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Adobe reported strong results Dec. 15 for its fourth quarter, ended Dec. 2, and is entering 2017 with “great momentum,” according to CFO Mark Garrett.

The company continues to “see strength across our three cloud businesses,” he said on an earnings call, referring to Adobe’s Creative Cloud, Document Cloud and Marketing Cloud businesses. Adobe is “excited about our large addressable markets and [is] uniquely positioned to drive strong top-line and bottom-line growth,” he told analysts.

Creative Cloud revenue grew 33% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier to $886 million, while Marketing Cloud revenue jumped 32% to $465 million, he said, pointing out those were record results in those businesses. But Document Cloud revenue tumbled to $191 million from $209 million.

Adobe’s “record growth and net income were driven” in the fourth quarter by “strong performance in Creative Cloud annualized recurring revenue, continued growth of Adobe Document Cloud subscriptions and strong revenue and bookings” for Adobe Marketing Cloud, CEO Shantanu Narayen said on the call.

“At the heart of the Creative Cloud is the promise of continuous innovation and the pace at which we are delivering new technology is accelerating,” Narayen said, pointing out that at last month’s Adobe MAX Creativity Conference, the company unveiled next-generation desktop, mobile and cloud services for designers, photographers and filmmakers, as well as sneak previews of creative technologies in the areas of virtual reality, image matching and digital painting.

He went on to say: “Adobe’s success has been a result of our ability to predict the future. While others are jumping on the machine learning and AI bandwagon, these capabilities have been the foundation of our innovation for decades. Our engineers and scientists are squarely focused on harnessing the massive volume of content and data assets captured in our cloud solutions to tackle today’s complex experience challenges.”

Within Adobe’s Digital Media segment, which includes Creative Cloud, revenue grew 23% in the fourth quarter. The company was able to grow Creative annual recurring revenue (ARR) by $283 million and exited the quarter with $3.54 billion of Creative ARR, Garrett said.

“Driving the momentum with our Creative business was continued strong demand for Creative Cloud across all offerings and routes to market during the quarter, including net new Creative Cloud subscriptions and enterprise contract renewals and up-sells,” he said. Creative Cloud average revenue per user (ARPU) grew quarter-over-quarter across all offerings in the quarter, he added.
Digital Marketing division revenue grew 28%, but Print & Publishing revenue fell 10%. “Mobile remains a key driver” for the marketing business, Garrett said, adding mobile data transactions grew to 55% of total Adobe Analytics transactions in the quarter.

Total Adobe fourth-quarter revenue grew 23% to $1.6 billion, while profit increased to $399.6 million (81 cents a share) from $222.7 million (45 cents a share). Subscription revenue jumped to $1.3 billion from $907.4 million, while services and support revenue increased to $124.2 million from $114.5 million. But product revenue fell to $221.9 million from $284.5 million.

Adobe’s revenue growth matched the forecast of Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser and was slightly above Adobe’s forecast and consensus estimate of analysts, Wieser said. Pointing to Adobe’s data point that Marketing Cloud represented 20% of the company’s total results, Wiser predicted that “figure will rise to a higher level” after the completion of Adobe’s acquisition of enterprise programmatic advertising software company TubeMogul, which is expected to happen this month.

Wieser maintained a “buy” rating on Adobe stock. But he said: “Risks include the potential availability of better and/or cheaper software for core Creative Cloud solutions, risks associated with Marketing Cloud’s expansion into a market with specific characteristics which are still evolving and risks around external shocks from Adobe’s value chain/eco-system.” Adobe shares were down 1.38% at $103.64 in early afternoon trading Dec. 16.