Photoshop Expert Gives Opinions On Adobe Creative Users

One of the best ways to gauge a company's outlook is to reach out and speak with clients. This is exactly what UBS' Brent Thill did to gain a better understanding of Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ: ADBE)'s business.

Thill hosted Photoshop expert and president of the largest Photoshop user group, Stephen Burns, to discuss the state of Adobe's creative users.

The analyst's main takeaways from the conversations were the following four points:

1. Adobe has a "meaningful" but declining base of Creative Suite perpetual license users that haven't migrated to Creative Cloud.
2. Adobe has several new competitive products in its pipeline such as Affinity Photo and ArtRage.
3. Adobe has done a "very good job" in integrating several products together which results in time savings for users.
4. The digital needs of Adobe's clients are endless and the company needs to continue innovating.

Thill expanded on Adobe's Affinity Photo and pointed out that Affinity Photo was named the best Mac App of 2015. The product is "getting a lot of buzz" among photographers and is reasonably priced at $49.99 and is a good tool for detailed, solo work.

Finally, the analyst reaffirmed his Buy rating on Adobe's stock with a $130 price target, which is based on a 30x multiple on the company's earnings per share in five to eight quarters.

For a different take on Adobe's stock rating, here is what Credit Suisse's Michael Nemeroff said when he maintained a Neutral rating and $105 price target.