MW Adobe's CFO just made a rare purchase of stock. It sends an upbeat signal.

By Emily Bary

Adobe CFO Dan Durn has only purchased the software stock once before in his tenure at the company - and that buying activity proved well timed

Adobe Inc.'s chief financial officer recently purchased shares on the open market for only the second time in his tenure at the company - a move that suggests he views Adobe's recent stock pressure as excessive.

CFO Dan Durn's purchase last week of $508,000 worth of Adobe shares $(ADBE)$ came after the company's latest earnings got panned by investors. Adobe shares hit a nearly two-year low following that report, but his latest purchase aligns with his "opportunistic" approach to buybacks as Adobe's financial chief.

Adobe shares are down 25% in the past six months, with some investors worried that generative artificial intelligence poses a threat to the company's creative-software offerings. Shares are up 1.9% in Monday action.

See also: Adobe's stock has been an AI laggard. A ho-hum earnings forecast is adding to its declines.

Durn purchased 1,300 shares of Adobe at prices between $389.88 and $391.72 on Thursday, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission released the next day. His only other purchase of Adobe's stock came in September 2022 - and that buy ended up being well timed. Durn "caught a low" for the stock then, according to analysts at VerityData, as Adobe shares proceeded to bounce back from fears about the company's since-scuttled plans to acquire Figma.

"Durn's latest purchase reinforces the view that insiders see thestock as undervalued," the VerityData team wrote.

Adobe didn't immediately respond to a MarketWatch request for comment on the purchase.

Durn wasn't alone in buying stock after the Figma selloff. David Ricks, an Adobe director, purchased shares then as well. And Ricks did the same in January, buying up nearly $1 million in Adobe shares at an average price near $444.

"While [the] earlier buys were likely intended to spur investor confidence, the pair's return into the latest selloff appears opportunistic and placessentiment squarely into positive territory," the VerityData analysts wrote.

Durn is taking that "opportunistic" tack with Adobe's buyback program, too. The company stepped up the pace of share repurchases in the latest quarter, buying back about 7 million shares, versus 4.6 million in the previous quarter.

"We've got a strong point of view about the financial profile throughout the course of the year, happy to reaffirm guidance, but we're going to drive that with strong operating margins, strong cash-flow delivery, and be strong capital allocators throughout the year," Durn said on the Adobe earnings call in mid-March. "So we feel good about where we sit, and if there's opportunities to be opportunistic, we will."

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-Emily Bary

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March 24, 2025 15:16 ET (19:16 GMT)

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