Adobe: Looking Ahead To Adobe CS5, Kaufman Says Buy

Adobe Systems shares are getting a lift Wednesday from Kaufman Bros. analyst Barbara Coffey, who Wednesday morning lifted her rating on the stock to Buy from Hold, boosting her price target to $32, from $25. Tuesday, the stock closed at $28.30.

Coffey notes that Adobe shares tend to outperform heading into major product upgrades. She notes that a new version of Acrobat could be released in Q1 2010, with Adobe CS5 (Adobe Creative Suite 5) expected in the second quarter of next year. She notes that buyer patterns have been shown stronger sales for the odd-numbered CS upgrades; CS 1 and 3 did better than versions 2 and 4. “We believe that shares of Adobe will likely outperform the market until the time of the releases,” with the stock performance after that more tied to the strength of demand, the state of the economy and the health of the advertising market, she writes in a research note.

New image editing tools for Photoshop CS5

Structural image editing. Left to right: (a) the original image; (b) a hole is marked (magenta) and we use line constraints (red/green/blue) to improve the continuity of the roofline; (c) the hole is filled in; (d) user-supplied line constraints for retargeting; (e) retargeting using constraints eliminates two columns automatically; and (f) user translates the roof upward using reshuffling. (more…)

Adobe CS5 will ship in April 2010

Piper Jaffray – leading international middle market investment firm, believes investors will start getting positioned for Adobe CS5 now, given the historical CS cycle peak multiple occurs 1-6 months prior to ship. Piper expects Adobe CS5 will ship in April 2010 (more…)