Adobe Defies the Recession

Sometimes there's a perfectly reasonable explanation when a great company reports a loss. Those are the times when non-GAAP metrics become useful.

So Adobe Systems (Nasdaq: ADBE  ) reported a net loss in the fourth quarter. Don't panic. The tax man reached in to take an extra cut this time, and he ain't coming back for more.

Backing out a $192 million tax charge mostly related to Adobe's purchase of Web analytics firm Omniture, Adobe's non-GAAP bottom line lands at $0.39 of earnings per share. A year ago, the tax bill was a mere $30 million, and that's closer to where Adobe will dwell in future periods as well.

Adobe's sales grew 8.6% compared to last quarter, or 4.9% if you take away the contributions from Omniture. The company is in a bit of a lull between major product releases, so 5% of organic growth is nothing to sneeze at.

In fact, Adobe is acting as a barometer of IT spending. When companies are buying design and documentation software, you can bet that they're going to spend a bit on systems and other important applications too.

Given that Adobe's fastest-growing segment was the enterprise market, which saw nearly 13% sequential order growth, I think it's safe to say that IT budgets are loosening up at long last. We'll get more data when Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL  ) reports earnings tomorrow, but strong business-to-business results from Adobe are a good sign for big-ticket hardware and software companies like Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT  ) , IBM (NYSE: IBM  ) , and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ  ) .

Keep Adobe in mind when the next earnings season rolls around in January. This could be your first sign of a stronger IT rebound than anyone expected, and it wouldn't hurt to put your spare cash to work in the tech sector today.