Good morning.
Adobe is full speed ahead toward a future in generative AI products—and finance will be a big part of this journey.
“The finance organization has a seat at the table,” says Dan Durn, CFO and EVP of finance, technology services, and operations at Adobe. “They’re involved in discussions. They understand the technology, the opportunities, and play a key role in prioritizing across that opportunity set once decisions are made. And from an execution standpoint, making sure the teams are hitting milestones at a velocity that enables leadership and competitiveness.”
I talked with Durn on Wednesday, the second day of Adobe MAX in Los Angeles, the company’s annual conference for designers and creatives. Adobe announced three new models of Firefly, its collection of generative AI models, on Tuesday. With the applications, users can use their own words to generate content from images, audio, vectors, videos, and 3D to creative ingredients, like color gradients.
“You get the ‘oohs and ahhs’—a visceral enthusiastic response to the innovation roadmap and the things that are going to make them more productive in the creative process,” Durn recalls of the crowd’s response.
One update is Firefly Image 2, an interaction of the first version released in March. The upgrade comes with the ability to make shutter speed and aperture-style adjustments to pictures, like a photographer behind the camera, and more accurate details and improved coloring. Companies can customize Firefly by providing it with marketing materials it can use as reference to replicate their brand’s visual style.
“The company is innovating at a pace we’ve never seen,” Durn says. “We’re natively, deeply integrating these technologies into those workflows and products that define how they operate.”
Adobe earned record revenue of $4.89 billion in its third quarter of fiscal year 2023, which represents 10% year-over-year growth, or 13% in constant currency. The new AI offerings will expand the total addressable market (TAM) for the company, Durn says. Adobe’s Document Cloud, Creative Cloud, and Experience Cloud combined could have a TAM of more than $110 billion, according to the company. At Adobe’s Q4 earnings call in December, Durn will talk about the targets for 2024, he says.
“This is a seminal moment in Adobe’s history,” Durn says. “There’s an opportunity in front of us.” How does Adobe decide on product enhancements? By staying closely connected with the customers and the community, Durn says. “We understand the needs that they look for in the workflows, and feature functionality that drives real productivity gains.”
When I last spoke with Durn in March, he said Adobe positioned itself to avoid company-wide layoffs this year when major tech companies were doing so. “We don’t need to do that, and we don’t want our employees worried about when the next shoe is going to drop,” he told me in March.
And offloading parts of graphic designers’ work to AI does not put their jobs in jeopardy, according to Durn. “Productivity enhancement is not new,” he explains. For example, “this is something that’s been playing out in the engineering world for decades now,” he says, “and it hasn’t led to a lower number of R&D engineers in this world.” In fact, “the demand for talent is going to be very robust,” he says.
Sheryl Estrada
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Leaderboard
Michael R. Kirby was promoted to CFO and Operating Officer at International Materials LLC, (IMI) effective immediately. In his expanded role, Kirby will continue to oversee IMI's financial and accounting functions while taking on a broader range of responsibilities, including oversight of the chartering, operations, trade execution, business strategy and analytics, legal, HR, and IT departments. Kirby joined IMI in October 2022 as CFO, bringing over 25 years of invaluable experience spanning the financial services, commodities, banking, and technology sectors.
Salman Rashid was named CFO at Woolpert, an architecture, engineering, geospatial consulting firm. Rashid succeeds longtime Woolpert CFO Josh Heid. Rashid has 25 years of financial and consulting experience. Most recently, he was CFO and COO for Edgile, a cybersecurity consulting company, He was also CFO and COO at QuickStart Technologies, and CFO for Dell Services' Global BPO business. Rashid was part of the leadership team that led the integration of Dell and EMC Corp.
Big deal
S&P Global Market Intelligence research finds that seven U.S. Bank M&A deals were announced in September. This brings the year-to-date total to 79 transactions, compared to 122 deals announced in the same period in 2022, according to the report. In Q3, a total of 34 deals were announced, beating the first- and second-quarter totals of 20 and 25, respectively. The aggregate deal value surged to $2.76 billion in the third quarter, compared to the first and second quarter's combined aggregate deal value of $629.9 million, the research found.
Going deeper
How to Get Mergers and Acquisitions Right, a new report in Wharton's business review, explores factors that make M&A successful, such as picking targets wisely, avoiding overstating expectations of synergies, and managing cultural dynamics correctly, according to Wharton’s Emilie Feldman.
Overheard
“While housing and more generally consumer fundamentals are in a much stronger position today, affordability for the incremental buyer is worse than it was at the peak in 2006 before the crash.”
Roger Ashworth, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, wrote in a credit strategy research paper released on Tuesday, Coins2Day reported.
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