MW Adobe is betting a quarter of its value against the so-called SaaSpocalypse

By Jamie Chisholm

The PhotoShop maker says AI can complement and not destroy the business

A sign is posted on the exterior of an Adobe office on December 10, 2025 in San Francisco, California. The software maker's shares have been hit by AI fears.

Adobe is betting a quarter of its market value against what's been called the "SaaSpocalypse."

The design-software group said late Tuesday it would launch a $25 billion share repurchase program that will run through Apr. 30, 2030 in a move "designed to return value to Adobe's stockholders."

Shares of the Photoshop maker this month hit their lowest level in more than seven years - and are roughly 60% below their record high from 2021 - as investors continued to bail, on fears AI-driven programs will badly disrupt the company's business model.

Adobe $(ADBE)$ now sports a market value of about $100 billion, with its shares up around 2% in Wednesday's premarket action.

The idea of AI disintermediating the broader software-as-a-service (SaaS) sector has come to be known on Wall Street as the SaaSpocalypse, hitting shares of other big players such as Salesforce (CRM) and ServiceNow (NOW).

Fears for Adobe were heightened last week when AI company Anthropic unveiled Claude Design, which ?allows ?users to create designs, prototypes and presentations using its chatbot.

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said in March that he will be resigning after 18 years in the role, though he will be staying on until a successor is chosen.

However, Adobe's buyback pledge indicates that management thinks the market is severely overestimating the impact of such AI on its business.

"Our new $25 billion share repurchase authorization is a direct expression of confidence in our robust cash flow and the long-term value we are delivering to investors," said Dan Durn, Adobe's executive vice president and chief financial officer.

"Returning meaningful capital to stockholders while continuing to invest aggressively in innovation speaks to the durability of Adobe's business model and strategy to leverage AI to amplify creativity, scale reach and deliver impactful experiences," he added.

Adobe this week launched an AI agent platform for customers and said it was expanding collaboration with AI platforms including Amazon Web Services, Anthropic, Google Cloud, IBM, Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI.

A team of analysts at KeyBank, led by Jackson Adler, noted that there was still $3.9 billion of buybacks to be made from the $25 billion program announced in March 2024.

"This implies a new roughly $28.9 billion remaining, or roughly 51.0% of our free cash flow estimates through fiscal 2030. Assuming an average price of $240, this represents roughly 29.3% of the 411.0 million shares outstanding, as of F1Q26," said the KeyBank team.

Rich Privorotsky, head of European One Delta trading at Goldman Sachs, said that though the new proposed buyback was sending a "strong signal to the market" it was "awkward to spread over a long duration that far out when the market is actively questioning the terminal value of the franchise."

He said the key question is not what Adobe and peers report for the first quarter but what they indicate about future demand.

Adobe is due to release its fiscal second-quarter results on June 11.

-Jamie Chisholm

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April 22, 2026 05:19 ET (09:19 GMT)

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