Adobe Systems Posts 37% Rise in Quarterly Profit

Adobe Systems Inc. said Thursday that its fiscal second-quarter profit rose 37% as the maker of Acrobat and Photoshop reported strong sales of its most popular software.

San Jose-based Adobe, the maker of the portable document format, or PDF, technology, posted net income of $149.8 million, or 29 cents a share, compared with $109.4 million or 22 cents, in the same period last year.

Adobe reported revenue for the quarter, which ended June 3, of $496 million, up 21% from $410 million in the year-earlier period.

Excluding special items, such as taxes on some revenue from abroad, the software company earned $142.9 million, or 28 cents a share.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call had expected Adobe to earn an average of 27 cents a share on revenue of $491.7 million.

Shares of Adobe, which reported after the market’s close, fell more than 6%, or $1.99, in after-hours trading. The stock had risen 41 cents to $32.41 in regular trading.

“We’re excited about the growth in our business,” Adobe Chief Executive Bruce Chizen said.

“This is the eighth consecutive quarter we’ve seen double-digit growth.”

Looking ahead to the third quarter, Adobe predicted that earnings would range from 25 cents to 27 cents a share on revenue of $470 million to $490 million.

In April, Adobe announced a deal to buy animation software maker Macromedia Corp. for about $3.4 billion in stock. The deal was complicated after Macromedia announced that it would have to restate earnings for six years because of the way it accounted for employee leave.