May 11, 2025

TIVP019: Adobe (ADBE): Designing a Creative Empire w/ Shawn O’Malley & Daniel Mahncke

1 hour 27 minutes

Shawn O’Malley and Daniel Mahncke break down Adobe (ticker: ADBE), a leading software company providing end-to-end solutions for creative professionals, from design and creation to marketing and performance measurement. Through apps like Photoshop and After Effects, Adobe offers an industry-leading suite of productivity tools for creatives, including freelancers designers, Hollywood design studios, and everyone inbetween. Excel is to the financial world as Adobe is to the creative world, you might say.

In this episode, you’ll learn how Adobe grew out of a garage and became tangled with Apple early on, how the company transitioned to a cloud-based subscription model, whether AI risks to Adobe’s business are overstated, how Adobe is implementing AI into its tool, whether Adobe is as attractively valued as it seems, plus so much more!

Prefer to watch? Click ⁠⁠here⁠⁠ to watch this episode on YouTube.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN

00:00 - Intro

00:43 - Adobe’s origin story and how it was created out of a garage.

07:24 - What were Adobe’s first few popular products and how Apple elevated Adobe’s business.

16:02 - Why Adobe transitioned to a subscription-based business model in 2013.

19:36 - Why the market has soured on Adobe’s otherwise wonderfully profitable and growing business.

24:40 - How Adobe is responding to Canva, Figma, and disruptions from AI.

39:32 - What Adobe is doing to keep the next generation of designers using its products.

01:04:50 - The biggest risks to Adobe’s continued dominance.

01:07:41 - Whether Adobe is attractively valued at its current beaten down levels.

01:16:22 - Whether Shawn & Daniel add ADBE to The Intrinsic Value Portfolio.

And much, much more!

*Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences.

BOOKS AND RESOURCES

Get smarter about valuing businesses in just a few minutes each week through our newsletter, ⁠⁠The Intrinsic Value Newsletter⁠⁠.

From Quartr’s Insights blog: Adobe: Equipping the Architects of Digital Expression.

Adobe’s Investor Day Summit.

Value Investor’s Club pitch for Adobe.

Never Sell podcast on Adobe.

Check out our previous Intrinsic Value breakdowns: ⁠⁠Nintendo⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Airbnb⁠⁠, ⁠⁠AutoZone⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Alphabet⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Ulta⁠⁠, ⁠⁠John Deere⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠Madison Square Garden Sports⁠⁠.

Check out the books mentioned in the podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠.

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