"Software giant Adobe Systems (NASDAQ: ADBE) has joined our model Growth Portfolio," says Stephen Leeb. Here's his assessment of the tech firm in The Complete Investor.

"When it comes to investing in tech, perhaps the most difficult task is to find one with a bona fide franchise, i.e., an ironclad grip on its market that keeps it largely immune to competition.

"Adobe -- also known as 'the PDF company' -- fits the bill. As most computer users know, PDF files are ones that you can read but can't change in any way-the content is controlled solely by the file's creator.

For the first time Monday I heard John McCain comparing Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter. I had heard this before in other arenas, but not from McCain. I guess that despite these two presidential candidates pledging to the American people to bring change and resist politics as usual, they are both, as usual as one could get.

Obama is being shaped by the pressures of running for office and to believe otherwise is delusional. I suppose one has to have hope but the effects of the campaign are becoming clear. Obama has been painting McCain as an extension of Bush, which is nonsense, and now in a typical tit-for-tat response, McCain is filling the air with Carter references.

Both McCain and Obama are wrong in their assessments of their opponents and they are becoming commoners to resort to the bottom of the barrel campaign techniques used in every campaign for most of our nation's proud history. Obama gave up the high ground too easily and McCain has decided he can sling mud with the best of them.

Adobe Systems (NASDAQ: ADBE) offers business and mobile software and services. The firm's products include tools for professional publishing, Web design, video production, business process automation, and mobile device interfacing. Its well-known Acrobat Reader displays portable document format (PDF) files on the Internet. Its Web and print publishing products include the widely-used Photoshop, Illustrator, and PageMaker programs. Adobe's InDesign publishing package provides professional layout and design applications. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) are competitors.

The company pleased investors last week, when it reported Q1 EPS of 48 cents and revenues of $890.4 million. The Street had been expecting 45 cents and $875.8 million. Management also guided Q2 EPS to 45-47 cents (44 cent consensus), Q2 revenues to $855-$885 million ($874.69M consensus) and FY08 EPS to $1.86-$1.92 ($1.82 consensus).

Shares of Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE) have been soaring after the company reported yesterday after the market closed that its first-quarter profit jumped 52%, helped by strong demand for its design tools. The software maker also issued a stronger-than-expected sales and earnings outlook, despite fears of an economic slowdown.

For the quarter, Adobe Systems reported that its profit climbed to $219.4 million, or 38 cents a share, boosted by strong sales from its software tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and Acrobat. Excluding special items, the company's earnings came in at 48 cents a share, topping analysts' estimations for quarterly earnings of 45 cents a share.

Adobe Systems also announced a respectable 37% growth in revenues, to $890.4 million, up from $649.4 million a year earlier. Revenue during the period was helped by a 57% increase in its Creative Suite 3 solutions sales which rose up to $543.5 million in the quarter. Analysts, on average, were expecting the company show $876 million in revenue, according to Thomson Financial.

Adobe Systems (NASDAQ: ADBE) stock is trading lower this morning on reports that competitor Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is beginning tests of new business programs to be offered as online services. MSFT is attempting to increase its presence in a sector of the software industry where it is uncharacteristically behind the curve, which could be a bad sign for ADBE. Yesterday, cellphone manufacturer Nokia (NYSE: NOK) announced it would start to support Microsoft's Silverlight, a direct competitor of Adobe's Flash. If you think this stock won't be rising too far in the coming months, then it could be a good time to look at a bearish hedged play on ADBE.

After hitting a one-year high of $48.47 in October, the stock hit a one-year low of $32.08 last month. This morning, ADBE opened at $33.00. So far today the stock has hit a low of $32.01 and a high of $33.08. As of 12:45, ADBE is trading at $32.34, down $0.73 (-2.2%). The chart for ADBE looks bearish and steady, while S&P gives the stock a positive 4 STARS (out of 5) buy rating.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer suspects that nimble traders can enjoy real gains on this sector's run into year-end.

Can someone remind me what the bear case for tech was?

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) (Cramer's Take), which has a huge business in financial services, shoots the lights out with a remarkable quarter. And then right on top of it, Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) (Cramer's Take), again laden with financial services, issues a huge quarter that kind of blows the mind after all that it has done already.

Before that we had Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) (Cramer's Take), again a much-used product in finance, print a quarter that was so strong that I was surprised the stock didn't leap.

Shares of Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE) are trading slightly higher in today's premarket action, following yesterday evening's fourth-quarter earnings release. The company posted a pretty strong quarter, but investors have displayed some concerns over the company's 2008 outlook, which was left unchanged.

The company reported a growth of 21% for its quarterly profit, which rose up to $222.2 million, or 38 cents a share, following strong sales of its design software. Back a year ago, Adobe had posted a profit of $183.2 million, or 30 cents a share, in the same period.

Included in the company's figures were certain costs related to stock-based compensation and restructuring charges. Excluding that, the company''s profit was 49 cents per share. Analysts had been expecting to see the Adobe show earnings of 37 cents per share.

If you take a look at revenues, you see a very respectable jump of 34% in the quarter, helped by increased sales of software for photo editing, building Web sites and creating graphics. The maker of Photoshop, Flash and Illustrator software posted record sales of $911.2 million, easily beating analysts' expectations for sales of $887.33 million.

Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) has landed a blow in its ongoing tilt with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) for online advertising supremacy, announcing a deal with Adobe Systems (NASDAQ: ADBE) to add dynamic ads into PDF documents distributed over the web.

Good on Yahoo for sifting out another scrap of free web space to stick an ad on -- the leading web portal depends primarily on ad revenue, and this should add a little to its bottom line, or at the very least, keep Google from capitalizing. Newsletters, e-zines and other PDF providers should also benefit from a little more ad revenue without the fuss of negotiating rates and artwork from their sponsors.

With an easier means to embed ads in the document, niche content providers are that much more likely to adopt the PDF as a medium. And the ads don't show up on print-outs -- welcome news to folks concerned about the integrity of their content.

On news of the deal, Adobe was trading up 1.31% at $42.58 Thursday afternoon, while Yahoo sat at $26.32, 0.46% higher.

Adobe (NYSE: ADBE) announced on November 12 it is targeting annual revenue growth of approximately 13%. ADBE is scheduled to report on EPS on December 17. ADBE December option implied volatility of 40 is 32 according to Track Data, suggesting larger price fluctuations.

LDK Solar (NYSE: LDK) is a manufacturer of multicrystalline solar wafers. LDK has been investigating inventory allegations made by a former LDK employee, and the company is also subject to a SEC inquiry. LDK has said the company has correctly reported its inventories. LDK December option implied volatility of 123 is above its 18-week average of 92 according to Track Data, suggesting larger risk.

Daily options Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com.

Forbes reports that Adobe Systems (NASDAQ: ADBE)'s CEO Bruce Chizen is stepping down next month to be replaced by president and chief operating officer, Shantanu Narayen. Third-quarter revenue was up 40% from the previous year. On the way out, Chizen raised Adobe's revenue target for the fourth quarter to be near the high end of the previously disclosed range of $860 million to $890 million, and Adobe is targeting overall revenue growth for fiscal 2008 to be about 13%.

In The Burning episode of Seinfeld, Jerry explains to George Costanza the idea of Showmanship: "Showmanship, George. When you hit that high note, you say goodnight and walk off." With his departure, Chizen appears to be following this principle. During Chizen's seven year tenure, Adobe's software platforms -- Acrobat, for making PDF files, and Flash for displaying videos -- are all over the place thanks to the rise of Web 2.0. Adobe is also planning to launch a Web version of the popular photo-editing software Photoshop by the end of 2007.

New CEO Narayen plans to keep Adobe grounded while expanding it into mobile devices. According to CNETNews, he'll be introducing Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), software that allows Web applications to run on desktop PCs. He'll also extend applications written for AIR and Flash to help Adobe expand its reach further into mobile devices and set-top boxes and gaming machines.

Unless it's later discovered that Chizen quit for some nefarious reason, with its stock off 17% from its all-time high a few weeks ago, this could be a good entry point.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He owns Adobe shares.

Monday September 17

• Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ: ADBE) to report Q3 earnings; conference call at 5pm
• UTStarcom Inc (NASDAQ: UTSI) to hold business news update at 6pm

Tuesday September 18

• Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) to hold special media event at the London flagship store at 10am
• Federal Open Market Commiittee meeting; announcement at 2:15pm
• Bank of Japan Monetary Policy Meeting (Two-day Meeting, 9/18 - 9/19)

Wednesday Septermber 19

• General Mills Inc (NYSE: GIS) to report Q1 earnings; conference call at 8:30am
• Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) to report Q3 earnings; conference call at 11am.

Thursday September 20

• The Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE: GS) to report Q3 earnings; conference call at 8:30am
• The Bear Stearns Companies Inc (NYSE: BSC) to report Q3 earnings; conference call at 10am
• Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) to report Q1 earnings; conference call at 5pm

Friday September 21

• Sysco Corporation (NYSE: SYY) to hold analyst meeting at 8am
• Liberty Media Corporation (NASDAQ: LINTA) to hold 2007 Investors' Meeting at 9am
• Alexander & Baldwin Inc (NASDAQ: ALEX) strategic update at 2pm

The highlight of the week, where all eyes will be focused (at least in the tech world), is the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, which is all week long.

Monday June 11

• Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) Worldwide Developers Conference to be held from June 11 through June 15.
• Texas Instruments Incorporated (NYSE: TXN) mid-quarter update conference call to be held at 5pm.
• Medivation Inc (NASDAQ: MDVN) to discuss Phase II study results for Dimebon for Alzheimer's.

Tuesday June 12

• Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc (NYSE: LEH) to report Q2 earnings; conference call at 10am.

Wednesday June 13

• FDA Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee Meeting on Sanofi-Aventis's (NYSE: SNY) Acomplia at 8am.

Thursday June 14

• The Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE: GS) to report Q2 earnings; conference call at 11am.
• Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ: ADBE) to report Q2 earnings.
• Telkonet Inc (AMEX: TKO) to hold conference call at 11am to provide business update.

Friday June 15

• PDUFA date for Encysive Pharmaceuticals Inc's (NASDAQ: ENCY) Thelin for Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH).

Computer software company Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE) released 1Q 2007 earnings after the market closed yesterday. The results are not bad and beat estimates. First quarter revenue was $649.4 million, a bit less than the $655.5 million reported revenue for Q1 2006. While analysts polled by Thomson Financial had estimated revenue of $655.3 million, they also estimated EPS of $0.29. Here Adobe beat estimates and reported EPS of $0.30, based on 604 million weighted average shares. This figure is above Adobe's previous guidance.

1Q 2007 operating income was $146.3 million, up $16.3 million from 1Q 2006 operating income. GAAP operating income in 1Q 2007 was 22.5%, compared to 19.8% in 1Q 2006. GAAP net income was $143.9 million in 1Q 2007, up from $105.1 million in 1Q 2006, but down from $183.2 million in 4Q 2006.

Adobe Systems CEO Bruce Chizen states the company is "preparing for its biggest product launch in history." Adobe has already begun distribution of the alpha version of Apollo, a Web development software already in use at eBay. Also getting ready to ship are Creative Suite 3, and later in the spring 2 more editions of Photoshop.

Adobe is optimistic about full-year 2007 figures. For 2Q 2007 Adobe is targeting revenue of $700-$740 million, with an operating margin of 36%. GAAP EPS for 2Q 2007 are in the $0.23-$0.26 range. Adobe reaffirmed its annual revenue growth target of approximately 15%.

The stock has responded positively to the earnings release. At midday, Adobe was trading at $42.95, up $2.21.

Google and Adobe are jumping into each other's playground with the announcement that Adobe will be bundling the Google Toolbar with many (if not all) Adobe products for the life of the agreement. Well, this is significant for this reason -- Adobe controls two of the most widely-used technologies on the internet today: the free Adobe Acrobat Reader (used to read online documents) and the Macromedia Shockwave player (a de-facto multimedia player for rich media content like web advertising and short video segments).

With Adobe and Microsoft recently having a small tiff over the inclusion of PDF publishing in the upcoming Microsoft Office 2007 productivity suite, this new deal with Adobe and Google is just another shot across the bow for Microsoft in its efforts to fend off the competition. Although I think Adobe was completely off its rocker by insisting that Microsoft take out native PDF publishing capabilities from its newest Office software suite (everyone else with PDF publishing capability doesn't seem to cause Adobe issues), this is no small deal for Google. It just gets the Google Toolbar installed on Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Mozilla's Firefox -- which run the majority of all web browsing activity in the world today.

[Disclosure: I own MSFT shares as of 6-22-06)