Will Massive Upgrades Be Enough to Counter Product Cycle Blues for Adobe (ADBE)?

From William Trent, CFA of Stock Market Beat

We recently took profits on our Adobe (ADBE) position because we have noticed the stock tends to trade down following the release of a major new upgrade on the theory that there will be no more good news for a while. Of course, this is not the typical upgrade and things could be different this time. For one thing, the switch to Intel-based Mac support should be a significant demand driver for the company’s creative professional customer base. For another, it isn’t just a Photoshop upgrade, as some users are reporting. Think Secret – Adobe Illustrator CS3 shaping up to be most significant release in years

A new feature dubbed Live Color will greatly ease color selection and management, helping designers find appropriate matching colors for their work, improving experimentation with new colors, and managing colors collectively, instead of individually. In implementing Live Color, Adobe has revamped the software’s Color Guide and Swatches palettes, adding such improvements as saving a set of colors as a group or extracting all the colors from a specified artwork in one step.The bulk of the enhancements will be found in the new Live Color dialog, which will sport a plethora of options, including the ability to easily color reduce artwork so that similar hues are mapped to tints or shades of a given color, as well as the ability to constrain color group selection to specific color palettes or spaces.

As the first version of Illustrator to be released since Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia, improved Flash integration will also be at the top of Illustrator CS3’s selling points.

We haven’t taken up a new position one way or the other, but would prefer to see the normal valuation contraction before getting bullish again.

The author may hold a position in the securities discussed. The author’s current holdings are as follows: Long: Union Pacific (UNP) put options; Air Products (APD) put options; Nasdaq 100 (QQQQ) put options; FedEx (FDX) put options; Intuit (INTU) put options; Bookham (BKHM; Ballard Power (BLDP); Syntax Brillian (BRLC); CMGI (CMGI); Genentech (DNA); Ion Media Networks (ION); Three Five Systems (TFS); IShares Japan (EWJ); StreetTracks Gold (GLD); Starbucks (SBUX); U.S. Oil Fund (USO); Plantronics (PLT) call options; Short: Landstar (LSTR) put options; Ceradyne (CRDN) put options; Dell (DELL) put options; Plantronics (PLT) put options

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