Adobe reports its third fiscal quarter after the close today, 10 September, with the call at 2:00 p.m. Pacific. The Street expects $6.08 of adjusted earnings per share on $6.69 billion of revenue — 14.5% and 11.7% above the quarter a year ago, and within a cent of the midpoint of Adobe's own guide.
That last part is the setup for the problem. Three different numbers describe tonight's earnings per share, they differ by up to $1.71, and one of them is going to be printed against the wrong one.
Three numbers for one quarter
Adobe guided this quarter twice in the same table on 11 June: GAAP $4.40 to $4.45, and non-GAAP $6.05 to $6.10. Both are Adobe's, for the same three months, on the same revenue guide of $6.67 to $6.72 billion. The gap between them is $1.65 a share at the midpoints — stock compensation and purchased-intangible amortisation, the two adjustments that dominate software reconciliations.
The consensus above is on the second of those. So is nearly every "beat or miss" headline that will run tonight.
The third number is the one to watch out for. The Nasdaq feed that supplies EPS estimates for most of the tickers we cover carries $4.86 for this quarter, and $4.86 is neither of Adobe's figures. It sits about a quarter of the way up the wedge — above the GAAP guide, $1.20 below the non-GAAP one. The same feed's history behaves the same way: it recorded $4.58 for the May quarter, against Adobe's own $4.25 GAAP and $5.96 non-GAAP.
Pair that feed's estimate with the headline Adobe prints tonight and the arithmetic invents a beat of about 25% out of nothing. It is the same failure in reverse that showed AMD a 15% miss on a quarter it beat.
The wedge is widening, and not only because of a write-off
A year ago the same two lines were $4.18 and $5.31 — a gap of $1.13. In the May quarter it was $1.71. Some of that is a one-off: GAAP carried a $0.17 per share non-cash goodwill impairment on the Publishing & Advertising reporting unit. Strip it and the gap is $1.54, still 36% wider than the year before.
The guided Q3 midpoints put it at $1.65. Whether that holds is one of the few things tonight's release settles immediately, because Adobe prints both bases in the same sentence.
What to watch
- Which EPS the coverage compares. Adobe prints GAAP and non-GAAP in one sentence. A beat measured against $4.86 measures nothing; the comparison the guide supports is $6.08 against the reported non-GAAP figure.
- AI-first ARR. It tripled year over year and passed $500 million in the May quarter, against a $250 million target for all of FY2025. It is the youngest disclosure Adobe volunteers and the one the market trades.
- Total ARR, and how much was bought. ARR exited May at $27.10 billion, roughly $480 million of it Semrush, which also added about $40 million of subscription revenue. Ex-Semrush growth is the organic read.
- Whether the full-year guide moves again. Adobe raised FY2026 revenue and non-GAAP EPS in June; the targets now stand at $26.50–26.60 billion and non-GAAP $24.35–24.45.
- What the handover changes. Anil Chakravarthy becomes chief executive on 1 December and Narayen moves to executive chair. Tonight is one of Narayen's last calls; December's FY2027 guide is the first under his successor.
The quarter's date and the 2:00 p.m. Pacific call time are Adobe's own, from its investor relations page. Every Adobe figure here — the GAAP and non-GAAP EPS guides, the revenue guide, the full-year targets, ARR, AI-first ARR, the Semrush contribution and the goodwill impairment — is from Adobe's second-quarter FY2026 release of 11 June 2026 and its third-quarter FY2025 release of 11 September 2025, both filed as Exhibit 99.1. The chief-executive transition is from Adobe's filing of 8 September 2026. The $6.08 and $6.69 billion consensus is press-reported from third-party estimate feeds on Adobe's non-GAAP basis; this site neither stores nor verifies a consensus series, and the figure is not Adobe's. The $4.86 is the Nasdaq feed's own estimate on its own basis. The wedge arithmetic and every percentage here are ours.
