Adobe: Cowen Downgrades on Product Transition Worries

Adobe (ADBE) shares are losing ground today after Cowen’s Walter Pritchard cut his rating on the stock to Neutral from Outperform.

Pritchard is concerned about the company’s transition from the current version of its flagship software package–Creative Suite 3–to the coming update, Creative Suite 4. He says that with the May quarter, “the company will reach a peak in financial momentum.” But Pritchard contends that “many of the drivers of growth in CS3 are not in place and in some cases work against CS4 given the significant upgrade activity and price uplift that came with CS3.” He notes that in the case of CS3, there were 24 months between versions, rather than the usual 18. The current version, he adds, benefited from additional demand associated with Apple’s (AAPL) adoption of Intel processors for the Mac.

Read the rest of this post