6/18: Adobe Crushes the Quarter: CEO Exclusive
The most important thing in tech today is …
Adobe ($263.6 billion) and Oracle ($223.6 billion) are two big tech companies that report earnings on a different cadence than most others, so they often give valuable data at a time in the quarterly cycle when there isn’t much. Earlier this week, Oracle reported strong sales but told investors to expect higher expenses than analysts hoped. So a lot was riding on Adobe. Would its report be a similarly mixed bag?
It was not. Adobe both exceeded expectations and said its outlook for the rest of the year looks fantastic.
I spoke to Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen yesterday before the company’s earnings call, and covered financial performance and topics analysts often don’t, including how he’s managing the productivity of the engineering workforce, his expectations for reopening offices, the impact of Google’s plans to build a major campus near Adobe’s downtown San Jose headquarters and more. See part of the interview on CNBC’s TechCheck this morning, and catch the whole thing streaming on Twitter @jonfortt …
(Update: Here it is)
… and you can also find it on the Fortt Knox YouTube channel and on LinkedIn (my preferred platform for engaging the Fortt Knox audience).
One of the things Narayen told me is that businesses continue to need digital creative and measurement tools as economies fight to exit the pandemic. I’ll get some color on that in a live Fortt Knox News conversation with MassMutual CEO Roger Crandall, streaming on those same channels.
Coming up today on CNBC’s TechCheck, 11 a.m. ET / 8 a.m. PT …
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, MassMutual CEO Roger Crandall, LRMR Management CEO Maverick Carter
While you were sleeping …
U.S. stock futures fell on Friday as the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average are on pace to post a losing week after the Federal Reserve’s latest policy update. CNBC
Podcasts are all the rage, but podcast discovery is a challenge. Today, Spotify announced its acquisition of Podz, a startup that’s trying to solve the problem of podcast discovery. TechCrunch
The Senate on Thursday confirmed Chris Inglis to be President Joe Biden’s national cyber director, installing the former NSA deputy director as Biden’s top cyber adviser at a time when many lawmakers are pressing the White House for a muscular response to a series of high-profile hacks. Politico
In the broader world …
The prices of commodities were falling sharply on Thursday, cutting into months of gains and weighing on equity markets, as China takes steps to cool off rising prices and the U.S. dollar strengthens. CNBC
U.S. auto safety regulators said on Thursday they have opened 30 investigations into Tesla crashes involving 10 deaths since 2016 where advanced driver assistance systems were suspected of use. Reuters
On the horizon …
6/21: Neeva Cofounder Sridhar Ramaswamy on Fortt Knox
I’m listening to …
Thought provoking for Juneteenth, but NSFW: