Adobe Systems Inc, has reported disappointing first-quarter results that fell well short of analysts’ expectations. The San Jose-based multimedia software company reported net income down 42.5% at $26.7m on revenue down 12.6% at $197.8m. Earnings per share fell 39.7% to $0.38. Analysts surveyed by First Call were expecting $0.44 for the quarter. The situation was worse than that, however, as on a normalized basis – excluding non-recurring items such as investment gains and acquisition charges – net income was actually just $22.9m, or $0.33 per share. The company says revenue levels for the quarter were adversely affected by continuing weak demand in Asia, a decline in Macintosh platform revenues, and a slowdown in North American revenues. Also, it says, by comparison the first fiscal quarter of 1997 benefited from revenue momentum related to two major product releases Adobe Photoshop 4.0 which was released just before the quarter began, and Adobe PageMaker 6.5, released during the quarter. The company had no new releases during this year’s quarter. Application products revenues for the quarter were $156m, down from $175m reported for the same quarter of fiscal 1997. Macintosh revenues were down 36%, but Windows revenues were a bright spot, rising 18% year-over-year. For the quarter, 59% of Adobe’s total application products’ revenues – excluding platform-independent and UNIX products – came from the products for the Windows platform and 41% were related to the Macintosh platform. This compares to 44% for Windows and 56% for Macintosh in the first quarter of 1997. Adobe also announced Thursday that Judi Webster has joined the company as vice president, worldwide channels and accounts. Webster comes to the company from Netscape Communications Corp, where she was vice president, enterprise sales and marketing.
