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Adobe appoints new CEO to succeed Narayen in December

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Adobe ( ADBE ) executive Anil Chakravarthy has been chosen to succeed CEO Shantanu Narayen, starting in his chief executive role this December with Narayen becoming executive chair.

Morning Brief Host Julie Hyman is joined by Yahoo Finance Breaking Business News Reporter Jake Conley and Interactive Brokers Chief Strategist Steve Sosnick to discuss the details of Adobe's succession plans.

00:00 Speaker A

Let's talk about Adobe briefly here because Shantanu Narayen, who is, um, the longtime president and CEO of the company, is going to be stepping down. That's not necessarily unexpected. What's unexpected is who he named as his

00:11 Speaker A

um successor. There were two guys who were up for the job and kind of have been for a while, running different parts of the business. Onil Chakrathy is the one who got it. Um, and he is the one who's, who was in charge of like customer experience.

00:23 Speaker A

David Wani who didn't get the job was in charge of the biggest part of the company's business. The creative business. Yeah.

00:27 Speaker B

Yeah.

00:28 Speaker A

And he is now leaving the company. Uh, the shares are trading a little bit lower this morning on the this surprise happening. Um, you know, it TBD how this is going to shake out, but Adobe has already been challenged. It's gone through a rocky period.

00:40 Speaker B

Yeah. And there's there's a great stat here. Wani's operation accounted for three quarters of Adobe's revenue.

00:44 Speaker A

Yeah.

00:48 Speaker B

And so I'm sure there is reasoning here. And you know, I've never met any of these guys. I'm sure there's reasoning here. I think you've interviewed a couple of them, right?

00:52 Speaker A

Yes, I've interviewed both of them.

00:53 Speaker B

Yeah. But it's it's going to be a big question for shareholders who are going to look now at the new leader and say, what do you bring to this business? And what do you bring to, to your point, a company that's been struggling for a long time.

01:03 Speaker C

Yeah. Yeah. And and I think in general it's, you know, it got caught up in the SAS-pocalypse. But interestingly, we've seen how the SAS-pocalypse has played out when when the companies deliver, right? Everybody got out of them.

01:13 Speaker B

Yeah.

01:14 Speaker C

And then, you know, all of a sudden when they report good news, they're up 20%. I'm thinking salesforce, snowflake, etc, etc. And and those moves only happen when institutions are underinvested. and they got to get reinvested quickly. The moves that happen, let's say in Broadcom where the stock reported good numbers and everybody yawned and said they're not good enough. That's because everybody who needs to be invested in Broadcom is invested in Broadcom. So there's no so it takes more for the new money from new money to flow in. So to the extent that Adobe is playing into this, it's not quite I don't know the politics internally enough of how to do it. It's interesting also that they didn't even seem to consider someone from the outside. Maybe they want maybe they maybe the maybe the the tie breaker, but maybe then they would have lost both of them.

01:44 Speaker C

I don't know.

01:45 Speaker A

Right. Well, and the other thing is the company reports earnings next week next Thursday, so it's interesting that they're making this separately and ahead of those numbers. I don't know what that augurs.

01:51 Speaker B

Right.

01:53 Speaker B

Like, are you trying to front run something, but who knows? Who knows?

01:56 Speaker A

I I don't know.

01:56 Speaker C

The the the cynic would say that it means that they can put out anything bad as part of a kitchen sink right now to give the new person

02:01 Speaker B

That's right. And say, look, transition, let us figure it out, give us six months.

02:04 Speaker C

Although that didn't work for Lulu Lemon.

02:06 Speaker B

No, no, it didn't.

02:08 Speaker A

No, it definitely didn't. Which I know we brace yourselves. I think that Sazi, Brian Sazi's coming in hot on that one. We wrote, we wrote quite a take this morning on oh, look, he's he's. There he is. He's in the studio. He's ready. He's ready. He's raring to go.

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