate high quality images and text effects. Adobe Firefly-powered generative AI features are also available across Creative Cloud apps including Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Express. Creative Cloud delivers value with deep, cross-product integration, frequent product updates and feature enhancements, cloud-enabled services including storage and syncing of files across users’ devices, machine learning and artificial intelligence, access to marketplace, social and community-based features with our Adobe Stock and Behance services, app creation capabilities, tools which assist with enterprise deployments and team collaboration, and affordable pricing for cost-sensitive customers.


ADBE Digital Media

We offer Creative Cloud for individuals, students, teams and enterprises. We expect Creative Cloud will drive sustained long-term revenue growth through a continued expansion of our customer base by attracting new users with new features and products like Adobe Express and Adobe Firefly that make creative tools accessible to first-time creators and communicators, and delivering new features and technologies to existing customers with our latest releases such as share for review and generative AI capabilities. We have also built out a marketplace for Creative Cloud subscribers to enable the delivery and purchase of stock content in our Adobe Stock service. Overall, our strategy with Creative Cloud is designed to enable us to increase our revenue with existing users, continue to attract new customers, and grow our recurring and predictable revenue stream that is recognized ratably.


ADBE Digital Media

We continue to implement strategies that are designed to accelerate awareness, consideration and purchase of subscriptions to our Creative Cloud offerings. These strategies include increasing the value Creative Cloud users receive, such as offering new and enhanced desktop, web and mobile apps, as well as targeted promotions and offers that attract past customers and potential users to experience and ultimately subscribe to Creative Cloud. Because of the shift towards Creative Cloud subscriptions and Enterprise Term License Agreements (“ETLAs”), revenue from perpetual licensing of our Creative products has been immaterial to our business.


ADBE Digital Media

We are also a market leader with our Document Cloud offerings built around our Adobe Acrobat family of products, with a set of integrated mobile apps and cloud-based document services which enable users to create, collaborate, review, approve, sign and track documents regardless of platform or application source type. Document Cloud, which enhances the way people manage critical documents at home, in the office and across devices, includes Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Acrobat Sign and Adobe Scan. Adobe Acrobat is offered both through subscription and perpetual licenses, and is also included in our Creative Cloud All Apps subscription offering.


ADBE Digital Media

As part of our Creative Cloud and Document Cloud strategies, we utilize a data-driven operating model (“DDOM”) and our Adobe Experience Cloud solutions to raise awareness of our products, drive new customer acquisition, engagement and retention, and optimize customer journeys, which continue to contribute strong product-led growth in the business.


ADBE Digital Media

Annualized Recurring Revenue (“ARR”) is currently the key performance metric our management uses to assess the health and trajectory of our overall Digital Media segment. ARR should be viewed independently of revenue, deferred revenue and remaining performance obligations as ARR is a performance metric and is not intended to be combined with any of these items. We adjust our reported ARR on an annual basis to reflect any exchange rate changes. Our reported ARR results in the


ADBE Digital Media

current fiscal year are based on currency rates set at the beginning of the year and held constant throughout the year for measurement purposes. We calculate ARR as follows:


ADBE Digital Media

Creative ARR Annual Value of Creative Cloud Subscriptions and Services + Annual Creative ETLA Contract Value


ADBE Digital Media

Document Cloud ARR Annual Value of Document Cloud Subscriptions and Services + Annual Document Cloud ETLA Contract Value


ADBE Digital Media ARR Creative ARR + Document Cloud ARR

Creative ARR exiting fiscal 2023 was $12.37 billion, up from $10.98 billion at the end of fiscal 2022. Document Cloud ARR exiting fiscal 2023 was $2.81 billion, up from $2.28 billion at the end of fiscal 2022. Total Digital Media ARR grew to $15.17 billion at the end of fiscal 2023, up from $13.26 billion at the end of fiscal 2022. Revaluing our ending ARR for fiscal 2023 using currency rates determined at the beginning of fiscal 2024, our Digital Media ARR at the end of fiscal 2023 would be $15.33 billion or approximately $160 million higher than the ARR reported above.


Our success in driving growth in ARR has positively affected our revenue growth. Creative revenue in fiscal 2023 was $11.52 billion, up from $10.46 billion in fiscal 2022 and representing 10% year-over-year growth. Document Cloud revenue in fiscal 2023 was $2.70 billion, up from $2.38 billion in fiscal 2022 and representing 13% year-over-year growth. Total Digital Media segment revenue grew to $14.22 billion in fiscal 2023, up from $12.84 billion in fiscal 2022 and representing 11% year-over-year growth driven by strong net new user growth.


ADBE Digital Experience

We are a market leader in the fast-growing category addressed by our Digital Experience segment. The Adobe Experience Cloud apps and services are designed to manage customer journeys, enable personalized experiences at scale and deliver intelligence for businesses of any size in any industry. Our differentiation and competitive advantage are strengthened by our ability to use the Adobe Experience Platform to integrate our comprehensive set of solutions.


ADBE Digital Experience

Adobe Experience Cloud delivers solutions for our customers across the following strategic growth pillars: •Data insights and audiences. Our products, including Adobe Analytics, Customer Journey Analytics, Adobe Product Analytics, and our Real-time Customer Data Platform, deliver actionable data in real time to provide highly tailored and adaptive experiences across platforms. •Content and commerce. Our products help customers manage, deliver, monetize, and optimize content delivery through Adobe Experience Manager and build multi-channel commerce experiences for B2B and B2C customers on a single platform with Adobe Commerce. •Customer journeys. Our products help businesses manage, test, target and personalize customer journeys delivered as campaigns across B2B and B2C use cases, including through Adobe Marketo Engage, Adobe Campaign, Adobe Target and Adobe Journey Optimizer. •Marketing planning and workflow. Our products help businesses intelligently measure, optimize, and plan marketing investments through the Adobe Mix Modeler, and allow businesses to strategically plan, manage, collaborate, and execute on workflows for marketing campaigns and other projects at speed and scale with our enterprise work management app, Adobe Workfront.


ADBE Digital Experience

In addition to chief marketing officers, chief revenue officers and digital marketers, users of our Digital Experience solutions include advertisers, campaign managers, publishers, data analysts, content managers, social marketers, marketing executives and information management and technology executives. These customers often are involved in workflows that integrate other Adobe products, such as our Digital Media offerings. By combining the creativity of our Digital Media business with the science of our Digital Experience business, such as with our new Adobe GenStudio solution, we help our customers to more efficiently and effectively make, manage, measure and monetize their content across every channel with an end-to-end workflow and feedback loop.


ADBE Digital Experience

We utilize a direct sales force to market and license our Digital Experience solutions, as well as an extensive ecosystem of partners, including marketing agencies, systems integrators and independent software vendors that help license and deploy our solutions to their customers. We have made significant investments to broaden the scale and size of all of these routes to market, and our recent financial results reflect the success of these investments and our experience-led growth strategy.


ADBE Digital Experience

Digital Experience revenue was $4.89 billion in fiscal 2023, up from $4.42 billion in fiscal 2022 which represents 11% year-over-year growth. Driving this growth was the increase in subscription revenue, which grew to $4.33 billion in fiscal 2023 from $3.88 billion in fiscal 2022, representing 12% year-over-year growth.


ADBE Macroeconomic Conditions

As a corporation with an extensive global footprint, we are subject to risks and exposures from the evolving macroeconomic environment, including the effects of increased global inflationary pressures and interest rates, fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates, potential economic slowdowns or recessions and geopolitical pressures, including the unknown impacts of current and future trade regulations. We continuously monitor the direct and indirect impacts of these circumstances on our business and financial results. For example, foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations have negatively impacted our revenue and earnings during fiscal 2023, and may continue to negatively impact our financial results in fiscal 2024.


ADBE Macroeconomic Conditions

While our revenue and earnings are relatively predictable as a result of our subscription-based business model, the broader implications of these macroeconomic events on our business, results of operations and overall financial position, particularly in the long term, remain uncertain. See the section titled “Risk Factors” in Part I, Item 1A of this report for further discussion of the possible impact of these macroeconomic issues on our business.


ADBE Financial Performance Summary for Fiscal 2023

•Total Digital Media ARR of approximately $15.17 billion as of December 1, 2023 increased by $1.91 billion, or 14%, from $13.26 billion as of December 2, 2022. •Creative revenue of $11.52 billion increased by $1.06 billion, or 10%, during fiscal 2023, from $10.46 billion in fiscal 2022. Document Cloud revenue of $2.70 billion increased by $316 million, or 13%, during fiscal 2023, from $2.38 billion in fiscal 2022. •Digital Experience revenue of $4.89 billion increased by $471 million, or 11%, during fiscal 2023, from $4.42 billion in fiscal 2022. •Remaining performance obligations of $17.22 billion as of December 1, 2023 increased by $2.02 billion, or 13%, from $15.19 billion as of December 2, 2022. •Cost of revenue of $2.35 billion increased by $189 million, or 9%, during fiscal 2023, from $2.17 billion in fiscal 2022. •Operating expenses of $10.41 billion increased by $1.06 billion, or 11%, during fiscal 2023, from $9.34 billion in fiscal 2022. •Net income of $5.43 billion increased by $672 million, or 14%, during fiscal 2023, from $4.76 billion in fiscal 2022. •Cash flows from operations of $7.30 billion during fiscal 2023 decreased by $536 million, or 7%, from $7.84 billion in fiscal 2022.


ADBE Revenue

Revenue for fiscal 2021 benefited from an extra week in the first quarter of fiscal 2021 due to our 52/53 week financial calendar whereby fiscal 2021 was a 53-week year compared with fiscal 2023 and 2022 which were 52-week years. (dollars in millions)####2023######2022######2021####% Change 2023-2022## Subscription##$##18,284####$##16,388####$##14,573####12##% Percentage of total revenue####94##%####93##%####92##%#### Product####460######532######555####(14)##% Percentage of total revenue####2##%####3##%####4##%#### Services and other####665######686######657####(3)##% Percentage of total revenue####4##%####4##%####4##%#### Total revenue##$##19,409####$##17,606####$##15,785####10##%


ADBE Subscription

Our subscription revenue is comprised primarily of fees we charge for our subscription and hosted service offerings, and related support, including Creative Cloud and certain of our Adobe Experience Cloud and Document Cloud services. We primarily recognize subscription revenue ratably over the term of agreements with our customers, beginning with commencement of service. Subscription revenue related to certain offerings, where fees are based on a number of transactions and invoicing is aligned to the pattern of performance, customer benefit and consumption, are recognized on a usage basis.


ADBE Subscription

We have the following reportable segments: Digital Media, Digital Experience, and Publishing and Advertising. Subscription revenue by reportable segment for fiscal 2023, 2022 and 2021 is as follows: (dollars in millions)####2023####2022####2021##% Change 2023-2022## Digital Media##$##13,838##$##12,385##$##11,048##12##% Digital Experience####4,331####3,880####3,379##12##% Publishing and Advertising####115####123####146##(7)##% Total subscription revenue##$##18,284##$##16,388##$##14,573##12##%


ADBE Product

Our product revenue is comprised primarily of fees related to licenses for on-premise software purchased on a perpetual basis, for a fixed period of time or based on usage for certain of our original equipment manufacturer and royalty agreements. We primarily recognize product revenue at the point in time the software is available to the customer, provided all other revenue recognition criteria are met.


ADBE Services and Other

Our services and other revenue is comprised primarily of fees related to consulting, training, maintenance and support for certain on-premise licenses that are recognized at a point in time and our advertising offerings. We typically sell our consulting contracts on a time-and-materials or fixed-fee basis. These revenues are recognized as the services are performed for time-and-materials contracts and on a relative performance basis for fixed-fee contracts. Training revenues are recognized as the services are performed. Our maintenance and support offerings, which entitle customers, partners and developers to receive desktop product upgrades and enhancements or technical support, depending on the offering, are generally recognized ratably over the term of the arrangement. Transaction-based advertising revenue is recognized on a usage basis as we satisfy the performance obligations to our customers.


ADBE Segments

In fiscal 2023, we categorized our products into the following reportable segments: •Digital Media—Our Digital Media segment provides products and services that enable individuals, teams, businesses, and enterprises to create, publish and promote their content anywhere and accelerate their productivity by transforming how they view, share, engage with and collaborate on documents and creative content. Our customers include creative professionals, including photographers, video editors, graphic and experience designers


ADBE Segments

and game developers; communicators, including content creators, students, marketers and knowledge workers; and consumers. •Digital Experience—Our Digital Experience segment provides an integrated platform and set of products, services and solutions that enable businesses to create, manage, execute, measure, monetize and optimize customer experiences that span from analytics to commerce. Our customers include marketers, advertisers, agencies, publishers, merchandisers, merchants, web analysts, data scientists, developers and executives across the C-suite. •Publishing and Advertising—Our Publishing and Advertising segment contains legacy products and services that address diverse market opportunities, including eLearning solutions, technical document publishing, web conferencing, document and forms platform, web app development, high-end printing and our Adobe Advertising offerings.


ADBE Segment Information

(dollars in millions)####2023######2022######2021####% Change 2023-2022## Digital Media##$##14,216####$##12,842####$##11,520####11##% Percentage of total revenue####73##%####73##%####73##%#### Digital Experience####4,893######4,422######3,867####11##% Percentage of total revenue####25##%####25##%####24##%#### Publishing and Advertising####300######342######398####(12)##% Percentage of total revenue####2##%####2##%####3##%#### Total revenue##$##19,409####$##17,606####$##15,785####10##%


ADBE Digital Media

Revenue by major offerings in our Digital Media reportable segment for fiscal 2023, 2022 and 2021 were as follows: (dollars in millions)####2023####2022####2021##% Change 2023-2022## Creative Cloud##$##11,517##$##10,459##$##9,546##10##% Document Cloud####2,699####2,383####1,974##13##% Total Digital Media revenue##$##14,216##$##12,842##$##11,520##11##%


ADBE Digital Media

Revenue from Digital Media increased $1.37 billion during fiscal 2023 as compared to fiscal 2022, driven by increases in revenue associated with our Creative and Document Cloud subscription offerings due to continued demand amid an increasingly digital environment, strong engagement across customer segments and migrating our customers to higher valued subscription offerings with increased revenue per subscription, partially offset by the impact of foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations.


ADBE Digital Experience

Revenue from Digital Experience increased $471 million during fiscal 2023 as compared to fiscal 2022 primarily due to net new additions across our subscription offerings, partially offset by the impact of foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations.


ADBE Geographical Information

(dollars in millions)####2023######2022######2021####% Change 2023-2022## Americas##$##11,654####$##10,251####$##8,996####14##% Percentage of total revenue####60##%####58##%####57##%#### EMEA####4,881######4,593######4,252####6##% Percentage of total revenue####25##%####26##%####27##%#### APAC####2,874######2,762######2,537####4##% Percentage of total revenue####15##%####16##%####16##%#### Total revenue##$##19,409####$##17,606####$##15,785####10##%


ADBE Geographical Information

Overall revenue during fiscal 2023 increased in all geographic regions as compared to fiscal 2022. Within each geographic region, the fluctuations in revenue by reportable segment were attributable to the factors noted in the segment information above.


ADBE Geographical Information

Included in the overall change in revenue for fiscal 2023 as compared to fiscal 2022 were impacts associated with foreign currency which were mitigated in part by our foreign currency hedging program. During fiscal 2023, the U.S. Dollar primarily strengthened against EMEA and APAC foreign currencies as compared to fiscal 2022, which decreased revenue in U.S. Dollar equivalents by approximately $371 million. During fiscal 2023, the foreign currency impacts to revenue were offset in part by net hedging gains from our cash flow hedging program of $41 million.


ADBE Geographical Information

See Note 2 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for additional details of revenue by geography.


ADBE Cost of Revenue

(dollars in millions)####2023######2022######2021####% Change 2023-2022## Subscription##$##1,822####$##1,646####$##1,374####11##% Percentage of total revenue####9##%####9##%####9##%#### Product####29######35######41####(17)##% Percentage of total revenue####*######*######*###### Services and other####503######484######450####4##% Percentage of total revenue####3##%####3##%####3##%#### Total cost of revenue##$##2,354####$##2,165####$##1,865####9##%


(*) Percentage is less than 1%.


ADBE Subscription

Cost of subscription revenue consists of third-party hosting services and data center costs, including expenses related to operating our network infrastructure. Cost of subscription revenue also includes compensation costs associated with network operations, implementation, account management and technical support personnel, royalty fees, software costs and amortization of certain intangible assets.


ADBE Subscription

Cost of subscription revenue increased due to the following: ##Components of % Change 2023-2022## Hosting services and data center costs##7##% Loss contingency##3## Royalty costs##2## Amortization of intangibles##(1)## Total change##11##%


ADBE Subscription

Cost of subscription revenue during fiscal 2023 included a loss contingency associated with an IP litigation matter.


ADBE Product

Cost of product revenue is primarily comprised of third-party royalties, localization costs and costs associated with the manufacturing of our products.


ADBE Services and Other

Cost of services and other revenue is primarily comprised of compensation and contracted costs incurred to provide consulting services, training and product support, and hosting services and data center costs.


ADBE Services and Other

Cost of services and other revenue increased during fiscal 2023 as compared to fiscal 2022 primarily due to increases in compensation costs partially offset by decreases in professional and consulting fees.


ADBE Operating Expenses

(dollars in millions)####2023######2022######2021####% Change 2023-2022## Research and development##$##3,473####$##2,987####$##2,540####16##% Percentage of total revenue####18##%####17##%####16##%#### Sales and marketing####5,351######4,968######4,321####8##% Percentage of total revenue####28##%####28##%####27##%#### General and administrative####1,413######1,219######1,085####16##% Percentage of total revenue####7##%####7##%####7##%#### Amortization of intangibles####168######169######172####(1)##% Percentage of total revenue####1##%####1##%####1##%#### Total operating expenses##$##10,405####$##9,343####$##8,118####11##%


ADBE Research and Development

Research and development expenses consist primarily of compensation and contracted costs associated with software development, third-party hosting services and data center costs, related facilities costs and expenses associated with computer equipment and software used in development activities.


ADBE Research and Development

Research and development expenses increased due to the following: ##Components of % Change 2023-2022## Incentive compensation, cash and stock-based##6##% Base compensation and related benefits##6## Hosting services and data center costs##2## Various individually insignificant items##2## Total change##16##%


ADBE Research and Development

Investments in research and development, including the recruiting and hiring of software developers, are critical to remain competitive in the marketplace and are directly related to continued timely development of new and enhanced offerings and solutions. We will continue to focus on long-term opportunities available in our end markets and make significant investments in the development of our subscription and service offerings, apps and tools.


ADBE Sales and Marketing

Sales and marketing expenses consist primarily of compensation costs, amortization of contract acquisition costs, including sales commissions, travel expenses and related facilities costs for our sales, marketing, order management and global supply chain management personnel. Sales and marketing expenses also include the costs of programs aimed at increasing revenue, such as advertising, trade shows and events, public relations and other market development programs.


ADBE Sales and Marketing

Sales and marketing expenses increased due to the following: ##Components of % Change 2023-2022## Base compensation and related benefits##3##% Incentive compensation, cash and stock-based##3## Various individually insignificant items##2## Total change##8##%


ADBE General and Administrative

General and administrative expenses consist primarily of compensation and contracted costs, travel expenses and related facilities costs for our finance, facilities, human resources, legal, information services and executive personnel. General and administrative expenses also include outside legal and accounting fees, provision for bad debts, expenses associated with computer equipment and software used in the administration of the business, charitable contributions and various forms of insurance.


ADBE General and Administrative

General and administrative expenses increased due to the following: ##Components of % Change 2023-2022## Professional and consulting fees##9##% Base compensation and related benefits##5## Incentive compensation, cash and stock-based##3## Various individually insignificant items##(1)## Total change##16##%


ADBE General and Administrative

Professional and consulting fees increased from fiscal 2023 as compared to fiscal 2022 primarily due to transaction costs associated with our intended acquisition of Figma.


ADBE Non-Operating Income (Expense), Net

(dollars in millions)####2023######2022######2021####% Change 2023-2022## Interest expense##$##(113)####$##(112)####$##(113)####1##% Percentage of total revenue####(1)##%####(1)##%####(1)##%#### Investment gains (losses), net####16######(19)######16####**## Percentage of total revenue####*######*######*###### Other income (expense), net####246######41######—####**## Percentage of total revenue####1##%####*######*###### Total non-operating income (expense), net##$##149####$##(90)####$##(97)####**##


(*) Percentage is less than 1%.


(**) Percentage is not meaningful.


ADBE Interest Expense

Interest expense represents interest associated with our debt instruments. Interest on our senior notes is payable semi-annually, in arrears, on February 1 and August 1.


ADBE Investment Gains (Losses), Net

Investment gains (losses), net consists principally of unrealized holding gains and losses associated with our deferred compensation plan assets.


ADBE Other Income (Expense), Net

Other income (expense), net consists primarily of interest earned on cash, cash equivalents and short-term fixed income investments. Other income (expense), net also includes realized gains and losses on fixed income investments and foreign exchange gains and losses.


ADBE Other Income (Expense), Net

Other income (expense), increased during fiscal 2023 as compared to fiscal 2022 primarily due to increases in interest income driven by higher average interest rates and cash equivalent balances.


ADBE Provision for Income Taxes

(dollars in millions)####2023######2022######2021####% Change 2023-2022## Provision for income taxes##$##1,371####$##1,252####$##883####10##% Percentage of total revenue####7##%####7##%####6##%#### Effective tax rate####20##%####21##%####15##%####


ADBE Provision for Income Taxes

Our effective tax rate decreased by approximately one percentage point during fiscal 2023 as compared to fiscal 2022, primarily due to an increase in the net tax benefit from effects of non-U.S. operations in fiscal 2023.


ADBE Provision for Income Taxes

Our effective tax rate for fiscal 2023 was lower than the U.S. federal statutory tax rate of 21% primarily due to the tax benefits from the U.S. federal research tax credit and non-U.S. operations, partially offset by state taxes.


ADBE Provision for Income Taxes

We recognize deferred tax assets to the extent that we believe these assets are more likely than not to be realized based on evaluation of all available positive and negative evidence. On the basis of this evaluation, we continue to maintain a valuation allowance to reduce our deferred tax assets to the amount realizable. The total valuation allowance was $405 million as of December 1, 2023, primarily related to certain state credits.


ADBE Provision for Income Taxes

We are a U.S.-based multinational company subject to tax in multiple domestic and foreign tax jurisdictions. The current U.S. tax law subjects the earnings of certain foreign subsidiaries to U.S. tax and generally allows an exemption from taxation for distributions from foreign subsidiaries.


ADBE Provision for Income Taxes

In the current global tax policy environment, the domestic and foreign governing bodies continue to consider, and in some cases introduce, changes in regulations applicable to corporate multinationals such as Adobe. As regulations are issued, we account for finalized regulations in the period of enactment.


ADBE Provision for Income Taxes

Beginning in 2023, under the provisions introduced by the U.S. Tax Act, we are required to capitalize and amortize research and development costs. If the rule is not modified, there will continue to be an adverse impact on our effective rates for income taxes paid, which is partially offset by a benefit to our effective tax rates from the increase in the foreign-derived intangible income deduction.


ADBE Provision for Income Taxes

See Note 10 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for further information regarding our provision for income taxes.


ADBE Accounting for Uncertainty in Income Taxes

The gross liabilities for unrecognized tax benefits excluding interest and penalties were $501 million, $321 million and $289 million at the end of fiscal 2023, 2022 and 2021, respectively. If the total unrecognized tax benefits as of December 1, 2023, December 2, 2022 and December 3, 2021 were recognized, $356 million, $203 million and $199 million would decrease the respective effective tax rates.


As of December 1, 2023 and December 2, 2022, the combined amounts of accrued interest and penalties included in long-term income taxes payable related to tax positions taken on our tax returns were not material.


The timing of the resolution of income tax examinations is highly uncertain as are the amounts and timing of tax payments that are part of any audit settlement process. These events could cause large fluctuations in the balance sheet classification of our tax assets and liabilities. We believe that within the next 12 months, it is reasonably possible that either certain audits will conclude or statutes of limitations on certain income tax examination periods will expire, or both. Although the timing of resolution, settlement and closing of audits is not certain, it is reasonably possible that the underlying unrecognized tax benefits may decrease by up to $60 million over the next 12 months.


Our future effective tax rates may be materially affected by changes in the tax rates in jurisdictions where our income is earned, changes in jurisdictions in which our profits are determined to be earned and taxed, changes in the valuation of our deferred tax assets and liabilities, changes in or interpretation of tax rules and regulations in the jurisdictions in which we do business, or unexpected changes in business and market conditions that could reduce certain tax benefits.


In addition, tax laws in the United States as well as other countries and jurisdictions in which we conduct business are subject to change as new laws are passed and/or new interpretations are made available. These countries, governmental bodies, such as the European Commission of the European Union, and intergovernmental economic organizations, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, have made or could make unprecedented assertions about how taxation is determined and, in some cases, have proposed or enacted new laws that are contrary to the way in which rules and regulations have historically been interpreted and applied. Changes in our operating landscape, such as changes in laws and/or interpretations of tax rules, could adversely affect our effective tax rates and/or cause us to respond by making changes to our business structure which could adversely affect our operations and financial results.


Moreover, we are subject to the examination of our income tax returns by domestic and foreign tax authorities. We regularly assess the likelihood of outcomes resulting from these examinations to determine the adequacy of our provision for income taxes and have reserved for potential adjustments that may result from these examinations. Our policy is to record interest and penalties related to unrecognized tax benefits in income tax expense. While we believe our tax estimates are reasonable, we cannot provide assurance that the final determination of any of these examinations will not have an adverse effect on our financial position and results of operations.