Pulled the event and price-explanation history. Two of the twelve prints have no significant-move record, so let me get their actual reaction from price data.Now the consensus side. Let me find the metric definitions and ADBE's forward fiscal periods.Adobe reports FQ3 FY26 on Sept 10 (after close, per the calendar). Here's the print history.
The last 12 prints
Reaction = next-session close-to-close, since Adobe reports after the bell.
| Reaction | Move | What the explanation attributed it to | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q3 FY23 | 9/15/23 | −4.2% | Marginal EPS miss ($4.09 vs $4.10); Q4 revenue guide below consensus; net-new Digital Media ARR $464M light |
| Q4 FY23 | 12/14/23 | −6.3% | Beat on the quarter, but Q1 guide ($5.10–5.15B) and FY24 guide ($21.3–21.5B) both below consensus |
| Q1 FY24 | 3/15/24 | −13.7% | Non-GAAP EPS beat; Q2 revenue guide short; net-new DM ARR $432M below expectations |
| Q2 FY24 | 6/14/24 | +14.5% | Revenue and EPS beat, FY guidance raised, net-new DM ARR $487M vs $440M guided |
| Q3 FY24 | 9/13/24 | −8.5% | Q3 revenue beat and NNARR $504M strong; Q4 revenue guide weak |
| Q4 FY24 | 12/12/24 | −13.7% | Record revenue and EPS beat; FY25 guide implied 8.9% growth vs 10.8% prior; DM ARR growth guide light |
| Q1 FY25 | 3/13/25 | −13.9% | Revenue and EPS beat; Q2 and FY guidance below street |
| Q2 FY25 | 6/13/25 | −5.3% | Beat on both lines, FY revenue guide raised — but DM ARR held at 11%, implying 2H deceleration |
| Q3 FY25 | 9/12/25 | −0.3% | No significant-move record generated. Volume 14.1M vs ~5M baseline, so it traded heavily and repriced almost nothing |
| Q4 FY25 | 12/11/25 | +2.1% | No significant-move record |
| Q1 FY26 | 3/13/26 | −7.6% | Revenue $6.40B vs $6.28B and EPS $6.06 vs $5.87, both beats; CEO transition announced plus NNARR $60M short of the $460M target |
| Q2 FY26 | 6/12/26 | −6.8% | Revenue $6.62B vs $6.45B, EPS $5.96 vs $5.81, FY26 guidance raised — offset by the freemium pivot's ~$500M organic ARR step-down and the CFO exit |
Mean reaction −5.3%, median −6.6%, average absolute move 8.1%. Nine down, two up, one flat. Note also that Q2 FY26 lost 6.2% on the print day itself before falling another 6.8% after.
What's actually being rewarded
Neither revenue nor margin. Revenue beat in effectively all twelve prints and the stock fell in nine of them, so a top-line beat carries no information. Margin doesn't appear as the attributed driver in a single one of the twelve — non-GAAP operating margin has sat in a stable 44–47% band and neither the beats nor the freemium-era compression got attributed a move.
Guidance is closer, but it's not the right frame either. Twice — Q2 FY25 and Q2 FY26 — Adobe raised full-year revenue and EPS guidance and the stock still fell 5–7%. In both cases the attribution points to the same line: the forward recurring-revenue number. Net-new ARR versus the guided figure is the variable that actually maps to the reaction, and revenue guidance only moves the stock when it functions as a proxy for it. The single large positive print (June 2024) is the one where NNARR came in above the guided number and guidance went up.
Since March 2026 there's a second driver stacked on top: C-suite turnover. Both 2026 prints had a leadership announcement attached, and both got attributed partly to governance rather than the numbers.
Consensus versus current guidance
Consensus vintage is Aug 28, 2026. Guidance is from the June 11 print, unchanged since.
FQ3 FY26
| Guidance | Consensus | Range | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $6.67–6.72B | $6.690B | $6.533–6.764B |
| Non-GAAP EPS | $6.05–6.10 | $6.067 | $5.72–6.35 |
| EBIT | — | $2.950B (44.1%) | — |
FY26
| Guidance | Consensus | Range | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $26.50–26.60B | $26.524B | $25.81–26.74B |
| Non-GAAP EPS | $24.35–24.45 | $24.402 | $23.73–24.99 |
| EBIT | — | $11.953B (45.1%) | — |
Consensus is parked almost exactly on the guide, marginally toward the low half of both ranges — $30M under the quarterly revenue midpoint, $24M above the bottom of the FY range. There's no visible skepticism discount and no cushion. FY27 consensus sits at $28.93B revenue (+9.1%) and $27.51 EPS, so the street is modeling deceleration below the 10.2% total ARR growth guided for FY26.
Two things that complicate reading that as a clean setup:
Semrush. Q2 actual revenue of $6.62B came in $140M above the top of the $6.43–6.48B guide, which is far outside Adobe's normal beat pattern. Semrush contributes roughly $480M of ARR ($120M/quarter), and the records I can see are ambiguous about whether it was inside the June guide or folded into the raise. Worth nailing down before treating consensus-vs-guide as apples to apples.
ARR isn't in the consensus feed. The variable with the actual 12-print track record — total ARR and net-new ARR against the ~$500M organic step-down from deferred Creative Cloud price optimization — has no consensus estimate in the dataset. So the revenue/EPS comparison above tells you very little about where the risk sits. If the pattern holds, next week resolves on total ARR growth tracking to the 10.2% guide net of that reset and inclusive of Semrush, not on the two lines everyone models.
For context on positioning: last close $266.51 (Sept 4, after a 6.7% drop on the Chakravarthy CEO appointment and Wadhwani's departure), ~10.9x FY26 and ~9.7x FY27 consensus EPS. Sell-side mean target is $275, about 3% above spot — the street's targets have effectively converged to the price. The stock has also rallied roughly 37% off its late-July low near $194, so it isn't going in washed out the way it was six weeks ago.
I'm not a financial advisor, and the attribution above is what the price-explanation records assert, not an independent causal test.