Can Adobe Stock Jump 50%?

For questions about this article or underlying research, email help@trefis.com.

To gauge whether Adobe (ADBE) stock can jump 50%, look at a part of the company you may overlook: its faster-growing subscriptions for business professionals and consumers. In seven of the last ten calendar years, the stock rose 50% or more from one close to a later close in the same year. Yet the shares lost 27.0% over the past year, and you probably still think of Adobe as software for creative professionals. So how big are those subscriptions?

Business Professionals And Consumers Bring Adobe 29% Of Subscriptions

Adobe sold $1.91 billion of subscriptions to business professionals and consumers in fiscal Q3 2026, up 16% from a year earlier. That pace makes them the faster-growing group so far. Adobe’s subscriptions for creative and marketing professionals were far larger at $4.65 billion, but grew 13%.

Adobe maintains a wide reach with business professionals and consumers. On the September 10, 2026 call, management said monthly active users in this group rose more than 25% from a year earlier to over 900 million. The company is also targeting the next generation of business professionals by making student spaces in Acrobat available globally.

Adobe Is Choosing When To Turn Users Into Subscribers

Adobe says it will decide when to try to turn free users into paying subscribers. Management said on the September 10 call that the company is routing part of its traffic to its freemium products, which are free to start, to win customers and deepen their usage. Adobe will then convert those users into recurring revenue at the right time. This strategy, management added, balances winning new customers with growing recurring revenue.

Analysts questioned that approach on the call. When one analyst noted that net new annual recurring revenue was down 36% to 37% from a year earlier, management cited the shift toward freemium products as one of the drivers. Adobe finished fiscal Q3 2026 with $22.16 billion in remaining performance obligations, which represent contracted revenue the company has yet to book. That figure was up 8% from a year earlier.

Trading at 14.0 times Adobe’s last twelve months of earnings, against 22.9 for the S&P 500, the stock price appears to allow for little from those users. Adobe’s faster-growing business and consumer subscriptions show reported sales are still rising, but they do not settle the analysts’ questions about new recurring revenue. Management raised its fiscal 2026 revenue and earnings targets on the call, but it only reiterated its target of 10.2% growth in ending annual recurring revenue.

What Adobe Passed Up To Win New Users

Adobe opted not to focus on pricing actions in its creative business so it could keep adding users. Management said on the September 10 call that the company was glad it had held back. Pricing actions might have brought short-term relief, management said, but they mattered less than winning new users.

The creative business still makes up most of Adobe. For fiscal 2026, management targets $18.242 billion to $18.272 billion of subscription revenue from creative and marketing professionals, against $7.47 billion to $7.49 billion from business professionals and consumers. If more of Adobe’s new users do not start paying, the company will have skipped pricing actions in its largest business without the new subscribers to show for it.

Adobe’s sales to business professionals and consumers are growing faster than its sales to creative and marketing professionals so far, while the question of whether its new users will pay remains open. When Adobe reports in December 2026, ending annual recurring revenue compared against management’s fiscal 2026 target will be the number to watch.

Is Too Much Of Your Wealth Riding On One Stock?

A stock like Adobe can look very different depending on which part of the business you watch. When one position grows into a large part of your wealth, a sharp fall can hurt your whole plan, and selling to spread the money out can bring a large tax bill. Our partner advisory firm offers a free strategy review of ways to protect a concentrated position and unwind it with less tax.

Request A Free Strategy Review

Spot an error or want more like this? Tell us in 10 seconds.