Adobe 10-K 2024-11-29

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-K

(Mark One)

For the fiscal year ended November 29, 2024

or

For the transition period from to

Commission File Number: 0-15175

ADOBE INC.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

345 Park Avenue, San Jose, California 95110-2704

(Address of principal executive offices)

(408) 536-6000

(Registrant’s telephone number, including area code)

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes ☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Act. Yes ☐ No ☒

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes ☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§ 232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files). Yes ☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report. ☒

If securities are registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act, indicate by check mark whether the financial statements of the registrant included in the filing reflect the correction of an error to previously issued financial statements. ☐

Indicate by check mark whether any of those error corrections are restatements that required a recovery analysis of incentive-based compensation received by any of the registrant’s executive officers during the relevant recovery period pursuant to §240.10D-1(b). ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Act). Yes ☐ No ☒

The aggregate market value of the registrant’s common stock, $0.0001 par value per share, held by non-affiliates of the registrant on May 31, 2024, the last business day of the registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter, was $164.65 billion (based on the closing sales price of the registrant’s common stock on that date). Shares of the registrant’s common stock held by each officer and director and each person who owns 5% or more of the outstanding common stock of the registrant have been excluded in that such persons may be deemed to be affiliates. This determination of affiliate status is not necessarily a conclusive determination for other purposes. As of January 3, 2025, 435.3 million shares of the registrant’s common stock, $0.0001 par value per share, were issued and outstanding.

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

Portions of the Proxy Statement for the registrant’s 2025 Annual Meeting of Stockholders (the “Proxy Statement”), to be filed within 120 days of the end of the fiscal year ended November 29, 2024, are incorporated by reference in Part III hereof. Except with respect to information specifically incorporated by reference in this Form 10-K, the Proxy Statement is not deemed to be filed as part hereof.

ADOBE INC.

FORM 10-K

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Forward-Looking Statements

In addition to historical information, this Annual Report on Form 10-K contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including statements related to our product development plans and new or enhanced offerings; our business, artificial intelligence and innovation momentum; our strategy, market opportunity and future growth; market trends; current macroeconomic conditions; fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates; strategic investments; industry positioning; and customer acquisition and retention. In addition, when used in this report, the words “will,” “expects,” “could,” “would,” “may,” “anticipates,” “intends,” “plans,” “believes,” “seeks,” “targets,” “estimates,” “looks for,” “looks to,” “continues” and similar expressions, as well as statements regarding our focus for the future, are generally intended to identify forward-looking statements. Each of the forward-looking statements we make in this report involves risks, uncertainties and assumptions based on information available to us as of the date of this report. Such risks and uncertainties, many of which relate to matters beyond our control, could cause actual results to differ materially and adversely from these forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, those discussed in the section titled “Risk Factors” in Part I, Item 1A of this report and elsewhere herein. The risks described herein and in Adobe’s other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), including our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q to be filed in fiscal 2025, should be carefully reviewed. Undue reliance should not be placed on the financial information set forth in this report, which reflects estimates based on information available as of the date of this report. Adobe assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update these forward-looking statements.

PART I

OVERVIEW

Adobe is a global technology company with a mission to change the world through personalized digital experiences. For over four decades, Adobe’s innovations have transformed how individuals, teams, businesses, enterprises, institutions, and governments engage and interact across all types of media. Our products, services and solutions are used around the world to imagine, create, manage, deliver, measure, optimize and engage with content across surfaces and fuel digital experiences. We have a diverse user base that includes consumers, communicators, creative professionals, developers, students, small and medium businesses and enterprises. We are also empowering creators by putting the power of artificial intelligence (“AI”) in their hands, and doing so in ways we believe are responsible. Our products and services help unleash creativity, accelerate document productivity and power businesses in a digital world.

OFFERINGS

We deliver a wide range of products, services and solutions to empower our customers and users to imagine and express ideas, create content and bring any digital experience to life. We focus our strategic investments in two areas of growth:

Digital Media. We provide products, services and solutions that enable individuals, teams, businesses, enterprises, institutions, and governments 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 content creation. Our Digital Media segment is centered around Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Document Cloud, which include Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Acrobat Sign, Adobe Express, Adobe Firefly and many more products, offering a variety of tools for creative professionals (like photographers, graphic designers, video editors and game developers), communicators and other consumers. This is the core of what we have delivered to customers and users for decades, and we have continually evolved and expanded our Digital Media business model to provide our customers and users with a range of flexible solutions to help them reach their full creative potential.

Digital Experience. We provide an integrated platform and set of products, services and solutions through Adobe Experience Cloud that enable businesses to create, manage, execute, measure, monetize and optimize customer experiences. Our customers include marketers, advertisers, agencies, publishers, merchandisers, merchants, web analysts, data scientists, developers and executives across the C-suite. The foundation of our offering is Adobe Experience Platform, which provides businesses with an open and extensible system for customer experience management that transforms customer data into robust customer profiles that update in real time and uses insights to deliver personalized digital experiences across various channels.

We offer a comprehensive suite of products, services and solutions to our customers in our Digital Media business and Digital Experience business. With Adobe GenStudio, our cross-cloud, end-to-end solution that packages offerings across Digital Experience and Digital Media, enterprises can automate, optimize and accelerate their content supply chains for

marketing campaigns and personalized customer experiences. We believe we are well positioned to deliver value in both the Digital Media and Digital Experience strategic areas where our mission to change the world through personalized digital experiences has never been more relevant as people seek new ways to create, collaborate and communicate and businesses continue to invest in digital transformation.

SEGMENTS

Our business is organized into three reportable segments:

• Digital Media;

• Digital Experience; and

• Publishing and Advertising.

These segments provide Adobe’s senior management with a comprehensive financial view of our key businesses. Our segments are aligned around our two strategic growth opportunities further described below, and our legacy products, services and solutions are contained within the third segment, Publishing and Advertising.

MARKET OVERVIEW

This overview provides an explanation of our markets and a discussion of strategic opportunities in fiscal 2025 and beyond for each of our segments. See the section titled “Results of Operations” in Part II, Item 7 titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and Note 2 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements of this report for further segment information.

Digital Media

Opportunity

In today’s digital world, content and digital documents are fueling the global economy, and productivity, design and creativity have never been more relevant, providing a significant market opportunity for Adobe in digital media. Everyone has a story to tell and needs products and services at their fingertips to tell those stories on an ever-increasing number of canvases. AI- and generative AI-powered technologies are increasing this opportunity by growing the demand for and production of content. This shift is changing how creative professionals work by accelerating their processes, increasing their productivity, and allowing them to explore and create in new fields, while empowering new creators by dramatically lowering barriers to creativity. At the same time, creativity is increasingly a team effort that is redefining productivity, making quick and easy collaboration even more critical to every company’s success. Adobe is driving innovation to shape these trends, democratize creativity, empower individuals to create wherever inspiration strikes and enable more effective collaboration between creators and stakeholders.

The flagship of our Digital Media business is Adobe Creative Cloud, a subscription service that allows subscribers to use our creative products and applications (“Apps”) integrated with cloud-delivered services across various surfaces and platforms. We believe in creativity for all, and Creative Cloud addresses the needs of all content creators, from creative professionals, such as artists, designers, developers, students, and administrators, to knowledge workers, marketers, educators, enthusiasts, communicators, and consumers. Our customers rely on our products for content creation, photo editing, design, video and animation production, mobile App and gaming development, and more. Our customers can choose between products optimized for different platforms and capabilities, from the speed and ease of use offered by Adobe Express, our AI-first, task-based web and mobile App, to the greater power and precision of our flagship Creative Cloud Apps. We believe we have significant opportunities to grow our Digital Media business by advancing every creative category across all surfaces; expanding content-first, task-based creativity with Adobe Express; enabling seamless collaboration across all stakeholders; inspiring the creative community through sharing and monetization; and expanding the user base of our tools through the infusion of AI into our products, services and solutions to enable users of any skill level to easily and efficiently create content.

Our Digital Media segment includes our Adobe Document Cloud business, a unified, cloud-based document services platform that integrates Adobe’s pioneering PDF technology with our Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Scan and Adobe Acrobat Sign Apps to deliver fully digital document workflows across all surfaces. We have the opportunity to continue to accelerate document productivity with Adobe Document Cloud and transform how people view, share, collaborate, and engage with documents. Trillions of PDF documents are created every year, reflecting the important role PDF p

Showing the first 8K of 94K characters. Open the full section

As previously discussed, our actual results could differ materially from our forward-looking statements. Below we discuss some of the factors that could cause these differences. The occurrence of these and many other factors described in this report, and factors that we do not presently know or that we currently believe to be immaterial, could materially and adversely affect our operations, performance and financial condition. Many factors affect more than one category and the factors are not in order of significance or probability of occurrence because they have been grouped by categories.

Risks Related to Our Ability to Grow Our Business

We may be unsuccessful at innovating in response to rapid technological or industry changes to meet customer needs, which could cause our operating results to suffer.

We operate in rapidly evolving industries and expect the pace of innovation to continue to accelerate. We must continually introduce new, and enhance existing, products, services and solutions to retain customers and attract new customers. Developing new products, services and solutions is complex, requires significant investment and operational costs and may not be profitable, and our investments in new technologies are speculative and may not yield the expected business or financial benefits. The commercial success of new or enhanced products, services and solutions depends on a number of factors, including timely and successful development; effective distribution and marketing; market acceptance; compatibility with existing and emerging standards, platforms, software delivery methods and technologies; accurately predicting and anticipating customer needs and expectations and the direction of technological change; identifying and innovating in the right technologies; and differentiation from other products, services and solutions. If we fail to anticipate or identify technological, creative or marketing trends or fail to devote appropriate resources to adapt to such trends, our business could be harmed. For example, generative artificial intelligence technologies enable users of all skill levels to create and provide new ways of marketing, creating content and interacting with documents, which could significantly disrupt industries in which we operate and our existing products, services and solutions and our business may be harmed if we fail to invest or adapt. While we have released new generative artificial intelligence products, such as Adobe Firefly, and are focused on enhancing the artificial intelligence (“AI”) capabilities of our products and incorporating AI across existing products, services and solutions, there can be no assurance that our new or enhanced products and AI innovations will be successful, adopted or monetizable or that we will innovate effectively to keep pace with the rapid evolution of AI across our offerings. If we do not successfully innovate, adapt to rapid technological or industry changes and meet customer needs, our business and our financial results may be harmed.

Issues relating to the development and use of AI, including generative AI, in our offerings may result in reputational harm, liability and adverse financial results.

Social, ethical and operational issues relating to the use of AI, including generative AI, in our offerings may result in reputational harm, liability and additional costs. We are increasingly incorporating AI technologies, developed by us and by third parties, into many of our offerings. If our AI development, deployment, content labeling or governance is ineffective or inadequate, it may result in incidents that impair the public acceptance of AI solutions or cause harm to individuals, customers or society, or result in our offerings not working as intended or producing unexpected outcomes.

Jurisdictions around the world are developing and passing new regulations that apply specifically to the use of AI. For example, the EU AI Act was adopted in 2024 and will be implemented in phases through 2030, and other jurisdictions are considering similarly focused legislation. These regulations and the evolving AI regulatory environment may, among other impacts, result in inconsistencies among AI regulations and frameworks across jurisdictions, increase our compliance, governance and research and development costs, increase our exposure to claims related to our AI models and increase liability related to the use of AI by our customers or users that are beyond our control. While we have taken a responsible approach to the development and use of AI, such as in our Adobe Firefly offerings, there can be no guarantee that future AI regulations will not adversely impact us or conflict with our approach to AI, including affecting our ability to make our AI offerings available without costly changes, delaying or halting development of AI offerings, requiring us to change our AI development practices, monetization strategies and/or indemnity protections and subjecting us to additional compliance requirements, regulatory action, competitive harm, reputational harm and/or legal liability. To the extent we rely on third-party AI models in our products, services and solutions, we will face risks inherent in how those models have been developed and deployed, including situations in which the third party may lack a proper license or consent for the training data used for their model. In addition, new competition regulations on AI development and deployment could impose new requirements on our markets that could impact our business and financial results.

Uncertainty around new and evolving AI uses may require significant, additional investment to develop models and proprietary datasets, responsible-use frameworks and new approaches and processes to attribute or compensate content creators. We have experienced, and may in the future experience, challenges accessing AI models, datasets or hardware. Developing, testing and deploying AI systems may also increase the cost of our offerings, including due to the nature of the computing costs

involved in such systems. These costs could adversely impact our margins as we continue to make significant investments in AI development, add AI capabilities to our offerings and scale our AI offerings without assurance that our customers and users will adopt them. Further, as with any new offerings based on new technologies, consumer reception and monetization pathways are uncertain, our strategies may not be successful and our business and financial results could be adversely impacted. New AI offerings and technologies could modify workforce needs, result in negative publicity about AI and decrease demand for our existing products, services and solutions, all of which could adversely impact our business.

We participate in rapidly evolving and intensely competitive markets, and, if we do not compete effectively, our operating results could suffer.

The markets for our products, services and solutions are rapidly evolving and intensely competitive. We expect competition to continue to intensify. Our numerous 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 companies whose specialized focuses may allow them to more easily and effectively deploy technical, marketing and financial resources. Our competitors may develop or acquire products, services or solutions that are similar to ours or that achieve greater or faster 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 indu

Showing the first 8K of 67K characters. Open the full section

None.

Risk Management and Strategy

Adobe has certain security processes, infrastructure, systems, policies and practices for assessing, identifying and managing risks from cybersecurity threats. We maintain an information security risk management framework for managing cybersecurity risks, priorities and projects for our products, services, infrastructure and corporate resources. As part of our framework, a cybersecurity risk steering committee meets regularly to review newly identified risks and progress on remediating existing risks.

We conduct regular security reviews, simulations and testing, including internal and external penetration testing, vulnerability assessments and regular scans on our hosts and network devices. We review available threat intelligence, including information from industry groups and our security vendor. We consult with third parties, including cybersecurity consultants, as part of our cybersecurity threat and risk management strategy.

Depending on the environment, our risk mitigation strategies include a variety of technical, physical and operational measures designed to manage and mitigate material risks from cybersecurity threats to our systems and data. We require employees annually to complete a general security awareness training, and additional engineering and security specific training may also be required for certain positions. Further, we maintain a vendor security review program, which is designed to provide an assessment of the security practices of those third-party vendors that process Adobe non-public data or connect to our networks. We maintain an information security incident response plan designed to monitor, analyze, address, escalate and report cybersecurity incidents, and escalate certain cybersecurity incidents to members of management depending on the circumstances, including our Chief Security Officer (“CSO”), Chief Cybersecurity Legal and Privacy Officer (“CCPO”), Chief Financial Officer, Chief People Officer, President of Digital Media, President of Digital Experience, General Counsel and Chief Executive Officer.

For a description of the risks from cybersecurity threats that may materially affect us, see the risks described in the section titled “Risk Factors” contained in Part I, Item IA of this report, including under the headings “Security incidents, improper access to or disclosure of our customers’ data or other cybersecurity incidents may harm our reputation and materially and adversely affect our business.”

Governance

Our Board of Directors (the “Board”) addresses cybersecurity risk management as part of its general oversight function. The Audit Committee of the Board (the “Audit Committee”) has oversight of enterprise risks, including risks related to cybersecurity. In this regard, the Audit Committee reviews and discusses with management the adequacy and effectiveness of our information security, technology and privacy policies and the internal controls regarding these areas. Our Audit Committee receives regular cybersecurity updates about general cybersecurity risks from our CSO and updates about the prevention, detection, mitigation and remediation of cybersecurity incidents from our CSO and CCPO. Cybersecurity updates presented to the Audit Committee are reported to the Board by the Audit Committee Chair. We also have a Cyber Disclosure Committee, comprised of cross-functional leaders including finance, risk, operations and investor relations and led by the CSO and CCPO, that meets to assess certain incidents and makes determinations regarding materiality. Additionally, our CSO and CCPO identify certain cybersecurity risks that are reviewed as part of the enterprise risk management framework and presented to the Board and the Audit Committee on an annual basis.

Our cybersecurity risk assessment and management processes are implemented and maintained by certain management members, including our CSO and CCPO, whom each has extensive cybersecurity experience in their respective areas of responsibility and expertise. Our CSO, who reports to the Chief Financial Officer, has primary responsibility for hiring appropriate information security personnel and managing workloads of information security personnel, engaging and overseeing third-party cybersecurity consultants, approving budgets and cybersecurity processes, preparing for incident response, reviewing security assessments and other security-related reports, communicating key priorities to relevant personnel, including the security incident response team, assessing and managing Adobe’s overall cybersecurity strategy, standards, risk management (in consultation with the cybersecurity risk steering committee) and processes. Our CCPO, who reports to the General Counsel, has primary responsibility for the legal aspects of the cybersecurity program, including assessing and providing advice on our cybersecurity strategy, standards, risk management, policies, processes and legal obligations. Our CSO and CCPO are supported by a cybersecurity team comprised of cybersecurity, information security, information technology, operations and legal executives and professionals.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Not applicable.

PART II

Market Information for Common Stock

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

Stockholders

According to the records of our transfer agent, there were 856 holders of record of our common stock on January 3, 2025. 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.

Dividends

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

Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

Below is a summary of stock repurchases for the three months ended November 29, 2024. See Note 14 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for information regarding our stock repurchase programs.

(1)In March 2024, our Board of Directors granted authority to repurchase up to $25 billion in our common stock through March 14, 2028.

(2)In June 2024, we entered into an accelerated share repurchase agreement (“ASR”) with a large financial institution whereupon we provided them with a prepayment of $2.5 billion and received an initial delivery of shares at contract inception representing a portion of the prepayment. Upon final settlement of this ASR in September 2024, we received an incremental delivery of 1.0 million shares of our common stock. Under this ASR, we repurchased a total of 4.6 million shares at an average price of $546.30.

(3)In September 2024, we entered into an ASR with a large financial institution whereupon we provided them with a prepayment of $2.5 billion and received an initial delivery of 3.6 million shares of our common stock at contract inception, representing a portion of the prepayment. Subsequent to November 29, 2024, this ASR was settled which resulted in total repurchases of 5.0 million shares at an average price of $501.37.

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 2023 as compared to fiscal 2022 is included in Item 7 of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 1, 2023, filed with the SEC on January 17, 2024.

CRITICAL ACCOUNTING POLICIES AND ESTIMATES

In preparing our Consolidated Financial Statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (“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.

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.

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.

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 tax loss and 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.

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

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.

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.

RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

Overview of 2024

For our fiscal 2024, 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, with focus on delivering product innovation and driving adoption and usage of our AI-powered solutions, we have continued to experience growth in software-based subscription revenue across our portfolio of offerings.

Digital Media

In our Digital Media segment, we are a market leader with Creative Cloud, our subscription-based offering which provides desktop tools, mobile applications (“apps”) and cloud-based services for designing, creating and publishing rich content and immersive 3D experiences. Creative Cloud offers Adobe Acrobat Pro, our comprehensive PDF solution, integral to creative workflows and used by creators worldwide as part of our Creative Cloud All Apps subscription and on a standalone basis. In addition, Adobe Express is our 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. Creative Cloud also includes 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 cos

Showing the first 8K of 62K characters. Open the full section

All market risk sensitive instruments were entered into for non-trading purposes.

Foreign Currency Risk

Foreign Currency Exposures and Hedging Instruments

In countries outside the United States, we transact business in U.S. Dollars and various other currencies, which subject us to exposure from movements in exchange rates. We may use foreign exchange forward contracts and option contracts to hedge a portion of our forecasted foreign currency denominated revenue and expenses. Additionally, we hedge our net recognized foreign currency monetary assets and liabilities with foreign exchange forward contracts to reduce the risk that our earnings and cash flows will be adversely affected by changes in exchange rates.

Our significant foreign currency revenue exposures for fiscal 2024, 2023 and 2022 were as follows:

As of November 29, 2024, the total notional amounts of all outstanding foreign exchange contracts were $5.89 billion, which included the notional equivalent of $2.73 billion in Euros, $791 million in Japanese Yen, $714 million in British Pounds, $609 million in Indian Rupees, $585 million in Australian Dollars, $386 million in Canadian dollars and $76 million in other foreign currencies. As of November 29, 2024, all contracts were set to expire at various dates through September 2026. The bank counterparties in these contracts could expose us to credit-related losses that would be largely mitigated with master netting arrangements with the same counterparty by permitting net settlement transactions. In addition, we enter into collateral security agreements that provide for collateral to be received or posted when the net fair value of these contracts fluctuates from contractually established thresholds.

A sensitivity analysis was performed on all of our foreign exchange derivatives as of November 29, 2024. This sensitivity analysis measures the hypothetical market value resulting from a 10% shift in the value of exchange rates relative to the U.S. Dollar. A 10% increase in the value of the U.S. Dollar and a corresponding decrease in the value of the hedged foreign currency asset would lead to an increase in the fair value of our financial hedging instruments by $434 million. A 10% decrease in the value of the U.S. Dollar would lead to a decrease in the fair value of these financial instruments by $434 million.

As a general rule, we do not use foreign exchange contracts to hedge local currency denominated operating expenses in countries where a natural hedge exists. For example, in many countries, revenue in the local currencies substantially offsets the local currency denominated operating expenses. We also have long-term investment exposures consisting of the capitalization and retained earnings in our non-U.S. Dollar functional currency foreign subsidiaries. As of November 29, 2024 and December 1, 2023, this long-term investment exposure totaled an absolute notional equivalent of $1.19 billion and $1.03 billion, respectively. At this time, we do not hedge these long-term investment exposures.

We do not use foreign exchange contracts for speculative trading purposes, nor do we hedge our foreign currency exposure in a manner that entirely offsets the effects of changes in foreign exchange rates. We regularly review our hedging program and assess the need to utilize financial instruments to hedge currency exposures on an ongoing basis.

Cash Flow Hedges of Forecasted Foreign Currency Revenue and Expenses

We may use foreign exchange purchased forward contracts or option contracts to hedge foreign currency revenue denominated in Euros, Japanese Yen, British Pounds, Australian Dollars and Canadian Dollars, or foreign currency expenses in Indian Rupees. We hedge these cash flow exposures to reduce the risk that our earnings and cash flows will be adversely affected by changes in exchange rates. These foreign exchange contracts, carried at fair value, have maturities of up to 24 months. We enter into these foreign exchange contracts to hedge forecasted revenue and expenses in the normal course of business and accordingly, they are not speculative in nature.

We record changes in fair value of these cash flow hedges of foreign currency denominated revenue and expenses in accumulated other comprehensive income (loss) in our Consolidated Balance Sheets, until the forecasted transaction occurs. When the forecasted transaction affects earnings, we reclassify the related gain or loss on the cash flow hedge to revenue or operating expenses, as applicable. In the event the underlying forecasted transaction does not occur, or it becomes probable that

it will not occur, we reclassify the gain or loss on the related cash flow hedge from accumulated other comprehensive income (loss) to revenue or operating expenses, as applicable. For the fiscal year ended November 29, 2024, there were no net gains or losses recognized in revenue or operating expenses relating to hedges of forecasted transactions that did not occur.

Non-Designated Hedges of Foreign Currency Assets and Liabilities

Our derivatives not designated as hedging instruments consist of foreign currency forward contracts that we primarily use to hedge monetary assets and liabilities denominated in non-functional currencies to reduce the risk that our earnings and cash flows will be adversely affected by changes in foreign currency exchange rates. These foreign exchange contracts are carried at fair value with changes in fair value of these contracts recorded to other income (expense), net in our Consolidated Statements of Income. These contracts reduce the impact of currency exchange rate movements on our assets and liabilities. At November 29, 2024, the outstanding balance sheet hedging derivatives had maturities of 180 days or less.

See Note 6 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for information regarding our derivative financial instruments.

Interest Rate Risk

Short-Term Investments and Fixed Income Securities

At November 29, 2024, we had debt securities classified as short-term investments of $273 million. Changes in interest rates could adversely affect the market value of these investments. A sensitivity analysis was performed on our short-term investment portfolio as of November 29, 2024, based on an estimate of the hypothetical changes in market value of the portfolio that would result from an immediate parallel shift in the yield curve. A 150 basis point increase in interest rates would lead to a $1 million decrease in the market value of our short-term investments. Conversely, a 150 basis point decrease in interest rates would lead to a $1 million increase in the market value of our short-term investments.

Senior Notes

As of November 29, 2024, we had $5.65 billion of senior notes outstanding which bear interest at fixed rates, and therefore do not subject us to financial statement risk associated with changes in interest rates. As of November 29, 2024, the total carrying amount of our senior notes was $5.63 billion and the related fair value based on observable market prices in less active markets was $5.51 billion.

See Note 17 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for information regarding our senior notes.

INDEX TO CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

All financial statement schedules have been omitted, since the required information is not applicable or is not present in amounts sufficient to require submission of the schedule, or because the information required is included in the Consolidated Financial Statements and Notes thereto.

ADOBE INC.

CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS

(In millions, except par value)

See accompanying Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements.

ADOBE INC.

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF INCOME

(In millions, except per share data)

Showing the first 8K of 174K characters. Open the full section

None.

Disclosure Controls and Procedures

Our management has evaluated, under the supervision and with the participation of our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures as of November 29, 2024. Based on their evaluation as of November 29, 2024, our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer have concluded that our disclosure controls and procedures (as defined in Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended) were effective at the reasonable assurance level to ensure that the information required to be disclosed by us in this Annual Report on Form 10-K was (i) recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in the SEC’s rules and regulations and (ii) accumulated and communicated to our management, including our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure.

Our management, including our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, does not expect that our disclosure controls and procedures or our internal control over financial reporting will prevent all errors and all fraud. A control system, no matter how well conceived and operated, can provide only reasonable, not absolute, assurance that the objectives of the control system are met. Further, the design of a control system must reflect the fact that there are resource constraints and the benefits of controls must be considered relative to their costs. Because of the inherent limitations in all control systems, no evaluation of controls can provide absolute assurance that all control issues and instances of fraud, if any, within Adobe have been detected.

Management’s Annual Report on Internal Control over Financial Reporting

Our management is responsible for establishing and maintaining adequate internal control over financial reporting (as defined in Rule 13a-15(f) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended). Our management assessed the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting as of November 29, 2024. In making this assessment, our management used the criteria established in Internal Control - Integrated Framework (2013) issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission. Our management has concluded that, as of November 29, 2024, our internal control over financial reporting is effective based on these criteria.

KPMG LLP, the independent registered public accounting firm that audited our financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, has issued an attestation report on our internal control over financial reporting, which is included herein.

Changes in Internal Control over Financial Reporting

There were no changes in our internal control over financial reporting during the quarter ended November 29, 2024 that have materially affected, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting.

On January 9, 2025, Brett Biggs notified the Board of Directors of the Company (the “Board”) that he has decided not to stand for re-election at the Company’s 2025 Annual Meeting of Stockholders (the “Annual Meeting”) but will serve out his term as a director until the Annual Meeting. The Board expresses its gratitude for Mr. Biggs, and his decision was not due to any disagreement with the Company or any refusal to stand for re-election.

Trading Arrangements

None.

Not applicable.

PART III

The information required by this Item 10 of Form 10-K that is found in our 2025 Proxy Statement to be filed with the SEC in connection with the solicitation of proxies for Adobe’s 2025 Annual Meeting of Stockholders (“2025 Proxy Statement”) is incorporated herein by reference to our 2025 Proxy Statement. The 2025 Proxy Statement will be filed with the SEC within 120 days after the end of the fiscal year to which this report relates.

For information with respect to our executive officers, see the section titled “Executive Officers” in Part I, Item 1 of this report.

Adobe has an insider trading policy governing the purchase, sale and other dispositions of Adobe’s securities that applies to all personnel of Adobe and its subsidiaries, including directors, officers and employees and other covered persons, as well as Adobe itself. Adobe believes that its insider trading policy is reasonably designed to promote compliance with insider trading laws, rules and regulations, as well as applicable listing standards. A copy of Adobe’s insider trading policy is filed as Exhibit 19.1 to this report.

The information required by this Item 11 of Form 10-K is incorporated herein by reference to our 2025 Proxy Statement.

The information required by this Item 12 of Form 10-K is incorporated herein by reference to our 2025 Proxy Statement.

The information required by this Item 13 of Form 10-K is incorporated herein by reference to our 2025 Proxy Statement.

The information required by this Item 14 of Form 10-K is incorporated herein by reference to our 2025 Proxy Statement.

PART IV

1. Financial Statements. See Index to Consolidated Financial Statements in Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K.

None.

SIGNATURES

Pursuant to the requirements of Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned, thereunto duly authorized.

Date: January 13, 2025

POWER OF ATTORNEY

KNOW ALL PERSONS BY THESE PRESENTS, that each person whose signature appears below constitutes and appoints Shantanu Narayen and Daniel Durn, and each or any one of them, his or her lawful attorneys-in-fact and agents, for such person in any and all capacities, to sign any and all amendments to this report and to file the same, with all exhibits thereto and other documents in connection therewith, with the Securities and Exchange Commission, hereby ratifying and confirming all that either of said attorneys-in-fact and agent, or substitute or substitutes, may do or cause to be done by virtue hereof.

Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, this report has been signed below by the following persons on behalf of the registrant and in the capacities and on the dates indicated.