Earnings call

Adobe Inc. Adobe Inc. · Q3 FY2026 call

Call heldSep 10, 2026
Time2:00 p.m. Pacific
CEOShantanu Narayen

What the CEO argued

Narayen's last call as chief executive argued the installed base is the asset: more than a billion monthly active users growing 20%, creative freemium past 100 million, and the AI-first line — given its dollar figure here, past $650 million — as proof the freemium funnel monetises. The handover got its colour: two internal candidates, Chakravarthy chosen, David Wadhwani thanked on his way out, and a deliberate choice of new users over pricing actions.

More from Shantanu Narayen

What they said

The users, counted
It's incredible that these innovations are now used by over 1 billion monthly active users across all businesses, a number that grew greater than 20% year-over-year in Q3 with the creative freemium MAU crossing 100 million and growing greater than 70% year-over-year.
Shantanu Narayen · Chair and CEO, Adobe
The dollar figure the release left out
We're just beginning to capitalize on the massive AI opportunity across creativity, productivity, and customer experiences, with AI-first ending ARR now exceeding $650 million and growing more than 150% year-over-year.
Shantanu Narayen · Chair and CEO, Adobe
The handover, and a departure
I'm delighted that Anil Chakravarthy will become Adobe's next President and Chief Executive Officer and join the board of directors effective December 1st. I would also like to thank David Wadhwani for over a decade of partnership, leadership, and passion for our creative community.
Shantanu Narayen · Chair and CEO, Adobe
The Acrobat base under the strategy
Today, people open more than 400 billion PDFs with Acrobat every year to read, edit, and create content.
Anil Chakravarthy · President of Customer Experience and Orchestration
Where the freemium engagement shows up
Firefly ending ARR across the Firefly app and Firefly credit packs grew 40% quarter-over-quarter.
Anil Chakravarthy · President of Customer Experience and Orchestration
The growth rates behind the levels
total Adobe ending ARR of $27.5 billion, growing 11.2% year-over-year. […] RPO of $22.16 billion exiting the quarter, growing 8% year-over-year, and CRPO growing 9% year-over-year, both as reported and in constant currency.
Steve Day · Senior VP and Interim CFO, Adobe
What is left to buy back
Exiting Q3, we have fully utilized our March 2024 authorization and have approximately $24.55 billion remaining under our April 2026 authorization.
Steve Day · Senior VP and Interim CFO, Adobe
The incoming chief executive's thesis
I do believe that every SaaS company will be going through the transformation to agentic software, just like the software companies went from on-prem to SaaS many years ago, and that Adobe executed very successfully.
Anil Chakravarthy · President of Customer Experience and Orchestration
How the board chose
We had two great internal candidates, so that was, I think, important for the board.
Shantanu Narayen · Chair and CEO, Adobe
The size of the raise
It is a raise across the CMP subs, BP&C subs, as well as the overall company, raising around $50 million at the midpoint.
Steve Day · Senior VP and Interim CFO, Adobe
Users over pricing actions
I'm actually really happy that we didn't focus on the pricing actions, because that, while it may have provided some short-term relief, would not be as critical as continuing to drive new user adoption.
Shantanu Narayen · Chair and CEO, Adobe
Why Q4 nets the beat away
we pushed through the beat that we saw in Q3, but there is a slight FX headwind that we are having coming into Q4, and it is just netting that off.
Steve Day · Senior VP and Interim CFO, Adobe

In the order they were said. Pick a name to read only that speaker.

On the call

  • Doug Clark — VP of Investor Relations, Adobe
  • Shantanu Narayen — Chair and CEO, Adobe
  • Anil Chakravarthy — President of Customer Experience and Orchestration
  • Steve Day — Senior VP and Interim CFO, Adobe
  • Matt Swanson — Analyst, RBC Capital Markets
  • Saket Kalia — Analyst, Barclays
  • Jay Vleeschhouwer — Analyst, Griffin Securities
  • Brian Hyska — Analyst, JPMorgan
  • Brad Zelnick — Analyst, Deutsche Bank
  • Billy Fitzsimmons — Analyst, Piper Sandler
  • Brent Thill — Analyst, Jefferies
  • Andrew Gerard — Analyst, Citi
  • Michael Turrin — Analyst, Wells Fargo Securities
  • Speaker 11
  • Speaker 12
  • Operator

About these quotes

Every passage above is quoted verbatim from Adobe Inc.'s Q3 FY2026 earnings call of Sep 10, 2026, checked against the recording's transcription word for word. Adobe records its earnings calls and posts the webcast replay, its prepared remarks and its financial results as PDFs on its own investor relations site. The call is Adobe's; this page quotes from it rather than reproducing it, and the transcription it quotes from is a third party's, not Adobe's own text. Figures spoken on a call are management's own and are checked against the release before they are used anywhere else on this site.

WebcastListen to the call at Adobe Inc. investor relationsThe company's own replay — the authoritative record ReleaseQ3 FY2026 results press releaseWhere every figure quoted here is verified NumbersQ3 FY2026 earnings pageThe reported figure set, Rule of 40 score and consensus comparison

Next call: Q4 and full-year FY2026 results come with the December print — the first reported under incoming chief executive Anil Chakravarthy, carrying the FY2027 guide.