Adobe Inc. said its chief financial officer would depart, leaving the company without a top tier of veteran leadership after Chief Executive Officer Shantanu Narayen announced in March that he would step aside.
Chief Financial Officer Dan Durn is exiting his post Monday, Adobe said Thursday in a statement. The company is continuing to search for a new CEO to succeed Narayen, who has held the job for 18 years.
Bloomberg reported earlier this month that David Wadhwani and Anil Chakravarthy, the heads of Adobe's two main business units, were the leading in-house candidates to become the company's next CEO. The software maker also has hired a search firm to find external candidates who could be suited to running the company in the AI era.
Separately, chipmaker Marvell Technology Inc. announced that Durn would be joining its staff. Adobe said Steve Day, senior vice president of corporate finance, would serve as interim CFO until a successor is hired.
The CFO announcement overshadowed Adobe's quarterly results and an outlook for the current period that surpassed analysts' expectations.
“Whenever you have a CEO transition, you don't necessarily want a CFO transition at the same time,” Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson & Co., said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “Clearly investors right now are uneasy with a transition in both of those positions.”
The shares declined about 6% in extended trading after closing at $218.80 in New York. The stock has dropped about 37% this year, and is hovering near its lowest level in seven years.
Adobe's Photoshop and other software have long been the standard for creative and marketing professionals. But in recent years, the company has faced increasing questions from Wall Street about whether it will be disrupted by AI-based products. Generative AI has made it easier to create visual media without Adobe's expensive offerings and many of the most popular new AI tools, such as Google's video-generating models, are built by competitors.
To stave off its rivals, Adobe has integrated AI throughout its platform in the form of well-used features and its own models for media generation.
Sales from AI-first products have exceeded $500 million, Narayen said Thursday on a conference call with analysts. In September, the company said those tools had generated more than $250 million in revenue.
The search for the next CEO is “progressing well,” and the goal is to have the new leader in place for planning the new fiscal year, which begins in December, he said.
In the fiscal second quarter, which ended May 29, sales gained 13% to $6.62 billion. That compared with analysts' average estimate of $6.45 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Subscription sales to creative and marketing professionals were $4.54 billion, while tools for business and consumers generated $1.85 billion.
Profit, excluding some items, was $5.96 a share. Annual recurring revenue across the company was $27.1 billion. Both metrics topped analysts' estimates.
Adobe also said revenue will be $6.67 billion to $6.72 billion in the period ending in August. Adjusted earnings will be $6.05 to $6.10 a share.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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