Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) Cut to “Buy” at StockNews.com

StockNews.com lowered shares of Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) from a strong-buy rating to a buy rating in a report published on Thursday.

A number of other equities research analysts have also recently commented on ADBE. Stifel Nicolaus reduced their target price on shares of Adobe from $650.00 to $600.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, December 12th. DA Davidson reduced their target price on shares of Adobe from $685.00 to $625.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, December 12th. Mizuho reduced their target price on shares of Adobe from $640.00 to $620.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, December 12th. Bank of America reduced their target price on shares of Adobe from $640.00 to $605.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, December 12th. Finally, Jefferies Financial Group reduced their target price on shares of Adobe from $700.00 to $650.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, December 12th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, eleven have assigned a hold rating, seventeen have assigned a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $570.88.

Adobe Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ:ADBE opened at $444.32 on Thursday. The company’s fifty day moving average price is $440.46 and its 200 day moving average price is $494.02. Adobe has a 12 month low of $403.75 and a 12 month high of $587.75. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.29, a current ratio of 1.07 and a quick ratio of 1.07. The firm has a market capitalization of $193.41 billion, a P/E ratio of 35.83, a P/E/G ratio of 2.20 and a beta of 1.31.

Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, December 11th. The software company reported $4.81 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $4.67 by $0.14. Adobe had a net margin of 25.85% and a return on equity of 45.87%. The firm had revenue of $5.61 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $5.54 billion. During the same period last year, the business earned $3.52 EPS. Adobe’s revenue for the quarter was up 11.1% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, sell-side analysts predict that Adobe will post 16.65 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity

In other news, Director Amy Banse sold 606 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, December 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $550.00, for a total value of $333,300.00. Following the sale, the director now directly owns 32,929 shares in the company, valued at $18,110,950. This represents a 1.81 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Also, EVP Scott Belsky sold 922 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, January 24th. The stock was sold at an average price of $437.28, for a total transaction of $403,172.16. Following the sale, the executive vice president now owns 22,153 shares in the company, valued at approximately $9,687,063.84. This trade represents a 4.00 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold 5,681 shares of company stock worth $2,525,126 over the last ninety days. 0.15% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Institutional Trading of Adobe

Hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of the company. Nordea Investment Management AB boosted its position in Adobe by 2.0% during the fourth quarter. Nordea Investment Management AB now owns 1,712,616 shares of the software company’s stock worth $765,094,000 after acquiring an additional 33,414 shares during the last quarter. Public Sector Pension Investment Board boosted its position in Adobe by 12.2% during the third quarter. Public Sector Pension Investment Board now owns 19,322 shares of the software company’s stock worth $10,005,000 after acquiring an additional 2,100 shares during the last quarter. Jacobs Levy Equity Management Inc. boosted its position in Adobe by 201.0% during the third quarter. Jacobs Levy Equity Management Inc. now owns 117,383 shares of the software company’s stock worth $60,779,000 after acquiring an additional 78,384 shares during the last quarter. Morse Asset Management Inc raised its stake in Adobe by 33.0% during the third quarter. Morse Asset Management Inc now owns 8,519 shares of the software company’s stock worth $4,411,000 after purchasing an additional 2,113 shares during the period. Finally, Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services LLC raised its stake in Adobe by 1.4% during the fourth quarter. Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services LLC now owns 99,150 shares of the software company’s stock worth $44,090,000 after purchasing an additional 1,326 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 81.79% of the company’s stock.

About Adobe

Adobe Inc, together with its subsidiaries, operates as a diversified software company worldwide. It operates through three segments: Digital Media, Digital Experience, and Publishing and Advertising. The Digital Media segment offers products, services, and solutions that enable individuals, teams, and enterprises to create, publish, and promote content; and Document Cloud, a unified cloud-based document services platform.