Adobe Systems Inc (ADBE) SEC Annual Report (10-K) for 2015

Washington, D.C. 20549

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For the fiscal year ended November 27, 2015

For the transition period from to

Commission File Number: 0-15175

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

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345 Park Avenue, San Jose, California 95110-2704

(Address of principal executive offices)

(408) 536-6000

(Registrant's telephone number, including area code)

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None

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Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes  x   No  o

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Act. Yes  o   No  x

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes  x   No  o

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically and posted on its corporate Web site, if any, every Interactive Data File required to be submitted and posted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§ 232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit and post such files). Yes  x   No  o

Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K (§ 229.405 of this chapter) is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of registrant's knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K. x

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer or a smaller reporting company. See the definitions of "large accelerated filer, "accelerated filer" and "smaller reporting company" in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Act). Yes  o   No  x

The aggregate market value of the registrant's common stock, $0.0001 par value per share, held by non-affiliates of the registrant on May 29, 2015 , the last business day of the registrant's most recently completed second fiscal quarter, was $31,964,797,377 (based on the closing sales price of the registrant's common stock on that date). Shares of the registrant's common stock held by each officer and director and each person who owns 5% or more of the outstanding common stock of the registrant have been excluded in that such persons may be deemed to be affiliates. This determination of affiliate status is not necessarily a conclusive determination for other purposes. As of January 15, 2016 , 498,330,407 shares of the registrant's common stock, $0.0001 par value per share, were issued and outstanding.

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

Portions of the Proxy Statement for the registrant's 2016 Annual Meeting of Stockholders (the "Proxy Statement"), to be filed within 120 days of the end of the fiscal year ended November 27, 2015 , are incorporated by reference in Part III hereof. Except with respect to information specifically incorporated by reference in this Form 10-K, the Proxy Statement is not deemed to be filed as part hereof.

ADOBE SYSTEMS INCORPORATED

FORM 10-K

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Forward-Looking Statements

In addition to historical information, this Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding product plans, future growth, market opportunities, strategic initiatives, industry positioning, customer acquisition, the amount of recurring revenue and revenue growth. In addition, when used in this report, the words "will," "expects," "could," "would," "may," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "seeks," "targets," "estimates," "looks for," "looks to," "continues" and similar expressions, as well as statements regarding our focus for the future, are generally intended to identify forward-looking statements. Each of the forward-looking statements we make in this report involves risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, those discussed in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in Part I, Item 1A of this report. You should carefully review the risks described herein and in other documents we file from time to time with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), including our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q to be filed in 2016 . You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. We undertake no obligation to publicly release any revisions to the forward-looking statements or reflect events or circumstances after the date of this document, except as required by law.

PART I

ITEM 1.  BUSINESS

Founded in 1982, Adobe Systems Incorporated is one of the largest and most diversified software companies in the world. We offer a line of products and services used by creative professionals, marketers, knowledge workers, application developers, enterprises and consumers for creating, managing, delivering, measuring, optimizing and engaging with compelling content and experiences across multiple operating systems, devices and media. We market and license our products and services directly to enterprise customers through our sales force and to end users through app stores and our own website at www.adobe.com. We offer many of our products via a Software-as-a-Service ("SaaS") model or a managed services model (both of which are referred to as a hosted or cloud-based model) as well as through term subscription and pay-per-use models. We also distribute certain products and services through a network of distributors, value-added resellers ("VARs"), systems integrators ("SIs"), independent software vendors ("ISVs"), retailers, software developers and original equipment manufacturers ("OEMs"). In addition, we license our technology to hardware manufacturers, software developers and service providers for use in their products and solutions. Our products run on personal and server-based computers, as well as on smartphones, tablets and other devices, depending on the product. We have operations in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa ("EMEA") and Asia-Pacific ("APAC"). See Note 18 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for further geographical information.

Adobe was originally incorporated in California in October 1983 and was reincorporated in Delaware in May 1997. We maintain executive offices and principal facilities at 345 Park Avenue, San Jose, California 95110-2704. Our telephone number is 408-536-6000 and our website is www.adobe.com. Investors can obtain copies of our SEC filings from this site free of charge, as well as from the SEC website at www.sec.gov. The information posted to our website is not incorporated into this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

BUSINESS OVERVIEW

For over 30 years, Adobe's innovations have transformed how individuals, businesses and governments interact. Across these markets, we help our customers create and deliver the most compelling experiences in a streamlined workflow, and optimize those experiences for greater return on investment. Our solutions turn ordinary interactions into valuable digital experiences, across media and devices, anywhere, anytime.

While we continue to offer a broad portfolio of products and solutions, we focus our investments in two strategic growth areas:

Digital Media - providing tools, services and solutions that enable individuals, small and medium businesses and enterprises to create, publish and promote their content anywhere. Our customers include content creators, web designers, app developers and digital media professionals, as well as management in marketing departments and agencies, companies and publishers. Our customers also include knowledge workers who create, collaborate and distribute documents. This is the core of what we have delivered for over 25 years, and we have evolved our business model rapidly to provide these customers with a more complete and integrated workflow across the variety of new devices, formats and business models that continue to emerge.

Digital Marketing - providing solutions and services for creating, managing, executing, measuring and optimizing digital advertising and marketing campaigns across multiple channels. Our customers include marketers, advertisers, agencies, publishers, merchandisers, web analysts, marketing executives, information management executives, product development executives, and

sales and support executives. We process over forty trillion data transactions a year via our SaaS products, providing our customers with analytics, social, targeting, media optimization, digital experience management, cross-channel campaign management, audience management and video solutions. This complements our digital media franchise, bringing together the art of creating and managing content with the science of measuring and optimizing it, enabling our customers to achieve their optimal business outcomes.

We believe we are uniquely positioned to be a leader in both the Digital Media and Digital Marketing categories, where our mission is to change the world through digital experiences. By integrating products from each of these two areas of Adobe's business, our customers are able to utilize a comprehensive suite of solutions and services that no other entity currently offers. In addition, our ability to deliver innovation and productivity improvements across customer workflows involving the creation, management, delivery, measurement and optimization of rich and engaging content favorably positions Adobe as our customers invest more to engage their constituents digitally.

SEGMENTS

Our business is organized into three reportable segments: Digital Media, Digital Marketing and Print and Publishing. These segments provide Adobe's senior management with a comprehensive financial view of our key businesses. Our segments are aligned around the company's two strategic growth opportunities described above, placing our Print and Publishing business in a third segment that contains many of our mature products and solutions.

This overview provides an explanation of our markets and a discussion of strategic opportunities in fiscal 2016 and beyond for each of our segments. See "Results of Operations" within Part II, Item 7 titled "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" and Note 18 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for further segment information.

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES OVERVIEW

Digital Media

Digital Media Opportunity

Recent trends in digital communications continue to provide a significant market opportunity for Adobe in digital media. Due to the increase in mobile computing, rich media consumed in digital environments and the rise of online social communities, the demand for digital media solutions to create engaging online experiences is higher than ever. Adobe is in a unique position to capitalize on this opportunity by delivering rapid innovation to increase our customer reach, deepen engagement with communities and accelerate long-term revenue growth by focusing on cloud-based offerings, which are licensed on a subscription basis.

The flagship of our Digital Media business is Creative Cloud-a subscription service that allows members to download and install the latest versions of our creative products such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe InDesign. Creative Cloud members can also access a growing marketplace of digital content through Adobe Stock, a leading online marketplace for photos, graphics and videos. Creative Cloud also offers members access to online services to sync, store, and share files, participate in our Behance community of more than five million creative professionals, publish and deliver digital content via app stores, develop mobile apps, and create and manage websites. Adobe is redefining the creative process with Creative Cloud so that our customers can obtain everything they need to create, collaborate and deliver engaging digital content.

Creative Cloud addresses the needs of creative professionals including graphic designers, production artists, web designers and developers, user interface designers, videographers, motion graphic artists, prepress professionals, video game developers, mobile application developers, students and administrators. They rely on our solutions for publishing, web design and development, video and animation production, mobile app and gaming development and document creation and collaboration. End users of our creative tools work in businesses ranging from large publishers, media companies and global enterprises, to smaller design agencies, small and medium-sized businesses and individual freelancers. Moreover, our creative products are used to create much of the printed and online information people see, read and interact with every day, including video, animation, mobile and advertising content. Knowledge workers, educators, hobbyists and consumers also use our products to create and deliver creative content.

In addition to Creative Cloud, our Digital Media business offers many of the products included in Creative Cloud on a standalone basis, including subscriptions to the Creative Cloud version of certain point products, and also offers a range of other creative tools and services, including our hobbyist products such as Adobe Photoshop Elements and Adobe Premiere Elements, Adobe Digital Publishing Solution (formerly Adobe Digital Publishing Suite), Adobe Typekit and mobile apps such as Adobe Photoshop Mix, Adobe Photoshop Sketch, Adobe Photoshop Fix and Adobe Premiere Clip that run on tablets and mobile devices. Further descriptions of our Digital Media products are included below under "Principal Products and Services".

Adobe's Digital Media segment also includes our Document Cloud business, built around our Acrobat family of products, the Adobe Acrobat Reader and a set of integrated cloud-based document services. For over twenty years, Adobe Acrobat has provided for the reliable creation and exchange of electronic documents, regardless of platform or application source type. Users can collaborate on documents with electronic comments and tailor the security of a file in order to distribute reliable Adobe PDF documents that can be viewed, printed or filled out utilizing our free Adobe Acrobat Reader. Acrobat provides essential electronic document capabilities and services to help knowledge workers accomplish a wide range of tasks ranging from simple publications and forms to mission-critical engineering documentation and architectural plans. With our Acrobat product and its innovative cloud services, we have extended the capabilities of our solution. Users can take advantage of electronic document signing with Adobe eSign (formerly EchoSign) and manage, track and control documents through Adobe Send & Track.

Digital Media Strategy

Our goal is to be the leading provider of tools and services that allow individuals, small and medium businesses and enterprises to create, publish and monetize their content anywhere.

Creative Cloud, a subscription service with competitive monthly pricing, is attractive to users of older versions of our products who desire to use our latest releases and services, but who in the past have been unwilling to upgrade to newer versions due to price sensitivity. Similarly, as we gain new customers, we expect to continue to drive new user adoption of our creative business over the next several years outside of our core creative professional target market because of Creative Cloud's attractive monthly subscription pricing combined with the strong brand of our creative products and the broad value proposition provided by Creative Cloud. We anticipate that our sustained focus on a subscription model will continue to increase the amount of our recurring revenue that is ratably reported, driven by broader Creative Cloud adoption over the next several years.

To accelerate the adoption of Creative Cloud, we have focused on migrating existing users of our creative products from perpetual licenses to a subscription-based offering, as well as driving new customer adoption. Aspects of this strategy include: focusing future innovation by our engineering teams on delivering new cloud-based functionality, such as Creative Cloud Libraries and Adobe CreativeSync, to enable our customers to use our creative tools and services across a variety of devices in ways that are not possible with previous desktop versions; integrating Creative Cloud with our Adobe Stock online marketplace offerings; increasing the value of Creative Cloud by delivering frequent product updates and enhancements to subscribers to address their content creation challenges; using promotions to attract customers to the offering; expanding our go-to-market reach through channel partners to reach new customers; and utilizing Creative Cloud for teams and Creative Cloud for enterprise offerings to drive broad adoption with customers who license our products in volume.

As part of our Creative Cloud strategy, we utilize our digital marketing solutions to drive customer awareness of our creative products and increase sales of our products through our website and across other channels. Adobe.com is increasingly becoming the destination site where we engage individual and small business customers to sign up for and renew Creative Cloud subscriptions. We utilize channel partners to target mid-size creative customers with our Creative Cloud for teams offering. Our direct sales force is focused on building relationships with our largest customers and driving adoption of our Creative Cloud for enterprise offering.

In our Document Cloud business, although Acrobat has achieved strong market adoption in document-intensive industries such as government, financial services, pharmaceutical, legal, aerospace, insurance and technical publishing, we believe there are tens of millions of users who still need the capabilities provided by Acrobat. We plan to continue to market the benefits of our Document Cloud solutions, combined with the low entry point of subscription-based pricing, to individuals as well as small and medium-sized businesses, large enterprises and government institutions around the world and increase our seat penetration in these markets through the utilization of our corporate and volume licensing programs. We also intend to increase our focus on marketing and licensing Acrobat in targeted vertical markets such as education, financial services, telecommunications and government, as well as on expanding into emerging markets, while simultaneously enhancing and building out the delivery of cloud-based document services to our Acrobat and Adobe Acrobat Reader users. We intend to continue to promote the capabilities of our cloud-based document solution, such as its integration with users' Dropbox documents, to millions of Acrobat users and hundreds of millions of Adobe Acrobat Reader users. Our Adobe eSign services provide a green alternative to costly paper-based solutions, and are an easier way for customers to manage their contract workflows. We believe that by growing the awareness of eSign services in the broader contract delivery and signing market and continuing to add new capabilities to this offering, we can help our customers migrate away from paper-based express mailing and adopt our solution, growing our revenue with this business in the process.

Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing Opportunity

Consumers today increasingly demand personalized content and experiences in their online interactions, across multiple channels and devices. As a result, any business or entity with an online presence must figure out how to best attract, engage, acquire and retain customers in a world where the reach and quality of experiences directly impacts success. Delivering the best experience

to a consumer at a given moment requires the right combination of data, insights and content. Marketing executives are increasingly demanding solutions that optimize their consumers' experiences and deliver the greatest return on their marketing spend so they can demonstrate the success of their programs using objective metrics.

We believe there is a significant opportunity to address these challenges and help customers transform their businesses. Chief Marketing Officers, digital marketers, advertisers and publishers are increasingly steering their marketing, advertising, and development budgets toward digital media. Many industry analysts predict more advertising dollars will be spent in digital than in traditional media in the future. As marketers make this move to digital, our opportunity is accelerating as customers look for vendors to help them navigate this transition. However, marketing in a digital world is not simply about executing campaigns in each digital channel. Marketers, and entire enterprises, also need to ensure they deliver meaningful experiences to their consumers across both digital and traditional channels and in areas such as sales, support, and product interactions where consumers expect experiences to be personalized.

Our Digital Marketing business targets this large and growing opportunity by providing comprehensive solutions that include analytics, social marketing, targeting, media optimization, digital experience management, cross-channel campaign management, audience management, premium video delivery and monetization. We deliver these capabilities through our Adobe Marketing Cloud, an integrated offering enabling marketers to measure, personalize and optimize marketing campaigns and digital experiences across channels for optimal marketing performance. With its broad set of solutions, including Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, Adobe Social, Adobe Media Optimizer, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Campaign, Adobe Audience Manager and Adobe Primetime, as well as real-time dashboards and a collaborative interface, customers of Adobe Marketing Cloud are able to combine data, insights and digital content to deliver a personalized brand experience to their consumers.

In addition to Chief Marketing Officers and digital marketers, users of our Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions include marketing professionals such as search engine marketers, media managers, media buyers and marketing research analysts. Customers also include web content editors, web analysts and web marketing managers. These customers often are involved in workflows that utilize other Adobe products, such as our Digital Media offerings and our video workflow and delivery technologies. By combining the creativity of our Digital Media business with the science of our Digital Marketing business, we help our customers to more efficiently and effectively make, manage, measure and monetize their content across every channel with an end-to-end workflow and feedback loop.

Our Digital Marketing segment also contains two legacy enterprise software offerings: our Adobe Connect web conferencing platform and Adobe LiveCycle, an enterprise document and forms platform. Since fiscal 2012, the focus of marketing and licensing of these products has been to financial services and government markets, driven by a subset of our enterprise sales force. We have also been focused on migrating some legacy LiveCycle customers to an updated offering with similar capabilities based on our Adobe Experience Manager solution.

Digital Marketing Strategy

Our goal is to be the leading provider of marketing solutions and a standard for the way digital advertising and marketing is created, measured, managed, executed and optimized.

We believe that our success will be driven by focusing our efforts on making Adobe Marketing Cloud the most comprehensive and integrated marketing solution available. Adobe Marketing Cloud consists of eight key solutions-Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, Adobe Social, Adobe Media Optimizer, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Campaign, Adobe Audience Manager and Adobe Primetime. Adobe Marketing Cloud provides marketers with key capabilities, such as the ability to:

To drive growth of Adobe Marketing Cloud, we also intend to streamline how customers learn about, acquire and deploy Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions. We believe we can accelerate the growth of our business by continuing to build out more direct sales capacity, as well as continuing to enable a rich ecosystem of agencies and SIs who sell, implement and service our solutions. We believe these investments will result in continued growth in revenue in our Digital Marketing segment in fiscal 2016 and beyond.

Print and Publishing

Our Print and Publishing segment contains legacy products and services that address diverse market opportunities including eLearning solutions, technical document publishing, web application development and high-end printing. Graphics professionals and professional publishers continue to require quality, reliability and efficiency in production printing, and our Adobe PostScript and Adobe PDF printing technologies provide advanced functionality to meet the sophisticated requirements of this marketplace. As high-end printing systems evolve and transition to fully digital, composite workflows, we believe we are uniquely positioned to be a supplier of software and technology based on the PostScript and Adobe PDF standards for use by this industry.

We generate revenue by licensing our technology to OEMs that manufacture workflow software, printers and other output devices. In fiscal 2015, we maintained a relatively consistent quarterly revenue run-rate with the mature products we market and license in our Print and Publishing business.    

PRINCIPAL PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Digital Media Products

Creative Cloud

Creative Cloud is a subscription offering that enables the creation of rich and engaging digital content. Through Creative Cloud, users can easily explore, create, publish and share their work across devices, the desktop and the web. Members have access to a vibrant creative community, publishing services to deliver apps and websites, cloud storage to easily access their work, the ability to sync their files to virtually any device, collaboration capabilities with team members, and new products and exclusive updates as they are developed.

Creative Cloud members can build a Creative Profile which persists wherever they are. A user's Creative Profile moves with them via Creative Cloud services from app-to-app and device-to-device, giving them immediate access to their personal files, photos, graphics, colors, fonts, text styles, desktop setting customizations and other important assets. Furthermore, CreativeSync synchronizes all files, photos, fonts and other assets used in a particular workflow so that users can begin creative work on any device and seamlessly continue it on another.

New Creative Cloud services have been developed and delivered to subscribers to increase the utilization of Creative Cloud capabilities beyond the use of our desktop applications. One of these new services, Adobe Stock, is an online marketplace with over 40 million curated photos, graphics and videos that is deeply integrated with Creative Cloud apps. We believe services such as Adobe Stock will drive higher user interaction with Creative Cloud and create upsell opportunities as users increasingly utilize higher-tiered versions of these services.

New mobile apps that run on tablets and smartphones enable connections between essential Creative Cloud desktop tools and a new family of mobile apps that extend the capabilities of Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and Lightroom onto mobile devices. Our mobile apps enable users to create designs with tablets and bring them into their creative workflows.

We license Creative Cloud to individuals and teams of users through Adobe.com either on a monthly subscription basis or as an annual subscription. Channel partners also license Creative Cloud with annual team subscriptions to small or medium-sized businesses, or to workgroups in enterprises. With larger enterprise customers, our direct sales force utilizes enterprise term license agreements ("ETLAs"), for volume-based agreements often for multi-year terms.

Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop CC is the world's most advanced digital imaging software. It is used by photographers, designers, animators, web professionals, and video professionals, and is available to Creative Cloud subscribers. Customers can also subscribe to Photoshop CC as an individual subscription product, or through our Creative Cloud Photography Plan, which is an offer targeted at photographers and photo hobbyists and includes our popular Photoshop Lightroom product as a companion tool to Photoshop. We also offer Photoshop Elements separately, which is targeted at consumers who desire the brand and power of Photoshop through an easy-to-use interface. For tablet and smartphone users, we offer several mobile apps including Photoshop Sketch, Photoshop Mix, Lightroom for mobile and Photoshop Fix - all of which enable sophisticated photo editing and content creation using a touch-based interface on tablet and mobile devices.

Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator CC is our industry-standard vector graphics software used worldwide by designers of all types who want to create digital graphics and illustrations for all kinds of media: print, web, interactive, video, and mobile. Illustrator is available to Creative Cloud subscribers, and customers can also subscribe to use it as an individual subscription product. Users can also utilize mobile apps such as Illustrator Draw to gain access to Illustrator capabilities on their tablets and mobile devices, and sync their work through CreativeSync for use with Illustrator on their desktop.

InDesign

InDesign is the leading professional page layout software for print and digital publishing. Our customers use it to design, preflight, and publish a broad range of content including newspapers and magazines for print, online, and tablet app delivery. Customers can create simple or complex layouts quickly and efficiently with precise control over typography, built-in creative tools, and an intuitive design environment. Tight integration with other Adobe software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and Adobe Animate enables customers to work productively in print and digital workflows. Customers can also access Adobe Digital Publishing Solution from within InDesign to create and publish engaging apps for a broad range of devices, including iOS, Android and Amazon-based devices.

InDesign is built for designers, prepress and production professionals, and print service providers who work for magazines, design firms, advertising agencies, newspapers, book publishers, and catalog companies, as well as in corporate design, commercial printing, and other leading-edge publishing environments. Customers using InDesign often use Adobe InCopy, a companion product used for professional writing and editing to enable an efficient collaborative workflow between design and editorial staff. InDesign and InCopy are available to Creative Cloud subscribers, and customers can also subscribe to use InDesign as an individual subscription product.

Adobe Premiere Pro

Adobe Premiere Pro is our powerful, customizable, nonlinear video editing tool used by video professionals. Customers can import and combine virtually any type of media, from video shot on a smartphone to raw 4K and higher resolution footage, and then edit in its native format without transcoding. The user interface includes a customizable timeline and numerous editing shortcuts which enable faster, keyboard-driven editing.

With the demands of shorter production schedules and high-resolution digital media formats, real-time performance is crucial to videographers. Premiere Pro utilizes our Mercury Playback Engine to provide the fastest performance solution in the industry. It also supports a vast majority of formats, and customers can now use multiple graphics cards to accelerate render and export times. As part of Creative Cloud, Premiere Pro tightly integrates with other Adobe creative applications. Customers can also subscribe to use it as an individual subscription product.

To address the increase in use of video capture and sharing on mobile devices, we offer Adobe Premiere Clip, which provides users with easy-to-use features to quickly edit and enhance video, and Adobe Capture CC, which provides an easy way to capture and share production-quality lighting and color schemes. We also offer an Elements version of Premiere Pro, which is a powerful yet easy-to-use video-editing software for home video editing. Premiere Elements provides tools for hobbyists to quickly edit and enhance video footage with fun effects and transitions and create custom DVDs for sharing video with friends and family.

After Effects

After Effects is our industry-leading animation and creative compositing software used by a wide variety of motion graphics and visual effects artists. It offers superior control, a wealth of creative options, and integration with other post-production applications. After Effects is available to Creative Cloud subscribers, and customers can also subscribe to use it as an individual subscription product.

Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver provides a complete toolset for professional web designers and front-end developers to create, code and manage modern, responsive websites. Dreamweaver makes it fast and efficient to design and develop responsive sites from scratch or with built-in templates, preview them in real time on mobile devices and quickly extract web-optimized elements from Adobe Photoshop documents directly into projects. Dreamweaver recently combined innovative visual aids with first-class support for the Bootstrap framework, making it the premiere tool for responsive web design. Device Preview in Dreamweaver makes it easy to preview and inspect websites or mobile app designs on actual devices. As part of Creative Cloud, Dreamweaver tightly integrates with other Adobe creative applications like Photoshop, as well as services like Adobe Stock and Typekit. Customers can also subscribe to use Dreamweaver as an individual subscription product.

Animate

Adobe Animate CC, formerly Adobe Flash Professional, is the leading toolset for professional designers to create interactive animations, and publish them to multiple formats or platforms - including HTML5 Canvas, WebGL, SWF, FLV or even custom platforms. Using Animate, professional designers can reach viewers on virtually any desktop or mobile device. Animate is available to Creative Cloud subscribers, and customers can also subscribe to use it as an individual subscription product.

Digital Publishing Solution

Adobe Digital Publishing Solution is a complete solution that enables media publishers, large brand organizations, enterprise customers and advertising agencies to transform their print publications into interactive digital reading experiences for tablet devices and smartphones. Consisting of hosted services and viewer technology, Digital Publishing Solution tightly integrates with our Creative Cloud applications for efficient design, distribution, and monetization of a new class of innovative magazines, newspapers, brand loyalty materials, merchandising content, marketing communications, and more. A wide range of media publishers have used Digital Publishing Solution to produce well-known titles. Businesses are also using Digital Publishing Solution to produce corporate publications.

Typekit

Adobe Typekit is a subscription font service that brings thousands of fonts from foundry partners into one library for quick browsing, easy use on the web or on the user's desktop, and endless typographic inspiration. The full font library is available to Creative Cloud subscribers, while a more limited option is available to consumers free of charge.

Behance

Behance is the leading social community to showcase and discover creative work online. Adobe Portfolio allows users to quickly and simply build a fully customizable and hosted website that seamlessly syncs with Behance.

Acrobat and Document Cloud

Adobe Document Cloud is a complete portfolio of secure digital document solutions that speeds business transactions through digital workflows. With Adobe Document Cloud, users can create, review, approve, sign and track documents, whether on a desktop or mobile device.

At the heart of Adobe Document Cloud is Adobe Acrobat DC, the industry standard for PDF creation and conversion. Acrobat enables users to create secure, reliable and compact Adobe PDF documents from desktop authoring applications such as Microsoft Office software, graphics applications and more. Use of Acrobat enables automated collaborative workflows with a rich set of commenting tools and review tracking features and includes everything needed to create and distribute rich, secure electronic documents that can be viewed easily within leading web browsers or on computer desktops via the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Acrobat DC is available to both Creative Cloud and Document Cloud subscribers. Customers can also license Acrobat Pro or Acrobat Standard (which has a subset of Acrobat Pro features) as individual point products, either as a subscription or in the form of desktop software. Adobe Acrobat DC is also available as a free mobile app that allows users to view, create and edit

documents, and Mobile Link synchronizes those files across multiple devices. Adobe Acrobat Reader is our free software for reliable viewing, searching, reviewing and printing of Adobe PDF documents on a variety of hardware and operating system platforms. Users of both Adobe Acrobat DC and Adobe Acrobat Reader can also access, edit and save changes to their PDF files stored on the Dropbox website or mobile app.

Our eSign Services, which can be purchased as part of Document Cloud, allow users to safely electronically send and sign any document from any device. Adobe eSign Manager DC is a mobile app companion for our eSign Services that allows users to electronically sign documents and forms, send them for signature, track responses in real-time, and obtain instant signatures with in-person signing. Adobe eSign integrates with Adobe Experience Manager Forms to provide seamless experiences to customers across web and mobile sites. We also plan to integrate key components of Adobe Marketing Cloud to help businesses test, measure and manage documents in order to provide the same visibility into usage and interactions with documents that marketers already have with digital marketing assets today.

Adobe Marketing Cloud Solutions

Adobe Analytics

Adobe Analytics helps our customers create a holistic view of their business by turning consumer interactions into actionable insights. With intuitive and interactive dashboards and reports, our customers can sift, sort, and share real-time information to provide insights that can be used to identify problems and opportunities and to drive conversion and relevant consumer experiences. Adobe Analytics enables web, social, video, mobile, attribution, and predictive analytics across online and offline channels to continuously improve the performance of marketing activities. It also provides the ability to perform advanced ad-hoc segmentation and to integrate data from offline and third-party sources.

Adobe Target

Adobe Target lets our customers test, target and personalize content across multiple devices. With Adobe Target, our customers have the tools they need to quickly discover what gets noticed, what increases conversion, and what keeps consumers coming back for more. Adobe Target paves a path from simple testing to targeting to true segmentation and optimization through A/B and multivariate testing, rules-based targeting and automated decision-making.

Adobe Social

Adobe Social provides marketers a comprehensive solution to build stronger connections through content guided by tangible data. Customers can create more relevant posts, monitor and respond to conversations, measure results, and connect social activities to business results. With Adobe Social, our customers can: manage social content and activities across multiple social networks and profile pages; listen and respond to consumer conversations in real time; create social campaigns; and track performance with integrated analytics.

Adobe Media Optimizer

Adobe Media Optimizer is a powerful advertisement management platform. Customers get a consolidated view of how their media is performing, along with tools to both accurately forecast and continually optimize their mix of paid campaigns across digital media. Media Optimizer includes cross-channel optimization capabilities, search engine marketing management, and display and social advertising management.

Adobe Experience Manager

Adobe Experience Manager helps customers organize, create, and manage the delivery of creative assets and other content across digital marketing channels, including web, mobile, email, communities and video. It enables customers to manage content on premise or host it in the cloud, delivering agile and rapid deployment. With this ultimate control of content and campaigns, customers are able to deliver relevant experiences to consumers that help build the customers' brand, drive demand and extend reach. Adobe Experience Manager includes digital asset management, web content management, integrated mobile app development, enterprise-level forms management, and social capabilities, providing customers with tools enabling users to improve their market and brand perception and provide a personalized experience to their consumers.

Adobe Campaign

Adobe Campaign enables marketers to orchestrate personalized experiences determined by each consumer's behaviors and preferences. As part of its feature set, Adobe Campaign provides visual campaign orchestration, allowing for intuitive design and automated consumer experiences across channels, from one-off campaigns to triggered messages, with a graphically rich interface. Marketers can also integrate consumer data from across marketing channels to develop and deliver more relevant marketing

experiences to their consumers. Features also included targeted segmentation, email execution, real-time interaction, in-app messaging, and operational reporting to easily see how well campaigns are performing.

Adobe Audience Manager

Adobe Audience Manager is a data management platform that helps digital publishers build unique audience profiles in order to identify the most valuable segments and use them across any digital channel. Adobe Audience Manager consolidates audience information from all available sources. It then identifies, quantifies, and optimizes high-value target audiences, which can then be offered to advertisers via an integrated, secure, privacy-friendly management system that works across all advertising distribution platforms. Adobe Audience Manager provides access to multiple data sources, offering digital publishers the ability to use a wide variety of third-party data as well as Audience Manager's private data co-op.

Adobe Primetime

Adobe Primetime is a modular platform for video publishing, advertising, and analytics, enabling content programmers and distributors to profit from their video content by making every screen a TV - including personal computer, smartphone and tablet screens. Primetime consists of the following components: PayTV Pass, a universal system for validating access to pay TV content; DRM, which is digital rights management technology to protect video content from unauthorized copying or access; Ad Insertion, providing for the seamless insertion of advertisements into live and video-on-demand content; Ad Decisioning, providing for the ability to determine which advertisements should be published; and Video Player SDK, which gives programmers and distributors the ability to measure, analyze and optimize online video delivery.

Other Products and Solutions

We also offer a broad range of other enterprise and digital media products and solutions. Information about other products not referenced here can be found on our corporate website, www.adobe.com, under the "Products" tab available in the "Menu".

COMPETITION

The markets for our products and services are characterized by intense competition, new industry standards, evolving business and distribution models, disruptive software and hardware technology developments, frequent new product introductions, short product life cycles, price cutting with resulting downward pressure on gross margins and price sensitivity on the part of consumers. Our future success will depend on our ability to enhance and better integrate our existing products, introduce new products on a timely and cost-effective basis, meet changing customer needs, provide best-in-class information security to build customer confidence and combat cyber-attacks, extend our core technology into new applications and anticipate and respond to emerging standards, business models, software delivery methods and other technological changes.

Digital Media

No single company has offerings identical to our Creative Cloud products and services, but we face collective competition from a variety of point offerings, free products and downloadable apps. Our competitors include offerings from companies such as Apple, Autodesk, Avid, Corel, Microsoft, Quark, Getty Images, Shutterstock and others, as well as from many lower-end offerings available on touch-enabled devices via app stores, and from various open source initiatives. We believe our greatest advantage in this market is the scope of our integrated solutions, which work together as part of Creative Cloud. With Creative Cloud we also compete favorably on the basis of features and functionality, ease of use, product reliability, value and performance characteristics.

Professional digital imaging, drawing and illustration products are characterized by feature-rich competition, brand awareness and price sensitivity. Competition in this market is also emerging with drawing and illustration applications on tablet and smartphone platforms. The demand for professional web page layout and professional web content creation tools is constantly evolving and highly volatile. In this area we face direct and indirect competition from desktop software companies and various proprietary and open source web-authoring tools.

The needs of digital imaging and video editing software users are constantly evolving due to rapid technology and hardware advancements in digital cameras, digital video cameras, printers, personal computers, tablets, smartphones and other new devices. Our imaging and video software offerings, including Photoshop, Lightroom, After Effects and Premiere Pro, face competition from established and emerging companies offering similar products.

New image editing applications for mobile devices and tablets with features that compete with our professional products are also emerging as adoption of these devices grows. Our consumer digital imaging and video editing offerings are subject to intense competition, including customer price sensitivity, competitor brand awareness and competitor strength in OEM bundling

and retail distribution. We face direct and indirect competition in the consumer digital imaging market from a number of companies that market software that competes with ours.

The stock content market has significant competition, especially in the microstock segment, where Adobe primarily operates today with Fotolia.com and the newly launched Adobe Stock offering. Key competitors in this market include Shutterstock,Getty Images and a number of smaller companies. Adobe Stock's deep product integration with Creative Cloud and superior reach and relationships with creative professionals around the world differentiate our offerings.

In addition, we face competition from device, hardware and camera manufacturers as they try to differentiate their offerings by bundling, for free, their own digital imaging software, or those of our competitors. Similarly, we face potential competition from operating system manufacturers as they integrate or offer hobbyist-level digital imaging and image management features with their operating systems. We also face competition from smartphone and tablet manufacturers that integrate imaging and video software into their devices to work with cameras that come as part of their smartphone and tablet offerings. In addition, social networking platforms such as Facebook (including Instagram), Snapchat, Twitter (including Vine) and Pinterest, as well as portal sites such as Google and Yahoo! are becoming a direct means to post, edit and share images, bypassing the step of using image editing and sharing software. Online storage and synchronization are becoming free and ubiquitous. Consumers in particular will be encouraged to use the image and video editing software offered by those storage products, thus competing with our software.

Competition is also emerging with imaging and video applications on smartphone and tablet platforms. Competitors are extending their products and feature sets to platforms such as Apple's iPhone and iPad, and other smartphone and tablet devices. Similarly, new cloud-based offerings continue to emerge which offer image editing and video-editing capabilities, as well as social and sharing features.

As customers such as publishers and media companies increase their desire to deliver their assets to new platforms, we expect new and existing companies to continue to offer solutions that address these challenges that are competitive with our Digital Publishing Solution. Many design agencies are building capabilities to offer such solutions, and companies such as Amazon, Apple and Google offer an alternative format and business model for the delivery of newspaper and magazine content to mobile devices.

The nature of traditional digital document creation, storage, and collaboration has been rapidly evolving as knowledge workers and consumers shift their behavior increasingly to non-desktop workflows. Competitors like Microsoft, Google, Box and Dropbox all offer competitive alternatives to our Document Cloud business for creating and managing PDFs. In addition, other PDF creation solutions can be found at a low cost or for free on the web. To address these competitive threats, we are working to ensure our Adobe Document Cloud applications stay at the forefront of innovation in emerging opportunities such as PDF document generation, document collaboration and document security.

As electronic signatures with Adobe eSign Services are quickly becoming a core element of digital documents, competitors such as DocuSign and Citrix have been jumping in to take advantage of the growing space. We face strong competition from these and other companies in this market.

Digital Marketing

The markets in which our Digital Marketing business unit competes are growing rapidly and characterized by intense competition. Our Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions face competition from large companies such as Google, IBM, Oracle, salesforce.com, SAP, SAS, Teradata and others, in addition to point product solutions and focused competitors. Additionally, new competitors are constantly entering these markets. Some of these competitors provide SaaS solutions to customers, generally through a web browser, while others provide software that is installed by customers directly on their servers. In addition, we compete at times with our customers' or potential customers' internally developed applications. Of the competitors listed above, no single company has products identical to our Adobe Marketing Cloud offerings. Adobe Marketing Cloud competes in a variety of areas, including: reporting and analytics; cross-channel marketing and optimization; online and social marketing; audience management; video delivery and monetization; web experience management and others.

Many of the companies with which we compete offer a variety of products or services and as a result could also bundle their products or services, which may result in these companies effectively selling their products or services at or below market prices for individual products. In addition, large software, Internet and database management companies have expanded their offerings in the digital marketing area, either by developing competing services or by acquiring existing competitors or strategic partners of ours. We believe competitive factors in our markets include the proven performance, security, scalability, flexibility and reliability of services; the strategic relationships and integration with third-party applications; the intuitiveness and visual appeal of user interfaces; demonstrable cost-effective benefits to customers; pricing; the flexibility of services to match changing business demands; enterprise-level customer service and training; perceived market leadership; the usability of services; real-time data and reporting; independence from portals and search engines; the ability to deploy the services globally; and success in educating customers in how to utilize services effectively. We believe we compete favorably with both the enterprise and low-

cost alternatives based on many of these competitive factors including our strong feature set, the breadth of our offerings, our focus on global, multi-brand companies, our superior user experience, tools for building multi-screen, cross-channel applications, standards-based architecture, scalability and performance and leadership in industry standards efforts.

Creative and digital agencies, as well as SIs, are increasingly investing in acquiring their own digital marketing technology platforms to complement their creative services offerings. Adobe may face competition from these agencies and SIs as they come to market with best-of-breed offerings in one or more digital marketing capabilities, or if agencies attempt to create a more complete technology platform offering. We believe our creative tools heritage differentiates us from our competitors. We have worked closely with marketing and creative customers for over thirty years. We also believe we have leadership in this market, with current customers representing leading global brands. Our comprehensive solutions extend more broadly than any other company in serving the needs of marketers and addressing this market opportunity; we integrate content and data, analytics, personalization, web experience management, cross-channel campaign management, audience management, video delivery and monetization and social capabilities in our Adobe Marketing Cloud, surpassing the reach of any competitor. Most importantly, we provide a vision for our digital marketing customers as we engage with them across the important aspects of their business, extending from their use of Creative Cloud, to how they manage, deliver, measure and monetize their content with our Adobe Marketing Cloud.

Print and Publishing

Our Print and Publishing product offerings face competition from large-scale electronic and web publishing systems, XML-based publishing companies as well as lower-end desktop publishing products. Depending on the product line, competition is based on a number of factors, including: the quality and features of products, ease-of-use, printer service support, the level of customization and integration with other publishing system components, the number of hardware platforms supported, service and price. We believe we can successfully compete based upon the quality and features of our products, our strong brand among users, the widespread adoption of our products among printer service bureaus, and our extensive application programming interface.

In printing technologies, we believe the principal competitive factors for OEMs in selecting a page description language or a printing technology are product capabilities, market leadership, reliability, price, support and engineering development assistance. We believe that our competitive advantages include our technology competency, OEM customer relationships and our intellectual property portfolio.

OPERATIONS

Marketing and Sales

We market and license our products directly using our sales force and through our own website at www.adobe.com. We also market and distribute our products through sales channels, which include distributors, retailers, software developers, SIs, ISVs and VARs, as well as through OEM and hardware bundle customers.

We support our end users through local field offices and our worldwide distribution network, which includes locations in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.

We sell the majority of our products through a software subscription model where our customers purchase access to a product for a specific period of time during which they always have rights to use the most recent version of that product. We also license perpetual versions of our software with maintenance and support, which includes rights to upgrades, when and if available, support, updates and enhancements.

For fiscal 2015 , 2014 and 2013 , there were no customers that represented at least 10% of net revenue. In fiscal 2015 and 2014 , no single customer was responsible for over 10% of our trade receivables.

Order Fulfillment Distribution

The procurement of the various components of packaged products, including DVDs and printed materials, and the assembly of packages for retail and other applications products is controlled by our product delivery operations organization. We outsource our procurement, production, inventory and fulfillment activities to third parties in the United States, Germany and Singapore.

To date, we have not experienced significant difficulties in obtaining raw materials for the manufacture of our products or in the replication of DVDs, printing and assembly of components.

Our evolution to a services and subscription-based business model has decreased the need to produce and distribute physical products. We still produce packaged products for a subset of our business, but that percentage is declining as the digital delivery of our services and subscriptions continues to grow.

Services and Support

Adobe Global Services provides expert consulting, customer success management, technical support, and training across all our customer segments, including enterprises, small and medium businesses, creative professionals, and consumers. With a focus on ensuring sustained customer success and realized value, this comprehensive portfolio of services is designed to help customers and partners maximize the return on their investments in our cloud solutions and licensed products. Our service and support revenue consists primarily of consulting fees, software maintenance, technical support fees and training fees.

Consulting Services

We have a global professional services team dedicated to designing and implementing solutions for our largest customers. Our professional services team uses a comprehensive, customer-focused methodology, that has been refined over years of capturing and analyzing best practices from numerous customer engagements across a diverse mix of solutions, industries, and customer segments. Increasingly, our customers seek to integrate across Adobe's products and cloud solutions, and engage our professional services teams to share their expertise in leading customers' digital strategies and multi-solution integrations. Using our methodology, our professional services teams are able to accelerate customers' time to value, and maximize the return customers earn on their investment in Adobe solutions.

In addition, Adobe Global Services focuses on its large and vibrant partner ecosystem that includes a mix of global SIs, regional SIs, VARs, digital agencies, and solution partners. Adobe invests in this ecosystem to ensure its partners have with the right skills and knowledge about our technologies and integration best practices. Consequently, this ecosystem provides our customers several different options to supplement their internal capabilities, and a large accessible pool of skilled resources that can help deploy and manage Adobe solutions. This approach not only creates value for our customers and partners, but also creates a large and productive go-to-market channel for our sales teams.

Customer Success Account Management

For our largest Digital Marketing and Digital Media customers, Adobe Global Services provides post-sales Customer Success Managers, who work individually with customers on an ongoing basis to understand their current and future business needs, promote faster solution adoption, and align solution capabilities to customers' business objectives to maximize the return on their investment in Adobe's solutions. We engage customers to share innovative best practices, relevant industry and vertical knowledge, and proven success strategies based on our extensive engagements with leading marketers and brands. The performance of these teams is directly associated with customer-focused outcomes, notably ongoing customer retention.

Technical Support

Adobe provides enterprise maintenance and support services to customers of subscription products as part of the subscription entitlement, and to perpetual license customers via annual fee-based maintenance and support programs. These offerings provide:

We provide product support through a global support organization that includes several regional and global support centers, supplemented with outsourced vendors for specific services. Customers can seek help through multiple channels including phone, chat, web, social media, and email, allowing quick and easy access to the information they need. These teams are responsible for providing timely, high-quality technical expertise on all our products.

We also offer a range of support programs, from fee-based incidents to annual support contract options. As a registered owner of the current version of an Adobe desktop product, consumers are eligible to receive Getting Started support on certain matters, to support easy adoption of their products. Support for some products and in some countries may vary. For enterprise customers with higher-level support needs, we offer personalized service options through Premium Services options, delivered by technical account managers who can also provide proactive risk mitigation services and on-site support services for those with business critical deployments.

Lastly, we also offer delivery assurance, technical support, and enablement services to partners and developer organizations. Through the Adobe Partner Connection Program, we provide developers with high-quality tools, software development kits, information and services.

Training Services

Adobe Global Services offers a comprehensive portfolio of training services to assist our customer and partner teams in the use of our products, including those within Digital Marketing, Digital Media and other legacy products and solutions. Our training portfolio includes a large number of free online self-service learning options on www.training.adobe.com. These self-service offerings are supplemented by a number of free introductory programs on best practices that Adobe conducts. Adobe also provides a number of fee-based education options, including a wide range of traditional classroom, virtual, and on-demand training and certifications delivered by our team of training professionals and partners across the globe.

These core offerings are complemented by our custom learning and education services, such as our Digital Marketing Learning Center of Excellence, to support our largest enterprise customers and their unique requirements. Solution-specific Skills Assessments help our enterprise customers objectively assess the knowledge and competencies within their marketing teams, and tailor their learning priorities accordingly. Finally, aligned with our cloud strategy, we have introduced a new learning subscription service that enables customers to access all available Digital Marketing training over a 12-month period, to support the ongoing advancement of our customers' marketing teams and skill sets.

Investments

We make direct investments in privately held companies. We enter into these investments with the intent of securing financial returns as well as for strategic purposes as they often increase our knowledge of emerging markets and technologies, as well as expand our opportunities to provide Adobe products and services.

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

As the software industry is characterized by rapid technological change, a continuous high level of investment is required for the enhancement of existing products and services and the development of new products and services. We develop our software internally as well as acquire products or technology developed by others by purchasing the stock or assets of the business entity that owned the technology. In other instances, we have licensed or purchased the intellectual property ownership rights of programs developed by others with license or technology transfer agreements that may obligate us to pay a flat license fee or royalties, typically based on a dollar amount per unit shipped or a percentage of the revenue generated by those programs.

During fiscal 2015 , 2014 and 2013 , our research and development expenses were $862.7 million , $844.4 million and $826.6 million , respectively.

PRODUCT PROTECTION

We regard our software as proprietary and protect it under the laws of copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets. We have a number of domestic and foreign patents and pending applications that relate to various aspects of our products and technology. While we believe our patents have value, no single patent is material to us or to any of our reporting segments. We protect the source code of our software programs as trade secrets and make source code available to third parties only under limited circumstances and subject to specific security and confidentiality constraints. From time to time, we secure rights to third-party intellectual property if beneficial to our business.

Our products are generally licensed to end users under one of the following two methods:

Policing unauthorized use of computer software is difficult and software piracy is a persistent problem for the software industry. This problem is particularly acute in international markets. We conduct piracy conversion and prevention programs

directly and through certain external software associations. In addition, we have activation technology in certain products to guard against illegal use and will continue to do so in certain future products.

EMPLOYEES

As of November 27, 2015 , we employed 13,893 people. We have not experienced work stoppages and believe our employee relations are good.

AVAILABLE INFORMATION

Our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K and amendments to reports filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a) and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, are available free of charge on our Investor Relations website at www.adobe.com/adbe as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such material with, or furnish it to, the SEC. The information posted on our website is not incorporated into this report.

EXECUTIVE OFFICERS

Adobe's executive officers as of January 15, 2016 are as follows:

ITEM 1A.  RISK FACTORS

As previously discussed, our actual results could differ materially from our forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, those discussed below. These and many other factors described in this report could adversely affect our operations, performance and financial condition.

If we cannot continue to develop, market and offer new products and services or enhancements to existing products and services that meet customer requirements, our operating results could suffer.

The process of developing new high technology products and services and enhancing existing products and services is complex, costly and uncertain. If we fail to anticipate customers' changing needs and emerging technological trends, our market share and results of operations could suffer. We must make long-term investments, develop or obtain appropriate intellectual property and commit significant resources before knowing whether our predictions will accurately reflect customer demand for our products and services. If we are unable to extend our core technologies into new applications and new platforms and to anticipate or respond to technological changes, the market's acceptance of our products and services could decline and our results would suffer. Additionally, any delay in the development, production, marketing or offering of a new product or service or enhancement to an existing product or service could result in customer attrition or impede our ability to attract new customers, causing a decline in our revenue, earnings or stock price and weakening our competitive position. We maintain strategic relationships with third parties to market certain of our products and services and support certain product functionality. If we are unsuccessful in establishing or maintaining our relationships with these third parties, our ability to compete in the marketplace, to reach new customers and geographies or to grow our revenue could be impaired and our operating results could suffer.

We offer our products on a variety of personal computers, tablet and mobile devices. Recent trends have shown a technological shift from personal computers to tablet and mobile devices. If we cannot continue to adapt our products to tablet and mobile devices, our business could be harmed. To the extent that consumer purchases of these devices slow down, or to the extent that significant demand arises for our products or competitive products on other platforms before we offer our products on those platforms, our business could be harmed. Releases of new devices or operating systems may make it more difficult for our products to perform or may require significant costs in order for us to adapt our solutions to such devices or operating systems. These potential costs and delays could harm our business.

Introduction of new products, services and business models by competitors or others could harm our competitive position and results of operations.

The markets for our products and services are characterized by intense competition, evolving industry standards, emerging business and distribution models, disruptive technology developments, short product and service life cycles, price sensitivity on the part of customers and frequent new product introductions (including alternatives with limited functionality available at lower costs or free of charge). Any of these factors could create downward pressure on pricing and gross margins and could adversely affect our renewal and upgrade rates, as well as our ability to attract new customers. Our future success will depend on our ability to enhance our existing products and services, introduce new products and services on a timely and cost-effective basis, meet changing customer needs, extend our core technology into new applications, and anticipate and respond to emerging standards, business models, software delivery methods and other technological developments, such as the evolution and emergence of digital application marketplaces as a direct sales and software delivery environment. These digital application marketplaces often have exclusive distribution for certain platforms, which may make it more difficult for us to compete in these markets. If any competing products, services or operating systems (that do not support our solutions) achieve widespread acceptance, our operating results could suffer. In addition, consolidation has occurred among some of the competitors in the markets in which we compete. Further consolidations in these markets may subject us to increased competitive pressures and may therefore harm our results of operations.

The introduction of certain technologies may reduce the effectiveness of our products. For example, some of our products rely on third-party cookies, which are placed on individual browsers when consumers visit websites that contain advertisements. We use these cookies to help our customers more effectively advertise, to gauge the performance of their advertisements, and to detect and prevent fraudulent activity. Consumers can block or delete cookies through their browsers or "ad-blocking" software

or applications. The most common Internet browsers allow consumers to modify their browser settings to prevent cookies from being accepted by their browsers, or are set to block third-party cookies by default. Increased use of methods, software or applications that block cookies could harm our business.

For additional information regarding our competition and the risks arising out of the competitive environment in which we operate, see the section entitled "Competition" contained in Part I, Item 1 of this report.

If we fail to successfully manage transitions to new business models and markets, our results of operations could suffer.

We often release new offerings and employ new product and services delivery methods in connection with our diversification into new business models and markets. It is uncertain whether these strategies will prove successful or whether we will be able to develop the necessary infrastructure and business models more quickly than our competitors. Market acceptance of new product and service offerings will be dependent in part on our ability to (1) include functionality and usability that address customer requirements, and (2) optimally price our products and services in light of marketplace conditions, our costs and customer demand. New product and service offerings may increase our risk of liability related to the provision of services and cause us to incur significant technical, legal or other costs. For example, with our cloud-based services and subscription-based licensing models, such as Creative Cloud, we have entered markets that may not be fully accustomed to cloud-based subscription offerings. Market acceptance of such services is affected by a variety of factors, including information security, reliability, performance, customer preference, social and community engagement, local government regulations regarding online services and user-generated content, the sufficiency of technological infrastructure to support our products and services in certain geographies, customer concerns with entrusting a third party to store and manage its data, consumer concerns regarding data privacy and the enactment of laws or regulations that restrict our ability to provide such services to customers in the United States or internationally. If we are unable to respond to these threats, our business could be harmed.

From time to time we open-source certain of our technology initiatives, provide broader open access to our technology, license certain of our technology on a royalty-free basis, or release selected technology for industry standardization. Additionally, customer requirements for open standards or open-source products could impact adoption or use of some of our products or services. To the extent we incorrectly predict customer requirements for such products or services, or if there is a delay in market acceptance of such products or services, our business could be harmed.

We also devote significant resources to the development of technologies and service offerings in markets where our operating history is less extensive, such as the marketplace for stock imagery. These new offerings and markets may require a considerable investment of technical, financial, compliance and sales resources, and a scalable organization. Some of our competitors may have advantages over us due to their larger presence, larger developer network, deeper market experience and larger sales, consulting and marketing resources. In addition, the metrics we use to gauge the status of our business model transition may evolve over the course of the transition as significant trends emerge. If we are unable to successfully establish new offerings in light of the competitive environment, our results of operations could suffer.

Subscription offerings and ETLAs could create risks related to the timing of revenue recognition.

Our subscription model creates certain risks related to the timing of revenue recognition and potential reductions in cash flows. A portion of the subscription-based revenue we report each quarter results from the recognition of deferred revenue relating to subscription agreements entered into during previous quarters. A decline in new or renewed subscriptions in any period may not be immediately reflected in our reported financial results for that period, but may result in a decline in our revenue in future quarters. If we were to experience significant downturns in subscription sales and renewal rates, our reported financial results might not reflect such downturns until future periods. Our subscription model could also make it difficult for us to rapidly increase our revenue from subscription-based or hosted services through additional sales in any period, as revenue from new customers will be recognized over the applicable subscription term. Further, any increases in sales under our subscription sales model could result in decreased revenue over the short term if they are offset by a decline in sales from perpetual license customers.

Additionally, in connection with our sales efforts to enterprise customers and our use of ETLAs, a number of factors could affect our revenue, including longer than expected sales and implementation cycles, potential deferral of revenue due to multiple-element revenue arrangements and alternate licensing arrangements. If any of our assumptions about revenue from our new businesses or our addition of a subscription-based model prove incorrect, our actual results may vary materially from those anticipated, estimated or projected.

Uncertainty about current and future economic conditions and other adverse changes in general political conditions in any of the major countries in which we do business could adversely affect our operating results.

As our business has grown, we have become increasingly subject to the risks arising from adverse changes in economic and political conditions, both domestically and globally. Uncertainty about the effects of current and future economic and political

conditions on us, our customers, suppliers and partners makes it difficult for us to forecast operating results and to make decisions about future investments. If economic growth in countries where we do business slows, customers may delay or reduce technology purchases, advertising spending or marketing spending. This could result in reductions in sales of our products and services, longer sales cycles, slower adoption of new technologies and increased price competition. Our customers include government entities, including the U.S. federal government, and if spending cuts impede the government's ability to purchase our products and services, our revenue could decline. Deterioration in economic conditions in any of the countries in which we do business could also cause slower or impaired collections on accounts receivable, which may adversely impact our liquidity and financial condition.

A financial institution credit crisis could impair credit availability and the financial stability of our customers, including our distribution partners and channels. A disruption in the financial markets may also have an effect on our derivative counterparties and could also impair our banking partners, on which we rely for operating cash management. Any of these events would likely harm our business, results of operations and financial condition.

Political instability in or around any of the major countries in which we do business would also likely harm our business, results of operations and financial condition.

The increased emphasis on a cloud strategy may give rise to risks that could harm our business.

Over the past several years, our business has shifted away from pre-packaged creative software to focus on a subscription model that prices and delivers our products and services in a way that differs from the historical pricing and delivery methods of our creative tools and document services products. These changes reflect a significant shift from perpetual license sales and distribution of our software in favor of providing our customers the right to access certain of our software in a hosted environment or use downloaded software for a specified subscription period. This cloud strategy requires continued investment in product development and cloud operations, and may give rise to a number of risks, including the following:

We may be unable to predict subscription renewal rates and the impact these rates may have on our future revenue and operating results.

The hosted business model we utilize in our Adobe Marketing Cloud offerings typically involves selling services on a subscription basis pursuant to service agreements that are generally one to three years in length. Our individual Creative Cloud and Document Cloud subscription agreements are generally month-to-month or one year in length, ETLAs for our Digital Media products and services are generally three years in length, and subscription agreements for other products and services may provide for shorter or longer terms. Our customers have no obligation to renew their subscriptions for our services after the expiration of their initial subscription period, and some customers elect not to renew. We cannot provide assurance that our subscriptions will be renewed at the same or higher level of service, for the same number of seats or licenses or for the same duration of time, if at all. Moreover, under certain circumstances, some of our customers have the right to cancel their service agreements prior to the expiration of the terms of their agreements. We cannot provide assurance that we will be able to accurately predict future customer renewal rates. Our customers' renewal rates may decline or fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, including their level of satisfaction with our services, our ability to continue to regularly add features and functionality, the reliability (including uptime) of our subscription services, the prices of our services, the actual or perceived information security of our systems and services, the prices of services offered by our competitors, mergers and acquisitions affecting our customer base, reductions in our customers' spending levels, or declines in customer activity as a result of economic downturns or uncertainty in financial markets. If our customers do not renew their subscriptions for our services or if they renew on terms less favorable to us, our revenue may decline.

Our future growth is also affected by our ability to sell additional features and services to our current customers, which depends on a number of factors, including customers' satisfaction with our products and services, the level of innovation reflected

in those additional features, the prices of our offerings and general economic conditions. If our efforts to cross-sell and upsell to our customers are unsuccessful, the rate at which our business grows might decline.

Security vulnerabilities in our products and systems could lead to reduced revenue or to liability claims.

Maintaining the security of our products, computers and networks is a critical issue for us and our customers. Security researchers, criminal hackers and other third parties regularly develop new techniques to penetrate computer and network security measures and, as we have previously disclosed, certain parties have in the past managed to breach certain of our data security systems and misused certain of our systems and software in order to access our end users' authentication and payment information. In addition, cyber-attackers also develop and deploy viruses, worms and other malicious software programs, some of which may be specifically designed to attack our products, systems, computers or networks. Sophisticated hardware and operating system applications that we produce or procure from third parties may contain defects in design or manufacture, including bugs and other problems that could unexpectedly compromise the security of the system, or impair a customer's ability to operate or use our products. The costs to prevent, eliminate or alleviate cyber- or other security problems, bugs, viruses, worms, malicious software programs and security vulnerabilities are significant, and our efforts to address these problems may not be successful and could result in interruptions, delays, cessation of service and loss of existing or potential customers. It is impossible to predict the extent, frequency or impact of these problems on us.

Outside parties have in the past and may in the future attempt to fraudulently induce our employees or users of our products or services to disclose sensitive information via illegal electronic spamming, phishing or other tactics. Unauthorized parties may also attempt to gain physical access to our facilities in order to infiltrate our information systems. These actual and potential breaches of our security measures and the accidental loss, inadvertent disclosure or unauthorized dissemination of proprietary information or sensitive, personal or confidential data about us, our employees or our customers, including the potential loss or disclosure of such information or data as a result of hacking, fraud, trickery or other forms of deception, could expose us, our employees, our customers or the individuals affected to a risk of loss or misuse of this information. This may result in litigation and potential liability or fines, governmental inquiry or oversight or a loss of customer confidence, any of which could harm our business or damage our brand and reputation, possibly impeding our present and future success in retaining and attracting new customers and thereby requiring time and resources to repair our brand.

These problems affect our products and services in particular because cyber-attackers tend to focus their efforts on the most popular offerings (such as those with a large user base), and we expect them to continue to do so. Critical vulnerabilities may be identified in certain of our applications. These vulnerabilities could cause such applications to crash and could allow an attacker to take control of the affected system, which could result in liability to us or limit our ability to conduct our business and deliver our products and services to customers. We devote significant resources to address security vulnerabilities through engineering more secure products, enhancing security and reliability features in our products and systems, code hardening, conducting rigorous penetration tests, deploying updates to address security vulnerabilities and improving our incident response time, but these security vulnerabilities cannot be totally eliminated. The cost of these steps could reduce our operating margins, and we may be unable to implement these measures quickly enough to prevent cyber-attackers from gaining unauthorized access into our systems and products. Despite our preventative efforts, actual or perceived security vulnerabilities in our products and systems may harm our reputation or lead to claims against us (and have in the past led to such claims), and could lead some customers to seek to return products, to stop using certain services, to reduce or delay future purchases of products or services, or to use competing products or services. If we do not make the appropriate level of investment in our technology systems or if our systems become out-of-date or obsolete and we are not able to deliver the quality of data security customers require, our business could be adversely affected. Customers may also adopt security measures designed to protect their existing computer systems from attack, which could delay adoption of new technologies. Further, if we or our customers are subject to a future attack, or our technology is utilized in a third-party attack, it may be necessary for us to take additional extraordinary measures and make additional expenditures to take appropriate responsive and preventative steps. Any of these events could adversely affect our revenue or margins. Moreover, delayed sales, lower margins or lost customers resulting from the disruptions of cyber-attacks or preventative measures could adversely affect our financial results, stock price and reputation.

Some of our lines of business rely on us or our third-party service providers to host and deliver services and data, and any interruptions or delays in these hosted services, security or privacy breaches, or failures in data collection could expose us to liability and harm our business and reputation.

Some of our lines of business and services, including our online store at adobe.com, Creative Cloud, Document Cloud, other hosted Digital Media offerings and our Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions, rely on hardware and services hosted and controlled directly by us or by our third-party service providers. We do not have redundancy for all of our systems, many of our critical applications reside in only one of our data centers, and our disaster recovery planning may not account for all eventualities. If our business relationship with a third-party provider of hosting or content delivery services is negatively affected, or if one of our content delivery suppliers were to terminate its agreement with us, we might not be able to deliver the corresponding hosted

offerings to our customers, which could subject us to reputational harm and cause us to lose customers and future business, thereby reducing our revenue.

We hold large amounts of customer data, some of which is hosted in third-party facilities. A security incident at those facilities or ours may compromise the confidentiality, integrity or availability of customer data. Unauthorized access to customer data stored on our computers or networks may be obtained through break-ins, breach of our secure network by an unauthorized party, employee theft or misuse, or other misconduct. It is also possible that unauthorized access to customer data may be obtained through inadequate use of security controls by customers. Accounts created with weak passwords could allow cyber-attackers to gain access to customer data. Additionally, failure by customers to remove accounts of their own employees, or granting of accounts by the customer in an uncontrolled manner, may allow for access by former or unauthorized customer representatives. If there were an inadvertent disclosure of personal information, or if a third party were to gain unauthorized access to the personal information we possess on behalf of our customers, our operations could be disrupted, our reputation could be damaged and we could be subject to claims or other liabilities. In addition, such perceived or actual unauthorized disclosure of the information we collect or breach of our security could damage our reputation, result in the loss of customers and harm our business.

Because of the large amount of data that we collect and manage on behalf of our customers, it is possible that hardware or software failures or errors in our systems (or those of our third-party service providers) could result in data loss or corruption or cause the information that we collect to be incomplete or contain inaccuracies that our customers regard as significant. Furthermore, our ability to collect and report data may be delayed or interrupted by a number of factors, including access to the Internet, the failure of our network or software systems, security breaches or significant variability in visitor traffic on customer websites. In addition, computer viruses or other malware may harm our systems, causing us to lose data, and the transmission of computer viruses or other malware could expose us to litigation. We may also find, on occasion, that we cannot deliver data and reports to our customers in near real time because of a number of factors, including significant spikes in customer activity on their websites or failures of our network or software. If we supply inaccurate information or experience interruptions in our ability to capture, store and supply information in near real time or at all, our reputation could be harmed and we could lose customers, or we could be found liable for damages or incur other losses.

We may not realize the anticipated benefits of past or future acquisitions, and integration of these acquisitions may disrupt our business and management.

We may not realize the anticipated benefits of an acquisition of a company, division, product or technology, each of which involves numerous risks. These risks include:

Mergers and acquisitions of high technology companies are inherently risky. If we do not complete an announced acquisition transaction or integrate an acquired business successfully and in a timely manner, we may not realize the benefits of the acquisition to the extent anticipated, and in certain circumstances an acquisition could harm our financial position.

We may incur substantial costs enforcing or acquiring intellectual property rights and defending against third-party claims as a result of litigation or other proceedings.

In connection with the enforcement of our own intellectual property rights, the acquisition of third-party intellectual property rights, or disputes relating to the validity or alleged infringement of third-party intellectual property rights, including patent rights, we have been, are currently and may in the future be subject to claims, negotiations and complex, protracted litigation. Intellectual property disputes and litigation are typically costly and can be disruptive to our business operations by diverting the attention and energies of management and key technical personnel. Although we have successfully defended or resolved many past lawsuits and other disputes, we may not prevail in every case in the future. Third-party intellectual property disputes, including those initiated by patent assertion entities, could subject us to significant liabilities, require us to enter into royalty and licensing arrangements on unfavorable terms, prevent us from licensing certain of our products or offering certain of our services, subject us to injunctions restricting our sale of products or services, cause severe disruptions to our operations or the markets in which we compete, or require us to satisfy indemnification commitments with our customers, including contractual provisions under various license arrangements and service agreements. In addition, we may incur significant costs in acquiring the necessary third-party intellectual property rights for use in our products, in some cases to fulfill contractual obligations with our customers. Any of these occurrences could significantly harm our business.

Our intellectual property portfolio is a valuable asset and we may not be able to protect our intellectual property rights, including our source code, from infringement or unauthorized copying, use or disclosure.

Our intellectual property portfolio is a valuable asset. Infringement or misappropriation of assets in this portfolio can result in lost revenues and thereby ultimately reduce their value. Preventing unauthorized use or infringement of our intellectual property rights is inherently difficult. We actively combat software piracy as we enforce our intellectual property rights, but we nonetheless lose significant revenue due to illegal use of our software. If piracy activities continue at historical levels or increase, they may further harm our business.

Additionally, we take significant measures to protect the secrecy of our confidential information and trade secrets, including our source code. Despite these measures, as we have previously disclosed, hackers have managed to access certain of our source code and may obtain access in the future. If unauthorized disclosure of our source code occurs through security breach, cyber-attack or otherwise, we could potentially lose future trade secret protection for that source code. The loss of future trade secret protection could make it easier for third parties to compete with our products by copying functionality, which could cause us to

lose customers and could adversely affect our revenue and operating margins. We also seek to protect our confidential information and trade secrets through the use of non-disclosure agreements with our customers, contractors, vendors and partners. However, there is a risk that our confidential information and trade secrets may be disclosed or published without our authorization, and in these situations, enforcing our rights may be difficult or costly.

Increasing regulatory focus on privacy issues and expanding laws and regulations could impact our new business models and expose us to increased liability.

Our industry is highly regulated, including for privacy and data security. We are also expanding our business in countries that have more stringent data protection laws than those in the United States, and such laws may be inconsistent across jurisdictions and are subject to evolving and differing interpretations. Privacy laws, including laws enforcing a "right to be forgotten" by consumers are changing and evolving globally. Governments, privacy advocates and class action attorneys are increasingly scrutinizing how companies collect, process, use, store, share and transmit personal data. New laws and industry self-regulatory codes have been enacted and more are being considered that may affect our ability to reach current and prospective customers, to understand how our products and services are being used, to respond to customer requests allowed under the laws, and to implement our new business models effectively. Any perception of our practices, products or services as an invasion of privacy, whether or not consistent with current regulations and industry practices, may subject us to public criticism, class action lawsuits, reputational harm or claims by regulators, industry groups or other third parties, all of which could disrupt our business and expose us to increased liability. Additionally, both laws regulating privacy, as well as third-party products purporting to address privacy concerns, could affect the functionality of and demand for our products and services, thereby harming our revenue.

On behalf of certain customers, we collect and store anonymous and personal information derived from the activities of end users with various channels, including traditional websites, mobile websites and applications, email interactions, direct mail, point of sale, text messaging and call centers. Federal, state and foreign governments and agencies have adopted or are considering adopting laws regarding the collection, use and disclosure of this information. Our compliance with privacy laws and regulations and our reputation among consumers depend in part on our customers' adherence to privacy laws and regulations and their use of our services in ways consistent with such consumers' expectations. We also rely on contractual representations made to us by customers that their own use of our services and the information they provide to us via our services do not violate any applicable privacy laws, rules and regulations or their own privacy policies. We contractually obligate customers to represent to us that they provide their consumers the opportunity to "opt out" of the information collection associated with our services, as applicable. We do not formally audit such customers to confirm compliance with these representations. If these representations are false or if our customers do not otherwise comply with applicable privacy laws, we could face adverse publicity and possible legal or other regulatory action. In addition, some countries are considering enacting laws that would expand the scope of privacy-related obligations required of service providers, such as Adobe, that would require additional compliance expense and increased liability.

In the past we have relied on the U.S.-European Union and the U.S.-Swiss Safe Harbor Frameworks, as agreed to by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the European Union ("EU") and Switzerland as a means to legally transfer European personal information from Europe to the United States. However, on October 6, 2015, the European Court of Justice invalidated the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor framework and the Swiss data protection authorities later invalidated the U.S.-Swiss Safe Harbor framework. As a result, we have been establishing alternate legitimate means of transferring personal data from the European Economic Area to the United States. The legitimacy of these alternate means are subject to differing interpretations among various European jurisdictions. The requirements or rulings of these jurisdictions may reduce demand for our services, restrict our ability to offer services in certain locations, impact our customers' ability to deploy our solutions in Europe, or subject us to sanctions, including fines and a prohibition on data transfers, by EU data protection regulators. Furthermore, the European Court of Justice's decision may result in different European data protection regulators applying differing standards for the transfer of personal data, which could result in increased regulation, cost of compliance and limitations on data transfer for us and our customers. These developments could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We may incur losses associated with currency fluctuations and may not be able to effectively hedge our exposure.

Because our products are distributed and used globally, our operating results are subject to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates. We attempt to mitigate a portion of these risks through foreign currency hedging, based on our judgment of the appropriate trade-offs among risk, opportunity and expense. We have established a program to partially hedge our exposure to foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations for various currencies. We regularly review our hedging program and make adjustments as necessary based on the factors discussed above. Our hedging activities may not offset more than a portion of the adverse financial impact resulting from unfavorable movement in foreign currency exchange rates, which could adversely affect our financial condition or results of operations.

If we fail to process transactions effectively, our revenue and earnings may be harmed.

We process a significant volume of transactions on a daily basis in both our Digital Marketing and Digital Media businesses. Due to the size and volume of transactions that we handle, effective processing systems and controls are essential, but even the most sophisticated systems and processes may not be effective in preventing all errors. The systems supporting our business are comprised of multiple technology platforms that may be difficult to scale. If we are unable to effectively manage these systems and processes, we may be unable to process customer data in an accurate, reliable and timely manner, which may harm our customer relationships or results of operations.

Failure to manage our sales and distribution channels and third-party customer service and technical support providers effectively could result in a loss of revenue and harm to our business.

We contract with a number of software distributors, none of which is individually responsible for a material amount of our total net revenue for any recent period. If any single agreement with one of our distributors were terminated, any prolonged delay in securing a replacement distributor could have a negative impact on our results of operations.

Successfully managing our indirect channel efforts to reach various customer segments for our products and services is a complex process across the broad range of geographies where we do business or plan to do business. Our distributors and other channel partners are independent businesses that we do not control. Notwithstanding the independence of our channel partners, we face potential legal risk and reputational harm from the activities of these third parties including, but not limited to, export control violations, workplace conditions, corruption and anti-competitive behavior. We cannot be certain that our distribution channel will continue to market or sell our products and services effectively. If our distribution channel is not successful, we may lose sales opportunities, customers and revenue.

Our distributors also sell our competitors' products and services, and if they favor our competitors' products or services for any reason, they may fail to market our products or services effectively or to devote resources necessary to provide effective sales, which would cause our results to suffer. We also distribute some products and services through our OEM channel, and if our OEMs decide not to bundle our applications on their devices, our results could suffer.

In addition, the financial health of our distributors and our continuing relationships with them are important to our success. Some of these distributors may be adversely impacted by changes to our business model or unable to withstand adverse changes in economic conditions, which could result in insolvency and/or the inability of such distributors to obtain credit to finance purchases of our products and services. In addition, weakness in the end-user market could negatively affect the cash flows of our distributors who could, in turn, delay paying their obligations to us, which would increase our credit risk exposure. Our business could be harmed if the financial condition of some of these distributors substantially weakened and we were unable to timely secure replacement distributors.

We also sell certain of our products and services through our direct sales force. Risks associated with this sales channel include longer sales and collection cycles associated with direct sales efforts, challenges related to hiring, retaining and motivating our direct sales force, and substantial amounts of training for sales representatives, including regular updates to cover new and upgraded systems, products and services. Moreover, recent hires may not become as productive as we would like, as in most cases it takes a significant period of time before they achieve full productivity. Our business could be seriously harmed if our expansion efforts do not generate a corresponding significant increase in revenue and we are unable to achieve the efficiencies we anticipate. In addition, the loss of key sales employees could impact our customer relationships and future ability to sell to certain accounts covered by such employees.

We also provide products and services, directly and indirectly, to a variety of government entities, both domestically and internationally. Risks associated with licensing and selling products and services to government entities include longer sales cycles, varying governmental budgeting processes and adherence to complex procurement regulations and other government-specific contractual requirements. Ineffectively managing these risks could result in various civil and criminal penalties and administrative sanctions, including termination of contracts, payment of fines, and suspension or debarment from future government business, as well as harm to our reputation.

We outsource a substantial portion of our customer service and technical support activities to third-party service providers. We rely heavily on these third-party customer service and technical support representatives working on our behalf, and we expect to continue to rely heavily on third parties in the future. This strategy provides us with lower operating costs and greater flexibility, but also presents risks to our business due to the fact that we may not be able to influence the quality of support as directly as we would be able to do if our own employees performed these activities. Our customers may react negatively to providing information to, and receiving support from, third-party organizations, especially if the third-party organizations are based overseas. If we encounter problems with our third-party customer service and technical support providers, our reputation may be harmed and we could lose customers and associated revenue.

Certain of our enterprise offerings have extended and complex sales cycles.

Sales cycles for some of our enterprise offerings, including our Adobe Marketing Cloud Solutions and ETLAs in our Digital Media business, are multi-phased and complex. The complexity in these sales cycles is due to a number of factors, including:

We spend substantial time and expense on our sales efforts without any assurance that potential customers will ultimately purchase our solutions. As we target our sales efforts at larger enterprise customers, these trends are expected to continue and could have a greater impact on our results of operations.  Additionally, our enterprise sales pattern has historically been uneven, where a higher percentage of a quarter's total sales occur during the final weeks of each quarter, which is common in our industry.  Our extended sales cycle for these products and services makes it difficult to predict when a given sales cycle will close.

Catastrophic events may disrupt our business.

We are a highly automated business and rely on our network infrastructure and enterprise applications, internal technology systems and our website for our development, marketing, operational, support, hosted services and sales activities. In addition, some of our businesses rely on third-party hosted services, and we do not control the operation of third-party data center facilities serving our customers from around the world, which increases our vulnerability. A disruption, infiltration or failure of these systems or third-party hosted services in the event of a major earthquake, fire, flood, tsunami or other weather event, power loss, telecommunications failure, software or hardware malfunctions, cyber-attack, war, terrorist attack or other catastrophic event could cause system interruptions, reputational harm, loss of intellectual property, delays in our product development, lengthy interruptions in our services, breaches of data security and loss of critical data. Any of these events could prevent us from fulfilling our customers' orders or could negatively impact a country or region in which we sell our products, which could in turn decrease that country's or region's demand for our products. Our corporate headquarters, a significant portion of our research and development activities, certain of our data centers and certain other critical business operations are located in the San Francisco Bay Area, and additional facilities where we conduct significant operations are located in the Salt Lake Valley Area, both of which are near major earthquake faults. A catastrophic event that results in the destruction or disruption of any of our data centers or our critical business or information technology systems could severely affect our ability to conduct normal business operations and, as a result, our future operating results could be adversely affected.

Climate change may have a long-term impact on our business.

Access to clean water and reliable energy in the communities where we conduct our business, whether for our offices or for our vendors, is a priority.  Our major sites in California and India are vulnerable to prolonged droughts due to climate change.  While we seek to partner with organizations that mitigate their business risks associated with climate change, we recognize that there are inherent risks wherever business is conducted.  In the event of a natural disaster that disrupts business due to limited access to these resources, Adobe has the potential to experience losses to our business, time required to recover, and added costs to resume operations.

Additionally, climate change may pose regulatory and environmental challenges that affect where we locate our offices, who we partner with, and how we deliver products and services to our customers.  

Net revenue, margin or earnings shortfalls or the volatility of the market generally may cause the market price of our stock to decline.

The market price for our common stock has in the past experienced significant fluctuations and may do so in the future. A number of factors may affect the market price for our common stock, including:

We are subject to risks associated with compliance with laws and regulations globally which may harm our business.

We are a global company subject to varied and complex laws, regulations and customs, both domestically and internationally. These laws and regulations relate to a number of aspects of our business, including trade protection, import and export control, data and transaction processing security, payment card industry data security standards, records management, user-generated content hosted on websites we operate, privacy practices, data residency, corporate governance, employee and third-party complaints, gift policies, conflicts of interest, employment and labor relations laws, securities regulations and other regulatory requirements affecting trade and investment. The application of these laws and regulations to our business is often unclear and may at times conflict. Compliance with these laws and regulations may involve significant costs or require changes in our business practices that result in reduced revenue and profitability. Non-compliance could also result in fines, damages, criminal sanctions against us, our officers or our employees, prohibitions on the conduct of our business, and damage to our reputation. We incur additional legal compliance costs associated with our global operations and could become subject to legal penalties if we fail to comply with local laws and regulations in U.S. jurisdictions or in foreign countries, which laws and regulations may be substantially different from those in the United States. In many foreign countries, particularly in those with developing economies, it is common to engage in business practices that are prohibited by U.S. regulations applicable to us, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. We cannot provide assurance that all of our employees, contractors and agents, as well as those companies to which we outsource certain of our business operations, including those based in or from countries where practices that violate such U.S. laws may be customary, will not take actions in violation of our internal policies. Any such violation could have an adverse effect on our business.

We face various risks associated with our operating as a multinational corporation.

As a global business that generates approximately 42% of our total revenue from sales to customers outside of the Americas, we are subject to a number of risks, including:

If sales to any of our customers outside of the Americas are delayed or canceled because of any of the above factors, our revenue may decline.

In addition, approximately 53% of our employees are located outside the United States. Accordingly, we are exposed to changes in laws governing our employee relationships in various U.S. and foreign jurisdictions, including laws and regulations regarding wage and hour requirements, fair labor standards, employee data privacy, unemployment tax rates, workers' compensation rates, citizenship requirements and payroll and other taxes, which likely would have a direct impact on our operating costs. We may continue to expand our international operations and international sales and marketing activities. Expansion in international markets has required, and will continue to require, significant management attention and resources. We may be unable to scale our infrastructure effectively or as quickly as our competitors in these markets, and our revenue may not increase to offset these expected increases in costs and operating expenses, which would cause our results to suffer.

We have issued $1.9 billion of notes in debt offerings and may incur other debt in the future, which may adversely affect our financial condition and future financial results.

We have $1.9 billion in senior unsecured notes outstanding. We also have a $1 billion revolving credit facility, which is currently undrawn. This debt may adversely affect our financial condition and future financial results by, among other things:

Our senior unsecured notes and revolving credit facility impose restrictions on us and require us to maintain compliance with specified covenants. Our ability to comply with these covenants may be affected by events beyond our control. If we breach any of the covenants and do not obtain a waiver from the lenders or noteholders, then, subject to applicable cure periods, any outstanding indebtedness may be declared immediately due and payable.

In addition, changes by any rating agency to our credit rating may negatively impact the value and liquidity of both our debt and equity securities, as well as the potential costs associated with a refinancing of our debt. Under certain circumstances, if our credit ratings are downgraded or other negative action is taken, the interest rate payable by us under our revolving credit facility could increase. Downgrades in our credit ratings could also restrict our ability to obtain additional financing in the future and could affect the terms of any such financing.

Changes in accounting principles, or interpretations thereof, could have a significant impact on our financial position and results of operations.

We prepare our Consolidated Financial Statements in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America ("GAAP"). These principles are subject to interpretation by the SEC and various bodies formed to interpret and create appropriate accounting principles. A change in these principles can have a significant effect on our reported results and may even retroactively affect previously reported transactions. Additionally, the adoption of new or revised accounting principles may require that we make significant changes to our systems, processes and controls.

For example, the U.S.-based Financial Accounting Standards Board ("FASB") is currently working together with the International Accounting Standards Board ("IASB") on several projects to further align accounting principles and facilitate more comparable financial reporting between companies who are required to follow GAAP under SEC regulations and those who are required to follow International Financial Reporting Standards outside of the United States. These efforts by the FASB and IASB may result in different accounting principles under GAAP that may result in materially different financial results for us in areas including, but not limited to, principles for recognizing revenue and lease accounting. Additionally, significant changes to GAAP

resulting from the FASB's and IASB's efforts may require that we change how we process, analyze and report financial information and that we change financial reporting controls.

It is not clear if or when these potential changes in accounting principles may become effective, whether we have the proper systems and controls in place to accommodate such changes and the impact that any such changes may have on our financial position and results of operations.

If our goodwill or amortizable intangible assets become impaired we could be required to record a significant charge to earnings.

Under GAAP, we review our goodwill and amortizable intangible assets for impairment when events or changes in circumstances indicate the carrying value may not be recoverable. GAAP requires us to test for goodwill impairment at least annually. Factors that may be considered a change in circumstances indicating that the carrying value of our goodwill or amortizable intangible assets may not be recoverable include declines in stock price, market capitalization or cash flows and slower growth rates in our industry. We could be required to record a significant charge to earnings in our financial statements during the period in which any impairment of our goodwill or amortizable intangible assets were determined, negatively impacting our results of operations.

Changes in tax rules and regulations, or interpretations thereof, may adversely affect our effective tax rates.

We are a U.S.-based multinational company subject to tax in multiple U.S. and foreign tax jurisdictions. A significant portion of our foreign earnings for the current fiscal year were earned by our Irish subsidiaries. In addition to providing for U.S. income taxes on earnings from the United States, we provide for U.S. income taxes on the earnings of foreign subsidiaries unless the subsidiaries' earnings are considered permanently reinvested outside the United States. While we do not anticipate changing our intention regarding permanently reinvested earnings, if certain foreign earnings previously treated as permanently reinvested are repatriated, the related U.S. tax liability may be reduced by any foreign income taxes paid on these earnings.

Our income tax expense has differed from the tax computed at the U.S. federal statutory income tax rate due primarily to discrete items and to earnings considered as permanently reinvested in foreign operations. Unanticipated changes in our tax rates could affect our future results of operations. Our future effective tax rates could be unfavorably affected by changes in the tax rates in jurisdictions where our income is earned, by changes in or our interpretation of tax rules and regulations in the jurisdictions in which we do business, by unanticipated decreases in the amount of earnings in countries with low statutory tax rates, or by changes in the valuation of our deferred tax assets and liabilities. The United States, countries in the EU and other countries where we do business have been considering changes in relevant tax, accounting and other laws, regulations and interpretations, including changes to tax laws applicable to corporate multinationals such as Adobe. These potential changes could adversely affect our effective tax rates or result in other costs to us.

In addition, we are subject to the continual examination of our income tax returns by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") and other domestic and foreign tax authorities, including a current examination by the IRS of our fiscal 2010, 2011 and 2012 tax returns. These tax examinations are expected to focus on our intercompany transfer pricing practices as well as other matters. We regularly assess the likelihood of outcomes resulting from these examinations to determine the adequacy of our provision for income taxes and have reserved for potential adjustments that may result from the current examinations. We cannot provide assurance that the final determination of any of these examinations will not have an adverse effect on our operating results and financial position.

If we are unable to recruit and retain key personnel, our business may be harmed.

Much of our future success depends on the continued service, availability and performance of our senior management. These individuals have acquired specialized knowledge and skills with respect to Adobe. The loss of any of these individuals could harm our business, especially in the event that we have not been successful in developing adequate succession plans. Our business is also dependent on our ability to retain, hire and motivate talented, highly skilled personnel across all levels of our organization. Experienced personnel in the information technology industry are in high demand and competition for their talents is intense in many areas where our employees are located. If we are unable to continue to successfully attract and retain key personnel, our business may be harmed. Effective succession planning is also a key factor for our long-term success. Our failure to enable the effective transfer of knowledge and facilitate smooth transitions of our key employees could adversely affect our long-term strategic planning and execution.

We believe that a critical contributor to our success to date has been our corporate culture, which we have built to foster innovation, teamwork and employee satisfaction. As we grow, including from the integration of employees and businesses acquired in connection with previous or future acquisitions, we may find it difficult to maintain important aspects of our corporate culture, which could negatively affect our ability to retain and recruit personnel who are essential to our future success.

Our investment portfolio may become impaired by deterioration of the financial markets.

Our cash equivalent and short-term investment portfolio as of November 27, 2015 consisted of corporate bonds and commercial paper, U.S. agency securities and U.S. Treasury securities, foreign government securities, money market mutual funds, municipal securities, time deposits and asset-backed securities. We follow an established investment policy and set of guidelines to monitor and help mitigate our exposure to interest rate and credit risk. The policy sets forth credit quality standards and limits our exposure to any one issuer, as well as our maximum exposure to various asset classes.

Should financial market conditions worsen in the future, investments in some financial instruments may pose risks arising from market liquidity and credit concerns. In addition, any deterioration of the capital markets could cause our other income and expense to vary from expectations. As of November 27, 2015 , we had no material impairment charges associated with our short-term investment portfolio, and although we believe our current investment portfolio has little risk of material impairment, we cannot predict future market conditions or market liquidity, or credit availability, and can provide no assurance that our investment portfolio will remain materially unimpaired.

ITEM 1B.  UNRESOLVED STAFF COMMENTS

None.

ITEM 2.  PROPERTIES

The following table sets forth the location, approximate square footage and use of each of the principal properties used by Adobe during fiscal 2015 . We lease or sublease all of these properties with the exception of our property in Noida, India where we own the building and lease the land, in Lehi where we own the building and land, in San Francisco at 601 and 625 Townsend Street where we own the building and land, and our corporate offices in San Jose where we own the land and the East and West tower buildings and lease the Almaden Tower building. All leased properties are leased under operating leases. Such leases expire at various times through 2028 , with the exception of our land lease in Noida, India that expires in 2091 . The annual base rent expense (including operating expenses, property taxes and assessments, as applicable) for all leased facilities is currently approximately $87.3 million and is subject to annual adjustments as well as changes in interest rates.

In general, all facilities are in good condition, suitable for the conduct of our business and are operating at an average capacity of approximately 75% .

ITEM 3.  LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

In connection with disputes relating to the validity or alleged infringement of third-party intellectual property rights, including patent rights, we have been, are currently and may in the future be subject to claims, negotiations or complex, protracted litigation. Intellectual property disputes and litigation may be very costly and can be disruptive to our business operations by diverting the attention and energies of management and key technical personnel. Although we have successfully defended or resolved past litigation and disputes, we may not prevail in any ongoing or future litigation and disputes. Third-party intellectual property disputes could subject us to significant liabilities, require us to enter into royalty and licensing arrangements on unfavorable terms, prevent us from licensing certain of our products or offering certain of our services, subject us to injunctions restricting our sale of products or services, cause severe disruptions to our operations or the markets in which we compete, or require us to satisfy indemnification commitments with our customers including contractual provisions under various license arrangements and service agreements.

Between May 4, 2011 and July 14, 2011, five putative class action lawsuits were filed in Santa Clara Superior Court and Alameda Superior Court in California. On September 12, 2011, the cases were consolidated into In Re High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation ("HTEAL") pending in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division. In the consolidated complaint, Plaintiffs alleged that Adobe, along with Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm and Pixar, agreed not to recruit each other's employees in violation of Federal and state antitrust laws. Plaintiffs claim the alleged agreements suppressed employee compensation and deprived employees of career opportunities. Plaintiffs seek injunctive relief, monetary damages, treble damages, costs and attorneys fees. All defendants deny the allegations and that they engaged in any wrongdoing of any kind. On October 24, 2013, the court certified a class of all persons who worked in the technical, creative, and/or research and development fields on a salaried basis in the United States for one or more of the following: (a) Apple from March 2005 through December 2009; (b) Adobe from May 2005 through December 2009; (c) Google from March 2005 through December 2009; (d) Intel from March 2005 through December 2009; (e) Intuit from June 2007 through December 2009; (f) Lucasfilm from January 2005 through December 2009; or (g) Pixar from January 2005 through December 2009, excluding retail employees, corporate officers, members of the boards of directors, and senior executives of all defendants. During the first quarter of fiscal 2015, the parties reached an agreement to settle the litigation. In March 2015, the court granted preliminary approval of the settlement and on September 2, 2015, the court granted final approval of the settlement. We expect to incur no additional losses associated with this matter.

In addition to intellectual property disputes, we are subject to legal proceedings, claims and investigations in the ordinary course of business, including claims relating to commercial, employment and other matters. Some of these disputes and legal proceedings may include speculative claims for substantial or indeterminate amounts of damages. We consider all claims on a quarterly basis in accordance with GAAP and based on known facts assess whether potential losses are considered reasonably possible, probable and estimable. Based upon this assessment, we then evaluate disclosure requirements and whether to accrue for such claims in our financial statements. This determination is then reviewed and discussed with the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors and our independent registered public accounting firm.

We make a provision for a liability when it is both probable that a liability has been incurred and the amount of the loss can be reasonably estimated. These provisions are reviewed at least quarterly and adjusted to reflect the impacts of negotiations, settlements, rulings, advice of legal counsel and other information and events pertaining to a particular case. Unless otherwise specifically disclosed in this note, we have determined that no provision for liability nor disclosure is required related to any claim against us because: (a) there is not a reasonable possibility that a loss exceeding amounts already recognized (if any) may be incurred with respect to such claim; (b) a reasonably possible loss or range of loss cannot be estimated; or (c) such estimate is immaterial.

All legal costs associated with litigation are expensed as incurred. Litigation is inherently unpredictable. However, we believe that we have valid defenses with respect to the legal matters pending against us. It is possible, nevertheless, that our consolidated financial position, cash flows or results of operations could be negatively affected by an unfavorable resolution of one or more of such proceedings, claims or investigations.

In connection with our anti-piracy efforts, conducted both internally and through organizations such as the Business Software Alliance, from time to time we undertake litigation against alleged copyright infringers. Such lawsuits may lead to counter-claims alleging improper use of litigation or violation of other laws. We believe we have valid defenses with respect to such counter-claims; however, it is possible that our consolidated financial position, cash flows or results of operations could be negatively affected in any particular period by the resolution of one or more of these counter-claims.

ITEM 4.  MINE SAFETY DISCLOSURES

Not applicable.

PART II

ITEM 5.  MARKET FOR REGISTRANT'S COMMON EQUITY, RELATED STOCKHOLDER MATTERS AND ISSUER PURCHASES OF EQUITY SECURITIES

Market Information for Common Stock

Our common stock is traded on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol "ADBE." The following table sets forth the high and low sales price per share of our common stock for the periods indicated.

Stockholders

According to the records of our transfer agent, there were 1,215 holders of record of our common stock on January 15, 2016 . Because many of such shares are held by brokers and other institutions on behalf of stockholders, we are unable to estimate the total number of stockholders represented by these record holders.

Dividends

We did not declare or pay any cash dividends on our common stock during fiscal 2015 or fiscal 2014 . Under the terms of our credit agreement and lease agreements, we are not prohibited from paying cash dividends unless payment would trigger an event of default or one currently exists. We do not anticipate paying any cash dividends in the foreseeable future.

Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

Below is a summary of stock repurchases for the three months ended November 27, 2015 . See Note 13 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for information regarding our stock repurchase programs.

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ITEM 6.  SELECTED FINANCIAL DATA

The following selected consolidated financial data (presented in thousands, except per share amounts and employee data) is derived from our Consolidated Financial Statements. As our operating results are not necessarily indicative of future operating results, this data should be read in conjunction with the Consolidated Financial Statements and notes thereto, and with Item 7, Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.

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ITEM 7.  MANAGEMENT'S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

The following discussion should be read in conjunction with our Consolidated Financial Statements and Notes thereto.

ACQUISITIONS

During fiscal 2015, we completed our acquisition of privately held Fotolia, a leading marketplace for royalty-free photos, images, graphics and HD videos, for $807.5 million . During fiscal 2015, we integrated Fotolia into our Digital Media reportable segment.

During fiscal 2013, we completed our acquisitions of privately held Neolane, a leader in cross-channel campaign management technology for $616.7 million , and privately held Behance, an online social media platform to showcase and discover creative work for $111.1 million . During fiscal 2013, we integrated Neolane and Behance into our Digital Marketing and Digital Media reportable segments, respectively.

We also completed other immaterial business acquisitions during the fiscal years presented. Pro forma information has not been presented for any of our fiscal 2015, 2014 and 2013 acquisitions as the impact to our Consolidated Financial Statements was not material.

See Note 2 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for further information regarding these acquisitions.

CRITICAL ACCOUNTING POLICIES AND ESTIMATES

In preparing our Consolidated Financial Statements in accordance with GAAP and pursuant to the rules and regulations of the SEC, we make assumptions, judgments and estimates that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenue and expenses, and related disclosures of contingent assets and liabilities. We base our assumptions, judgments and estimates on historical experience and various other factors that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances. Actual results could differ materially from these estimates under different assumptions or conditions. On a regular basis, we evaluate our assumptions, judgments and estimates. We also discuss our critical accounting policies and estimates with the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors.

We believe that the assumptions, judgments and estimates involved in the accounting for revenue recognition, business combinations, goodwill impairment and income taxes have the greatest potential impact on our Consolidated Financial Statements. These areas are key components of our results of operations and are based on complex rules requiring us to make judgments and estimates, so we consider these to be our critical accounting policies. Historically, our assumptions, judgments and estimates relative to our critical accounting policies have not differed materially from actual results.

Revenue Recognition

Our revenue is derived from the licensing of subscription, perpetual and time-based software products, associated software maintenance and support plans, non-software related hosted services, consulting services, training and technical support.

We recognize revenue when all four revenue recognition criteria have been met: persuasive evidence of an arrangement exists, we have delivered the product or performed the service, the fee is fixed or determinable and collection is probable. Determining whether and when some of these criteria have been satisfied often involves assumptions and judgments that can have a significant impact on the timing and amount of revenue we report. 

We enter into multiple element revenue arrangements in which a customer may purchase a combination of software, upgrades, maintenance and support, hosted services and consulting.

For our software and software-related multiple element arrangements, we must: (1) determine whether and when each element has been delivered; (2) determine whether undelivered products or services are essential to the functionality of the delivered products and services; (3) determine the fair value of each undelivered element using vendor-specific objective evidence ("VSOE"); and (4) allocate the total price among the various elements. VSOE of fair value is used to allocate a portion of the price to the undelivered elements and the residual method is used to allocate the remaining portion to the delivered elements. Absent VSOE, revenue is deferred until the earlier of the point at which VSOE of fair value exists for any undelivered element or until all elements of the arrangement have been delivered. However, if the only undelivered element is maintenance and support, the entire arrangement fee is recognized ratably over the performance period. Changes in assumptions or judgments or changes to the elements in a software arrangement could cause a material increase or decrease in the amount of revenue that we report in a particular period.

We determine VSOE for each element based on historical stand-alone sales to third parties or from the stated renewal rate for the elements contained in the initial arrangement. In determining VSOE, we require that a substantial majority of the selling prices for a product or service fall within a reasonably narrow pricing range.

We have established VSOE for our software maintenance and support services, custom software development services, con sulting services and training, when such services are sold optionally with software licenses.

For multiple-element arrangements containing our non-software services, we must: (1) determine whether and when each element has been delivered; (2) determine the fair value of each element using the selling price hierarchy of VSOE of selling price, third-party evidence ("TPE") of selling price or best-estimated selling price ("BESP"), as applicable; and (3) allocate the total price among the various elements based on the relative selling price method.

For multiple-element arrangements that contain both software and non-software elements, we allocate revenue to software or software-related elements as a group and any non-software elements separately based on the selling price hierarchy. We determine the selling price for each deliverable using VSOE of selling price, if it exists, or TPE of selling price. If neither VSOE nor TPE of selling price exist for a deliverable, we use BESP. Once revenue is allocated to software or software-related elements as a group, we recognize revenue in conformance with software revenue accounting guidance. Revenue is recognized when revenue recognition criteria are met for each element.

We are generally unable to establish VSOE or TPE for non-software elements and as such, we use BESP. BESP is generally used for offerings that are not typically sold on a stand-alone basis or for new or highly customized offerings. We determine BESP for a product or service by considering multiple factors including, but not limited to, major product groupings, geographies, market conditions, competitive landscape, internal costs, gross margin objectives and pricing practices. Pricing practices taken into consideration include historic contractually stated prices, volume discounts where applicable and our price lists. We must estimate certain royalty revenue amounts due to the timing of securing information from our customers. While we believe we can make reliable estimates regarding these matters, these estimates are inherently subjective. Accordingly, our assumptions and judgments regarding future products and services as well as our estimates of royalty revenue could differ from actual events, thus materially impacting our financial position and results of operations.

Product revenue is recognized when the above criteria are met. We reduce the revenue recognized for estimated future returns, price protection and rebates at the time the related revenue is recorded. In determining our estimate for returns and in accordance with our internal policy regarding global channel inventory which is used to determine the level of product held by our distributors on which we have recognized revenue, we rely upon historical data, the estimated amount of product inventory in our distribution channel, the rate at which our product sells through to the end user, product plans and other factors. Our estimated provisions for returns can vary from what actually occurs. Product returns may be more or less than what was estimated. The amount of inventory in the channel could be different than what is estimated. Our estimate of the rate of sell-through for product in the channel could be different than what actually occurs. There could be a delay in the release of our products. These factors and unanticipated changes in the economic and industry environment could make our return estimates differ from actual returns, thus impacting our financial position and results of operations.

In the future, actual returns and price protection may exceed our estimates as unsold products in the distribution channels are exposed to rapid changes in consumer preferences, market conditions or technological obsolescence due to new platforms, product updates or competing products. While we believe we can make reliable estimates regarding these matters, these estimates are inherently subjective. Accordingly, if our estimates change, our returns and price protection reserves would change, which would impact the total net revenue we report.

We recognize revenue for hosted services that are based on a committed number of transactions ratably beginning on the date the services are first made available to the customer and continuing through the end of the contractual service term. Over-usage fees, and fees billed based on the actual number of transactions from which we capture data, are billed in accordance with contract terms as these fees are incurred. We record amounts that have been invoiced in accounts receivable and in deferred revenue or revenue, depending on whether the revenue recognition criteria have been met.

Our consulting revenue is recognized on a time and materials basis and is measured monthly based on input measures, such as on hours incurred to date compared to total estimated hours to complete, with consideration given to output measures, such as contract milestones, when applicable.

Business Combinations

We allocate the purchase price of acquired companies to the tangible and intangible assets acquired and liabilities assumed, assumed equity awards, as well as to in-process research and development based upon their estimated fair values at the acquisition

date. The purchase price allocation process requires management to make significant estimates and assumptions, especially at the acquisition date with respect to intangible assets, deferred revenue obligations and equity assumed. 

Although we believe the assumptions and estimates we have made are reasonable, they are based in part on historical experience and information obtained from the management of the acquired companies and are inherently uncertain. Examples of critical estimates in valuing certain of the intangible assets we have acquired or may acquire in the future include but are not limited to:

In connection with the purchase price allocations for our acquisitions, we estimate the fair value of the deferred revenue obligations assumed. The estimated fair value of the support obligations is determined utilizing a cost build-up approach. The cost build-up approach determines fair value by estimating the costs related to fulfilling the obligations plus a normal profit margin. The estimated costs to fulfill the obligations are based on the historical costs related to fulfilling the obligations.

In connection with the purchase price allocations for our acquisitions, we estimate the fair value of the equity awards assumed. The estimated fair value is determined utilizing a modified binomial option pricing model which assumes employees exercise their stock options when the share price exceeds the strike price by a certain dollar threshold. If the acquired company has significant historical data on their employee's exercise behavior, then this threshold is determined based upon the acquired company's history. Otherwise, our historical exercise experience is used to determine the exercise threshold. Zero coupon yields implied by U.S. Treasury issuances, implied volatility for our common stock and our historical forfeiture rate are other inputs to the binomial model.

Unanticipated events and circumstances may occur which may affect the accuracy or validity of such assumptions, estimates or actual results.

Goodwill Impairment

We complete our goodwill impairment test on an annual basis, during the second quarter of our fiscal year, or more frequently, if changes in facts and circumstances indicate that an impairment in the value of goodwill recorded on our balance sheet may exist. In order to estimate the fair value of goodwill, we typically estimate future revenue, consider market factors and estimate our future cash flows. Based on these key assumptions, judgments and estimates, we determine whether we need to record an impairment charge to reduce the value of the asset carried on our balance sheet to its estimated fair value. Assumptions, judgments and estimates about future values are complex and often subjective. They can be affected by a variety of factors, including external factors such as industry and economic trends, and internal factors such as changes in our business strategy or our internal forecasts. Although we believe the ass umptions, judgme nts and estimates we have made in the past have been reasonable and appropriate, different assumptions, judgments and estimates could materially affect our reported financial results.

We completed our annual impairment test in the second quarter of fiscal 2015 and determined there was no impairment. The results of our annual impairment test indicate that the fair values of our reporting units are significantly in excess of their carrying values.

Accounting for Income Taxes

We use the asset and liability method of accounting for income taxes. Under this method, income tax expense is recognized for the amount of taxes payable or refundable for the current year. In addition, deferred tax assets and liabilities are recognized for the expected future tax consequences of temporary differences between the financial reporting and tax bases of assets and liabilities, and for operating losses and tax credit carryforwards. Management must make assumptions, judgments and estimates to determine our current provision for income taxes and also our deferred tax assets and liabilities and any valuation allowance to be recorded against a deferred tax asset.

Our assumptions, judgments and estimates relative to the current provision for income taxes take into account current tax laws, our interpretation of current tax laws and possible outcomes of current and future audits conducted by foreign and domestic

tax authorities. We have established reserves for income taxes to address potential exposures involving tax positions that could be challenged by tax authorities. In addition, we are subject to the continual examination of our income tax returns by the IRS and other domestic and foreign tax authorities, including a current examination by the IRS of our fiscal 2010, 2011 and 2012 tax returns. We expect future examinations to focus on our intercompany transfer pricing practices as well as other matters. We regularly assess the likelihood of outcomes resulting from these examinations to determine the adequacy of our provision for income taxes and have reserved for potential adjustments that may result from the current examinations. We believe such estimates to be reasonable; however, the final determination of any of these examinations could significantly impact the amounts provided for income taxes in our Consolidated Financial Statements.

Our assumptions, judgments and estimates relative to the value of a deferred tax asset take into account predictions of the amount and category of future taxable income, such as income from operations or capital gains income. Actual operating results and the underlying amount and category of income in future years could render our current assumptions, judgments and estimates of recoverable net deferred taxes inaccurate. Any of the assumptions, judgments and estimates mentioned above could cause our actual income tax obligations to differ from our estimates, thus materially impacting our financial position and results of operations.

We are a United States-based multinational company subject to tax in multiple U.S. and foreign tax jurisdictions. A significant portion of our foreign earnings for the current fiscal year were earned by our Irish subsidiaries. In addition to providing for U.S. income taxes on earnings from the United States, we provide for U.S. income taxes on the earnings of foreign subsidiaries unless the subsidiaries' earnings are considered permanently reinvested outside the United States. While we do not anticipate changing our intention regarding permanently reinvested earnings, if certain foreign earnings previously treated as permanently reinvested are repatriated, the related U.S. tax liability may be reduced by any foreign income taxes paid on these earnings.

Our income tax expense has differed from the tax computed at the U.S. federal statutory income tax rate due primarily to discrete items and to earnings considered as permanently reinvested in foreign operations. Unanticipated changes in our tax rates could affect our future results of operations. Our future effective tax rates could be unfavorably affected by changes in the tax rates in jurisdictions where our income is earned, by changes in, or our interpretation of, tax rules and regulations in the jurisdictions in which we do business, by unanticipated decreases in the amount of earnings in countries with low statutory tax rates, or by changes in the valuation of our deferred tax assets and liabilities. The United States, countries in the European Union and other countries where we do business have been considering changes in relevant tax, accounting and other laws, regulations and interpretations, including changes to tax laws applicable to corporate multinationals such as Adobe. These potential changes could adversely affect our effective tax rates or result in other costs to us.

Recent Accounting Pronouncements

On November 20, 2015, the Financial Accounting Standards Board ("FASB") issued ASU No. 2015-17, Balance Sheet Classification of Deferred Taxes, requiring all deferred tax assets and liabilities, and any related valuation allowance, to be classified as non-current on the balance sheet. The classification change for all deferred taxes as non-current simplifies entities' processes as it eliminates the need to separately identify the net current and net non-current deferred tax asset or liability in each jurisdiction and allocate valuation allowances. We elected to prospectively adopt the accounting standard in the beginning of our fourth quarter of fiscal 2015. Prior periods in our Consolidated Financial Statements were not retrospectively adjusted.

Recent Accounting Pronouncements Not Yet Effective

On May 28, 2014, the FASB issued ASU No. 2014-09, Revenue from Contracts with Customers, requiring an entity to recognize the amount of revenue to which it expects to be entitled for the transfer of promised goods or services to customers. The updated standard will replace most existing revenue recognition guidance in U.S. GAAP when it becomes effective and permits the use of either the retrospective or cumulative effect transition method. In August 2015, the FASB issued ASU No. 2015-14, Revenue from Contracts with Customers: Deferral of the Effective Date, which deferred the effective date of the new revenue standard for periods beginning after December 15, 2016 to December 15, 2017, with early adoption permitted but not earlier than the original effective date. Accordingly, the updated standard is effective for us in the first quarter of fiscal 2019. We have not yet selected a transition method and we are currently evaluating the effect that the updated standard will have on our Consolidated Financial Statements and related disclosures.

With the exception of the new revenue standard discussed above, there have been no new accounting pronouncements not yet effective that have significance, or potential significance, to our Consolidated Financial Statements.

RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

Overview of 2015

For fiscal 2015, we reported financial results consistent with the continued execution of our long-term plans for our two strategic growth areas, Digital Media and Digital Marketing, while continuing to market and license a broad portfolio of products and solutions.

In our Digital Media segment, we are a market leader with Adobe Creative Cloud, our subscription-based offering for creating and publishing content and applications. Creative Cloud, first delivered in May 2012, is our next-generation offering that supersedes our historical model of licensing our creative products with perpetual licenses. Creative Cloud delivers value through more frequent product updates, storage and access to user files stored in the cloud with syncing of files across users' machines, access to marketplace, social and community-based features with our Adobe Stock and Behance services, app creation capabilities and lower entry point pricing for cost-sensitive customers.

We offer Creative Cloud for individuals and for teams, and we enable larger enterprise customers to acquire Creative Cloud capabilities through Enterprise Term License Agreements ("ETLAs"). The three Creative Cloud offerings address the multiple routes to market we use to license our creative software to targeted customers. Adoption of Creative Cloud has transformed our business model, and we continue to expect this to drive higher long-term revenue growth through an expansion of our customer base by acquiring new users through a lower cost of entry and delivery of additional features and value, as well as keeping existing customers current on our latest release. We have also built out a marketplace for Creative Cloud subscribers, most notably with our acquisition of Fotolia in January of 2015, to enable the delivery and purchase of stock assets in our new service called Adobe Stock. Overall, our strategy with Creative Cloud is designed to enable us to increase our revenue with users, attract more new customers, and shift our revenue to be more recurring and predictable as revenue is recognized ratably.

We continue to implement strategies that will accelerate awareness, consideration and purchase of subscriptions to our Creative Cloud offering. These strategies include increasing the value Creative Cloud users receive such as offering new mobile applications, as well as targeted promotions and offers that attract past customers and potential users to try out and ultimately subscribe to Creative Cloud. Because of the shift towards Creative Cloud subscriptions and ETLAs, perpetual revenue for older Creative products has continued to decline, and revenue from perpetual licensing of these products was immaterial for fiscal 2015.

We are also a market leader with our Document Cloud offerings built around our Acrobat family of products, the Adobe Reader DC and a set of integrated cloud-based document services, including Adobe eSign. Adobe Acrobat provides reliable creation and exchange of electronic documents, regardless of platform or application source type. In the second quarter of fiscal 2015, we delivered the next generation of this offering called Adobe Document Cloud, which we believe enhances the way people manage critical documents at home, in the office and across devices. Adobe Document Cloud includes all-new Adobe Acrobat DC and Adobe eSign releases and a set of integrated services enable users to create, review, approve, sign and track documents whether on a desktop or mobile device. Acrobat DC, with a touch-enabled user interface, is licensed both through subscription and perpetual pricing.

Annualized Recurring Revenue ("ARR") is currently our key performance metric to assess the health and trajectory of our overall Digital Media segment. ARR should be viewed independently of revenue, deferred revenue and unbilled deferred revenue as ARR is a performance metric and is not intended to be combined with any of these items. We plan to adjust our reported ARR on an annual basis to reflect any material exchange rates changes. We calculate ARR as follows:

Total Creative ARR exiting fiscal 2015 was $2.60 billion , up from $1.61 billion at the end of fiscal 2014. We exited fiscal 2015 with 6.167 million paid Creative Cloud subscriptions, up 78% from 3.458 million at the end of fiscal 2014.

Our Digital Media segment also includes our Document Cloud products and solutions, including our newly released Acrobat DC product which helped grow Document Cloud ARR to $397 million exiting fiscal 2015, up from $265 million at the end of fiscal 2014.

Total Digital Media ARR grew to approximately $3.00 billion at the end of fiscal 2015, up from $1.88 billion at the end of fiscal 2014, demonstrating the progress we have made with the transformation of our business to a more recurring, ratable and predictable revenue model. Our reported ARR results in fiscal 2015 are based on currency rates set at the start of fiscal 2015 and held constant throughout the year. Revaluing our ending ARR for fiscal 2015 using currency rates at the beginning of fiscal 2016, our Digital Media ARR at the end of fiscal 2015 would be $2.88 billion or approximately $114 million lower than the ARR reported above.

We are a market leader in the fast-growing category addressed by our Digital Marketing segment. Our Adobe Marketing Cloud now includes eight solutions which address the expanding needs of marketers. In fiscal 2015, we achieved record Marketing Cloud revenue of $1.36 billion , which represents 16% year-over-year revenue growth. In addition, we drove strong demand and bookings growth for our Marketing Cloud solutions, which we expect will positively benefit revenue growth in future quarters.

Financial Performance Summary for Fiscal 2015

Revenue (dollars in millions)

Our subscription revenue is comprised primarily of fees we charge for our subscription and hosted service offerings including Creative Cloud and certain of our Adobe Marketing Cloud and Document Cloud services. We recognize subscription revenue ratably over the term of agreements with our customers, beginning with commencement of the service. We expect our subscription revenue will continue to increase as a result of our investments in new software-as-a-service ("SaaS") and subscription models.

We have the following reportable segments-Digital Media, Digital Marketing and Print and Publishing. Subscription revenue by reportable segment for fiscal 2015 , 2014 and 2013 is as follows (dollars in millions):

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Our services and support revenue is comprised of consulting, training and maintenance and support, primarily related to the licensing of our enterprise, developer and platform products and the sale of our hosted Adobe Marketing Cloud services. Our support revenue also includes technical support and developer support to partners and developer organizations related to our desktop products. Our maintenance and support offerings, which entitle customers to receive desktop product upgrades and enhancements or technical support, depending on the offering, are generally recognized ratably over the term of the arrangement.

Segments

In fiscal 2015 , we categorized our products into the following reportable segments:

Segment Information (dollars in millions)

Fiscal 2015 Revenue Compared to Fiscal 2014 Revenue

Digital Media

Revenue from Digital Media increased $492.0 million during fiscal 2015 as compared to fiscal 2014, primarily driven by increases in revenue associated with our creative offerings due to continued strong adoption of Creative Cloud. Document Cloud revenue remained stable during fiscal 2015 as compared to fiscal 2014.

Creative revenue, which includes our Creative Cloud and perpetual creative offerings, increased during fiscal 2015 as compared to fiscal 2014, primarily due to the increase in subscription revenue associated with our Creative Cloud offerings driven by the increase in number of paid Creative Cloud team, individual and enterprise subscriptions. The increases associated with our creative products were offset in part by expected declines in revenue associated with our perpetual creative offerings.

Document Cloud revenue, which includes our Acrobat product family, remained stable during fiscal 2015 as compared to the year ago period, as increases in revenue associated with eSign and our Document Cloud subscription offering were offset by decreases in revenue associated with our Document Cloud perpetual license offerings. Driving the increase in our Document Cloud subscription revenue was the adoption of our cloud offering through subscriptions and ETLAs.

Digital Marketing

Revenue from Digital Marketing increased $153.7 million during fiscal 2015 as compared to fiscal 2014 primarily due to continued revenue growth associated with our Adobe Marketing Cloud, which increased 16% as compared with the year-ago period. Contributing to this increase was the continued adoption of our AEM term-based offering, and to a lesser extent, increases in revenue associated with Adobe Campaign, Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target.

Print and Publishing

Revenue from Print and Publishing remained stable during fiscal 2015 as compared to fiscal 2014.

Fiscal 2014 Revenue Compared to Fiscal 2013 Revenue

Digital Media

Revenue from Digital Media decreased slightly during fiscal 2014 as compared to fiscal 2013. The slight decrease was primarily driven by declines in revenue associated with our perpetual creative offerings, distribution of third-party software downloads and Hobbyist products launched in fiscal 2013. With respect to the Hobbyist product revenue decline, we began actively migrating customers to our Creative Cloud Photography Plan in fiscal 2014, for which revenue is recognized ratably. Largely offsetting these decreases were increases in Creative Cloud and Document Cloud revenue.

Creative revenue, which includes our Creative Cloud, Creative Suite editions and CS point products, decreased slightly during fiscal 2014 as compared to fiscal 2013 due to decreases in revenue from CS point products and Creative Suite editions, as we discontinued the general availability of our perpetually licensed CS6 products in the second quarter of fiscal 2014. Also contributing to the decline in creative revenue were decreases in revenue associated with the distribution of third-party software downloads and Hobbyist products launched in fiscal 2013. Decreases were largely offset by increases in revenue from subscriptions and ETLAs and revenue from our Digital Publishing Suite.

Document Cloud revenue, which includes our Acrobat product family, increased during fiscal 2014 as compared to fiscal 2013 primarily due to increases in our Document Cloud subscription revenue. Increases were slightly offset by decreases due to our continued shift to ETLAs.

Digital Marketing

Revenue from Digital Marketing increased $126.3 million during fiscal 2014 as compared to fiscal 2013 due to continued revenue growth associated with our Adobe Marketing Cloud, which increased 15% during fiscal 2014 as compared to fiscal 2013. Contributing to this increase was Adobe Campaign and the strong adoption of AEM.

Print and Publishing

Revenue from Print and Publishing decreased during fiscal 2014 as compared to fiscal 2013 primarily due to decreases in legacy product revenue and increased ETLAs for certain products in this group.

Geographical Information (dollars in millions)

Fiscal 2015 Revenue by Geography Compared to Fiscal 2014 Revenue by Geography

Revenue increased in the Americas and EMEA during fiscal 2015 as compared to fiscal 2014 while revenue in APAC remained stable during fiscal 2015 compared with the year-ago period. Revenue in the Americas and EMEA increased primarily due to growth in Digital Media and Digital Marketing revenue. The overall increase in EMEA revenue was slightly offset by declines due to strengthening of the U.S. Dollar against the Euro, British Pound and other EMEA currencies in fiscal 2015. Within the Americas and EMEA, fluctuations in revenue by reportable segment were attributable to the factors noted in the segment information above.

Revenue in APAC remained stable during fiscal 2015 as compared to fiscal 2014 due to an increase in Digital Marketing revenue offset by a decrease in Digital Media revenue.The increase in Digital Marketing revenue in APAC was attributable to the factors noted in the segment information above. The decline in Digital Media revenue was primarily due to expected decreases in perpetual license revenue, partially offset by increases in subscription revenue during fiscal 2015 as compared to fiscal 2014.

Fiscal 2014 Revenue by Geography Compared to Fiscal 2013 Revenue by Geography

Overall revenue increased in the Americas and EMEA during fiscal 2014 as compared to fiscal 2013. Revenue in the Americas increased due to growth in Digital Media and Digital Marketing revenue. Revenue in EMEA increased primarily due to growth in Digital Marketing revenue. Digital Media and Print and Publishing revenue in EMEA remained relatively stable. Despite strengthening of the U.S. Dollar against the Euro and the British Pound during the latter part of fiscal 2014, the overall weakening of the U.S. Dollar against these currencies during fiscal 2014 also caused revenue in EMEA to increase as compared to fiscal 2013. Within the Americas and EMEA, the fluctuations in revenue by reportable segment were attributable to the factors noted in the segment information above.

Revenue in APAC decreased during fiscal 2014 as compared to fiscal 2013 primarily as a result of decreases in Digital Media revenue due to slower adoption of Creative Cloud in Japan compared to other countries and the strengthening of the U.S. Dollar against the Japanese Yen and other Asian currencies. Digital Marketing and Print and Publishing revenue in APAC remained relatively stable during fiscal 2014 compared to fiscal 2013.

Included in the overall change in revenue for fiscal 2015 and fiscal 2014 were impacts associated with foreign currency as shown below. Our currency hedging program is used to mitigate a portion of the foreign currency impact to revenue.

During fiscal 2015, the U.S. Dollar strengthened against the Euro, British Pound, Japanese Yen and other Asian currencies causing revenue in EMEA and APAC measured in U.S. Dollar equivalents to decrease as compared to fiscal 2014. These decreases were partially offset by hedging gains from our EMEA currencies and Japanese Yen hedging programs during fiscal 2015.

During fiscal 2014, the U.S. Dollar strengthened against the Japanese Yen and other Asian currencies causing revenue in APAC measured in U.S. Dollar equivalents to decrease compared to fiscal 2013. This decrease was offset in part by the favorable impact to revenue measured in EMEA currencies as the U.S. Dollar weakened against the Euro and the British Pound for the majority of fiscal 2014. Our EMEA and Yen currency hedging programs resulted in hedging gains during fiscal 2014.

See Note 18 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for further geographic information.

Product Backlog

The actual amount of product backlog at any particular time may not be a meaningful indicator of future business prospects. Shippable backlog is comprised of unfulfilled orders, excluding those associated with new product releases, those pending credit review and those not shipped due to the application of our global inventory policy. We had minimal shippable backlog at the end of the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015 and fiscal 2014 . We expect that our shippable backlog will continue to be insignificant in future periods.

Deferred revenue on our consolidated balance sheet does not represent the total contract value of annual or multi-year, non-cancelable commercial subscription agreements or government contracts with fiscal funding clauses. Unbilled deferred revenue represents expected future billings which are contractually committed under our existing subscription, SaaS and managed services agreements that have not been invoiced and are not recorded in deferred revenue within our financial statements. Our presentation of unbilled deferred revenue backlog may differ from that of other companies in the industry. As of November 27, 2015 , we had unbilled deferred revenue backlog of approximately $2.89 billion of which approximately 40% to 50% is not reasonably expected to be billed during fiscal 2016. As of November 28, 2014 , we had unbilled deferred revenue backlog of approximately $2.19 billion , which has been updated to include $433 million of individual annual subscriptions which were not captured in the prior year due to current year enhancements to our management reporting system.

We expect that the amount of unbilled deferred revenue backlog will change from period to period due to certain factors, including the timing and duration of large customer subscription, SaaS and managed service agreements, varying billing cycles of these agreements, the timing of customer renewals, the timing of when unbilled deferred revenue backlog is to be billed, changes in customer financial circumstances and foreign currency fluctuations. Additionally, the unbilled deferred revenue backlog for multi-year subscription agreements that are billed annually is typically higher at the beginning of the contract period, lower prior to renewal and typically increases when the agreement is renewed. Accordingly, fluctuations in unbilled deferred revenue backlog may not be a reliable indicator of future business prospects and the related revenue associated with these contractual commitments.

Cost of Revenue (dollars in millions)

Subscription

Cost of subscription revenue consists of third-party royalties and expenses related to operating our network infrastructure, including depreciation expenses and operating lease payments associated with computer equipment, data center costs, salaries and related expenses of network operations, implementation, account management and technical support personnel, amortization of intangible assets and allocated overhead. We enter into contracts with third parties for the use of their data center facilities and our data center costs largely consist of amounts we pay to these third parties for rack space, power and similar items. 

Cost of subscription revenue increased due to the following:

Cost of subscription revenue increased during fiscal 2015 as compared to fiscal 2014 primarily due to data center costs, compensation and related benefits, royalty cost, depreciation expense, and purchased intangible amortization. Data center costs increased primarily due to higher transaction volumes in our Adobe Marketing Cloud and Creative Cloud services. Depreciation expense increased primarily due to higher capital expenditures in recent periods as we continue to invest in our network and data center infrastructure to support the growth of our subscription and hosted services business. Royalty cost increased primarily due to increases in subscriptions and downloads of our SaaS offerings and increased royalties due to the introduction of our stock photography offering from our acquisition of Fotolia in fiscal 2015. Amortization of purchased intangibles increased primarily due to amortization of intangibles acquired from our acquisition of Fotolia in fiscal 2015.

Cost of subscription revenue increased during fiscal 2014 as compared to fiscal 2013 primarily due to data center costs, compensation and related benefits, depreciation expense, and royalty cost. Data center costs increased primarily due to higher transaction volumes in our Adobe Marketing Cloud and Creative Cloud services. Compensation cost and related benefits increased primarily due to additional headcount in fiscal 2014, including from our acquisition of Neolane in the third quarter of fiscal 2013. Depreciation expense increased primarily due to higher capital expenditures as we continued to invest in our network and data center infrastructure to support the growth of our business. Royalty cost increased primarily due to increases in subscriptions and downloads of our SaaS offerings.

Product

Cost of product revenue includes product packaging, third-party royalties, excess and obsolete inventory, amortization related to localization costs, purchased intangibles and acquired rights to use technology and the costs associated with the manufacturing of our products.

Fluctuations in cost of product revenue are due to the following:

Cost of product revenue decreased during fiscal 2015 as compared to fiscal 2014 primarily due to decreases in excess and obsolete inventory, cost of sales and amortization of purchased intangibles, partially offset by an increase in royalty cost. The increase in royalty cost was driven by royalty payments related to our stock photography perpetual offering from our acquisition of Fotolia in fiscal 2015.

Cost of product revenue decreased during fiscal 2014 as compared to fiscal 2013 primarily due to decreases in amortization of purchased intangibles and technology license arrangements, cost of sales and royalty cost, slightly offset by an increase in excess and obsolete inventory. Amortization of purchased intangibles and technology license arrangements decreased as we entered into certain technology licensing arrangements for which payments of $26.5 million related to historical use of certain technology licensing arrangements were expensed as cost of product revenue during fiscal 2013. Cost of sales decreased due to decreases in the number of perpetual units sold and associated packaging costs as we continued to focus our development and sales efforts on Creative Cloud. Royalty cost decreased primarily due to decreases in revenue from our perpetual offerings. Excess and obsolete inventory increased as a result of changes in reserve requirements for CS6 shrink boxes as we discontinued the general availability of CS6 on a perpetual licensing basis.

Services and Support

Cost of services and support revenue is primarily comprised of employee-related costs and associated costs incurred to provide consulting services, training and product support.

Cost of services and support revenue increased in all periods presented due to increases in compensation and related benefits driven by additional headcount and third-party fees to support the increase in our professional services business.

Operating Expenses (dollars in millions)

_________________________________________

(*)     Percentage is not meaningful.

(**)     Percentage is less than 1%.

Research and Development, Sales and Marketing and General and Administrative Expenses

Research and development and sales and marketing expenses increased slightly during fiscal 2015 as compared to fiscal 2014 primarily due to increases in compensation and related benefits associated with headcount. General and administrative expenses decreased slightly during fiscal 2015 as compared to fiscal 2014 primarily due to the reversal of a previously anticipated loss associated with the HTEAL proceedings, offset in part by increases in compensation and related benefits associated with headcount.

The increase in research and development and general and administrative expenses during fiscal 2014 as compared to fiscal 2013 was primarily due to increases in cash incentive and stock-based compensation. The increase in stock-based compensation was driven by a change in the vesting term for stock awards granted as part of our annual review process beginning in fiscal 2013, which decreased the term from four years to three years. The increase in sales and marketing expense during fiscal 2014 as compared to fiscal 2013 was primarily due to compensation and related benefits associated with additional headcount.

Research and Development

Research and development expenses consist primarily of salary and benefit expenses for software developers, contracted development efforts, related facilities costs and expenses associated with computer equipment used in software development.

We believe that investments in research and development, including the recruiting and hiring of software developers, are critical to remain competitive in the marketplace and are directly related to continued timely development of new and enhanced products, subscription and solution offerings. We will continue to focus on long-term opportunities available in our end markets and make significant investments in the development of our application, tool, subscription and service offerings.

Sales and Marketing

Sales and marketing expenses consist primarily of salary and benefit expenses, sales commissions, travel expenses and related facilities costs for our sales, marketing, order management and global supply chain management personnel. Sales and marketing expenses also include the costs of programs aimed at increasing revenue, such as advertising, trade shows, public relations and other market development programs.

General and Administrative

General and administrative expenses consist primarily of compensation and benefit expenses, travel expenses and related facilities costs for our finance, facilities, human resources, legal, information services and executive personnel. General and administrative expenses also include outside legal and accounting fees, provision for bad debts, expenses associated with computer equipment and software used in the administration of the business, charitable contributions and various forms of insurance.

The fluctuations in general and administrative expenses are due to the following:

The decrease in loss contingency during fiscal 2015 as compared to fiscal 2014 is due to the reversal of a previously anticipated loss associated with the HTEAL proceedings. See Note 15 of our Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements for further information regarding the HTEAL proceedings.

Restructuring and Other Charges

During the past several years, we have initiated various restructuring plans consisting of reductions in workforce and the consolidation of facilities to better align our resources around our business strategies. As of November 27, 2015 , we considered all our restructuring plans to be substantially complete. We continue to make cash outlays to settle obligations under these plans, however the current impact to our Consolidated Financial Statements is not material.

During fiscal 2015, we recorded immaterial credits and charges to our restructuring plans.

During fiscal 2014, in connection with our Fiscal 2014 Restructuring Plan, we recorded $19.4 million associated with termination benefits and closing redundant facilities. In connection with our Other Restructuring Plans, we recorded insignificant charges associated with closing redundant facilities.

During fiscal 2013, we sold land, building and other assets located in Waltham, Massachusetts for net proceeds of $24.3 million . Because the total carrying amount of these assets was $47.4 million at the time it was classified as held for sale, we recorded a write-down of $23.1 million during fiscal 2013.

Also during fiscal 2013, in connection with our Fiscal 2011 Restructuring Plan and Other Restructuring Plans, we recorded immaterial charges and credits associated with termination benefits and closing redundant facilities during the fiscal year.

See Note 10 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for further information regarding our restructuring plans.

Amortization of Purchased Intangibles

During the last several years, we have completed a number of business combinations and asset acquisitions. As a result of these acquisitions, we purchased intangible assets that are being amortized over their estimated useful lives ranging from one to fourteen years.     

Amortization expense increased during fiscal 2015 as compared to fiscal 2014 primarily due to amortization expense associated with intangible assets purchased through our acquisition of Fotolia in fiscal 2015, partially offset by the decrease in amortization expense associated with certain intangible assets purchased through our acquisition of Efficient Frontier and Day Software Holding AG that were fully amortized at the end of fiscal 2014.

Amortization expense remained stable during fiscal 2014 as compared to fiscal 2013.

Non-Operating Income (Expense), Net (dollars in millions)

_________________________________________

(*)     Percentage is not meaningful.

(**)     Percentage is less than 1%.

Interest and Other Income (Expense), Net

Interest and other income (expense), net consists primarily of interest earned on cash, cash equivalents and short-term fixed income investments. Interest and other income (expense), net also includes gains and losses on fixed income investments and foreign exchange gains and losses other than any gains recorded to revenue from our hedging programs.

Interest and other income (expense), net increased in fiscal 2015 as compared to fiscal 2014 primarily due to the gain on the sale of certain property assets and, to a lesser extent, an increased average investment balance and average interest rate. See Note 6 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for further details regarding the sale of our property assets.

Interest and other income (expense), net increased in fiscal 2014 as compared to fiscal 2013 primarily due to decreased foreign currency losses and increased realized gains on fixed income investments. The increases were partially offset by decreased interest income on our investment in lease receivable due to the purchase of the East and West Towers of our corporate headquarter offices during fiscal 2014. See Note 15 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for further details regarding our investment in lease receivables.

Interest Expense

Interest expense primarily represents interest associated with our senior notes and interest rate swaps. Interest on our senior notes is payable semi-annually, in arrears, on February 1 and August 1. Floating interest payments on the interest rate swaps are paid monthly. The fixed-rate interest receivable on the swaps is received semi-annually concurrent with the senior notes interest payments.

Interest expense increased during fiscal 2015 as compared to fiscal 2014 primarily due to the increase in total debt, partially offset by the favorable impact of the interest rate swaps.

Interest expense decreased during fiscal 2014 as compared to fiscal 2013 due to the favorable impact of the interest rate swaps. See Notes 5 and 13 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for further details regarding our interest rate swaps.

Investment Gains (Losses), Net

Investment gains (losses), net consists principally of realized gains or losses from the sale of marketable equity investments, other-than-temporary declines in the value of marketable and non-marketable equity securities and unrealized holding gains and losses associated with our deferred compensation plan assets (classified as trading securities) and gains and losses associated with our direct and indirect investments in privately held companies.

During fiscal 2015, total investment gains (losses), net remained stable compared to fiscal 2014.

During fiscal 2014, total investment gains (losses), net increased to net gains primarily due to write-downs for other-than-temporary declines in value of our direct investments in privately held companies in fiscal 2013 that did not recur in fiscal 2014, offset in part by a decrease in net gains related to our trading securities.

Provision for Income Taxes (dollars in millions)

Our effective tax rate increased by approximately two percentage points during fiscal 2015 as compared to fiscal 2014. The increase was primarily due to tax costs associated with licensing acquired company assets to Adobe's trading companies. The increase was partially offset by tax benefits related to the reinstatement of the federal research and development tax credit in December 2014. The reinstatement of the credit was retroactive to January 1, 2014.

Our effective tax rate increased by approximately seven percentage points during fiscal 2014 as compared to fiscal 2013. The increase was primarily due to the expiration of the federal research and development tax credit in December 2013 and stronger domestic profits for fiscal 2014.

In December 2015, the United States Congress passed the permanent extension of the federal research and development tax credit. As a result, we expect that our income tax provision for the first quarter of fiscal 2016 will include a discrete tax benefit for the 2015 credit which will reduce our effective tax rate for the quarter and, to a lesser extent, the effective annual tax rate.

We are a United States-based multinational company subject to tax in multiple U.S. and foreign tax jurisdictions. A significant portion of our foreign earnings for the current fiscal year were earned by our Irish subsidiaries. In addition to providing for U.S. income taxes on earnings from the United States, we provide for U.S. income taxes on the earnings of foreign subsidiaries unless the subsidiaries' earnings are considered permanently reinvested outside the United States. While we do not anticipate changing our intention regarding permanently reinvested earnings, if certain foreign earnings previously treated as permanently reinvested are repatriated, the related U.S. tax liability may be reduced by any foreign income taxes paid on these earnings. Currently, there are a significant amount of foreign earnings upon which U.S. income taxes have not been provided. See Note 9 of our Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements for further information on our provision for income taxes.

Accounting for Uncertainty in Income Taxes

The gross liability for unrecognized tax benefits at November 27, 2015 was $258.7 million , exclusive of interest and penalties. If the total unrecognized tax benefits at November 27, 2015 were recognized in the future, $220.2 million of unrecognized tax benefits would decrease the effective tax rate, which is net of an estimated $38.5 million federal benefit related to deducting certain payments on future federal and state tax returns.

As of November 27, 2015 , the combined amount of accrued interest and penalties related to tax positions taken on our tax returns was approximately $27.8 million . This amount is included in non-current income taxes payable.

The timing of the resolution of income tax examinations is highly uncertain as are the amounts and timing of tax payments that are part of any audit settlement process. These events could cause large fluctuations in the balance sheet classification of current and non-current assets and liabilities. We believe that within the next 12 months, it is reasonably possible that either certain audits will conclude or statutes of limitations on certain income tax examination periods will expire, or both. Given the uncertainties described above, we can only determine a range of estimated potential decreases in underlying unrecognized tax benefits ranging from $0 to approximately $10 million .

LIQUIDITY AND CAPITAL RESOURCES