Adobe Loses CTO But Beats Q1 Estimates: $1.01B Revenue, $0.35 Non-GAAP EPS, 479K Paying Creative Cloud Subscribers

Adobe just announced its Q1 2013 earnings, which generally beat analyst estimates. Overall revenue for the first quarter was $1.01 billion and GAAP earnings per share of $0.12 and non-GAAP earnings per share (EPS) of $0.35, ahead of the analyst consensus of $0.31 non-GAAP EPS on revenue of $986 million. Overall operating income was $240.7 million and net income was $177.9 million on a non-GAAP basis.

Kevin Lynch Leaves Adobe (For Apple?)

Just as the company released its earnings, however, an SEC filing also revealed that it’s long-term CTO Kevin Lynch is leaving the company on March 22 “to pursue other opportunities.” Rumor has it that he is leaving for Apple, which would be an interesting move for somebody who long defended Flash against Apple and once likened Apple’s walled-garden approach to 19th-century railroads.

Almost 500K Creative Cloud Subscribers

Maybe the most important metric of today’s earnings, however, wasn’t about the financial details but the face that the company’s Creative Cloud offering now has more than 479,000 paying subscribers, an increase of 153,000 compared to the end of the last quarter. Adobe also announced that it now has 2 million free and trial subscribers to its Creative Cloud.

“We exited the quarter with 479 thousand paid subscriptions, and recently we crossed the half-million mark. With this momentum, we are on track to reach our goal of 1.25 million paid subscriptions by the end of this fiscal year,” Adobe CEP Shantanu Narayen said in a prepared statement (PDF) during the company’s earnings call today.

The Adobe Marketing Cloud, another cornerstone of the company’s product line, achieved quarterly revenue of $215.4 million, a 20% year-over-year increase. For the whole year, Adobe expects its Marketing Cloud revenue to increase 25%.

adobe_earnings

creative_cloud_numbers