Adobe is one of the largest and most diversified software companies in the world. It has been known for brands such as Acrobat, Photoshop, and Marketing Cloud. Adobe serves customers such as content creators and web application developers with its digital media products, and marketers, advertisers, publishers, and others with its digital marketing business.

 

Adobe's business is organized into three reportable segments: Digital Media, Digital Experience and Publishing and Advertising. Overall, approximately 90% of sales were generated from subscriptions in 2021. As such, 70% of revenue comes from the Digital Media segment, another 25% from the digital experience, a following 5% from the publishing and Advertising unit while products and services account for the rest.

 

The company's revenue for fiscal 2021 increased by 23% to $15.8 billion compared to the prior year with $12.9 billion.

Cash held by the company at the end of fiscal 2021 increased to $3.8 billion. During the same period, cash provided by operations was $7.2 billion, while cash used for investing and financing activities were $3.5 million and $4.3 billion, respectively. Main uses of cash were acquisitions and repurchases of common stock.

Adobe market its products and services directly to enterprise customers through its sales force and local field offices. The company's advertising expenses for fiscal 2021, 2020, and 2019 were $540 million, $362 million, and $221 million, respectively.

 

Overall, Adobe's strategy with Creative Cloud is designed to enable the company to increase its revenue with users, attract more new customers, and grow its recurring and predictable revenue stream.

 

In the fourth quarter of 2021, Adobe completed the acquisition of Frame.io for approximately $1.18 billion. With this acquisition, Adobe aims to make the creative process even more collaborative, productive and efficient by enhancing Adobe Creative Cloud with Frame.io's cloud-native collaboration workflows, while continuing to enable third-party applications. They also acquired Workfront for approximately $1.52 billion in cash consideration and began integrating Workfront into its Digital Experience reportable segment.