Adobe's figures are booming

Bruce Chizen, president and CEO of Adobe, has cheered the market by announcing booming second quarter figures.

However, he warned that the rest of the year will be flat, hit by the worse than anticipated European slowdown and an expected slowdown in Asia. The US slowdown had been sharp, he said.

Quarterly turnover was up 15 per cent on the comparable period last year at $344m and operating profit was up 31 per cent over the comparable period to $121m.

Chizen told analysts in a conference call that the increase in head count is almost entirely due to increased hiring in R&D where the company will continue to invest and "improve its products and position." he said.

The launch of Acrobat 5 had significantly increased revenues. Chizen said:'This has resulted in a 67 per cent year-on-year growth in our ePaper Solutions segment."

Chizen expects that product upgrades will kick in before the end of the final quarter to improve Adobe results for the year.

The company also announced that it had settled a class action lawsuit related to its 1996 acquisition of Frame Technology and that this will not affect financial performance as the confidential settlement will be paid by insurance.

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