Adobe sees weakness in Europe, shares dip

SEATTLE, USA: Adobe Systems Inc reported on Tuesday a 54 per cent jump in quarterly net profit and held on to its sales growth target, but warned of weakness in demand for its applications in Europe.

The shares of the world's biggest maker of design software dipped 3.7 per cent in after-hours trading, to $30.83 after closing at $32.01 on Nasdaq.

Adobe, which makes the Flash media player, Omniture web analytics software and Acrobat document manipulation application, said that sales were not as badly affected as it had feared by the earthquake in Japan, one of its biggest markets, but cautioned that sales in Europe fell below expectations.

"We experienced weaker than expected demand in EMEA," said Mark Garrett, Adobe's chief financial officer, in a conference call, referring to the regions of Europe, Middle East and Africa.

For the fiscal second-quarter it reported net profit of $229.4 million, or 45 cents per share, compared with $148.6 million, or 28 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter.

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Excluding some items, it reported profit of 55 cents per share. Wall Street expected 51 cents per share, on average, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Sales rose 9 per cent to $1.02 billion. Analysts were expecting $994.8 million, on average.

Adobe warned in March that sales would be cut in the quarter because of disruption after the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, which accounted for 13 per cent of the company's sales last fiscal year.

The company said on Tuesday it was standing by its target of 10 per cent revenue growth in fiscal 2011, which ends in early December.

For the current quarter, Adobe forecast profit of 50 to 56 cents per share, excluding some items, in line with analysts' average estimate of 54 cents. It forecast sales of $1 billion to $1.05 billion, in line with the $1.02 billion expected by analysts.