Goldman Sachs Analyst on Adobe’s Next CEO, Docusign CEO on Product Roadmap, Oracle Results Preview

Akash Pasricha (0:13)

Welcome, everyone, to The Information's TITV. My name is Akash Pasricha. It is Friday, September 4th. Today on the show, we'll get one analyst's view on Adobe's new CEO and unpack what we've learned from software earnings at large these past few weeks.

We've then got the CEOs of Netskope and Docusign separately coming on the show to discuss each of their quarterly results. We're going to close out the show with this week's edition of the Editor's Cut, talking about Microsoft's new Azure disclosures and what to watch for next week with Apple's iPhone event and Oracle earnings. It's going to be a great show, so let's get right on into it.

The past few weeks have been packed with the software sector's quarterly results, and yesterday Adobe announced its new CEO too, tapping Anil Chakravorty who has led the company's enterprise ambitions. For more on all of this and the themes coming out of earnings season, I want to bring on Gabriela Borges, US Software Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs. Gabriela, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here.

Gabriela Borges (1:18)

It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Akash Pasricha (1:20)

You've been quite busy, I trust, the last couple of weeks with all of these results surging in. It's probably the most exciting time of the quarter, I'm sure.

I want to get through some of them and I want to get through your take on some of the themes that we've seen. But let's start with the Adobe News last night. So we were waiting to see who the new CEO is going to be. They tapped the top enterprise exec. We know we had a departure as well from the consumer chief, I guess you could say. You have a cell rating on the stock. Did this change anything for you?

Gabriela Borges (1:53)

The way we think about evolution in software in 2026 is a little bit different to how you would have thought about it in 2021 or 2015

Because the pace of competition, the pace of disruption, the pace of technology change is greater. There is a lot more that a CEO of a software company in 2026 has to deal with on an everyday basis. One of the things we've been writing about is, if you were a leader in the SaaS era, what do you need to do to be a leader in the AI era? You take a company like Adobe that has incredibly rich IP in digital design and creation, their installed base and the creative cloud side.

How do you then leverage that to be a leader in the AI world? The playbook that we're looking at is, number one, you have to minimize technical debt. Number two, you need to innovate either organically and inorganically with an acquisition like Topaz Labs. Number three, you have to monetize. I think Adobe is a little bit still figuring out where they are in that process. I would put them somewhere in the innovation stage where they've recently made an acquisition, but they still have a little bit of heavy lifting to do from a product standpoint to really be bleeding edge. There are a couple of interesting product cycles that we're watching like Express and the orchestration engine with Firefly that we think will be key for that.

Akash Pasricha (3:04)

You're talking about the SEMrush acquisition?

Gabriela Borges (3:06)

No, actually Topaz Labs.

Akash Pasricha (3:08)

Topaz Labs. Which one was that? I'm not familiar with that.

Gabriela Borges (3:11)

Yeah, there's some really interesting next-generation image and video assets that we're paying attention to. Many of them actually go to the Adobe Summit because Adobe Ventures has investments in them. And so those are the types of deals that take Adobe to the forefront of where the innovation is happening. And that's what we need to see in a lot of these software companies. It needs to be really obvious that companies are innovating at the speed of light. And I think there is so much potential for Adobe to up their game as it pertains to innovation.

Akash Pasricha (3:39)

So what will it take then for Anil Chakravorty to earn, perhaps not a buy rate, maybe a neutral? Is the next step for you guys? I mean, what's it going to take then? And what do you see as the future of this business? I mean, is this a business that you think, I don't know, maybe it merges with another one of these enterprise software companies that are sort of seen as figuring it all out still?

Is that sort of the case to make it a more compelling investment? What do you see here as the future?