We recently published a list of Long-Term Stock Portfolio: 15 Best Stocks for 15 Years. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE) stands against other best stocks for 15 years.
Russell Investments believes that 3 features are defining the market outlook for 2025. These include the elevated level of the S&P 500 forward P/E ratio, the potential for further US dollar strength, as well as the direction of the US 10-year Treasury yield. The active equity managers have been challenged by the severe market concentration. The firm opines that a flattening out of such trends— which can be seen due to policy shifts or change in sentiments related to earnings growth and valuations for mega caps — can support active manager outperformance.
Russell Investments remains focused on sectors in which AI adoption has been ramping up, including industrials, healthcare, and consumer goods. As per the firm, companies that leverage AI for productivity improvements remain well-placed to gain a lasting competitive edge and provide healthy returns. Therefore, skilled active managers are required to look for such companies, primarily those that are in less-covered segments of the market.
READ ALSO: 7 Best Stocks to Buy For Long-Term and 8 Cheap Jim Cramer Stocks to Invest In.
Sectors Providing Investment Opportunities
With respect to real assets, Russell Investments sees attractive investment opportunities in real estate and infrastructure, mainly sectors that can benefit from the stabilization of long-term interest rates and favorable relative valuations in comparison to other growth assets. The application of AI in real estate, like data centers and healthcare facilities, continues to emerge as a critical growth area. Furthermore, the infrastructure investments continue to gain momentum from energy utilities and pipeline exposures, given the US administration’s emphasis on expanding LNG (liquified natural gas) production.
The firm also believes that an early focus on deregulation and tax cuts would likely be well-received by equity investors. Overall, an expected US soft landing, together with anticipated policy moderation on trade and immigration, creates specific opportunities for well-positioned portfolios, says Russell Investments.
Our Methodology
We sifted through the holdings of iShares Core S&P 500 ETF and shortlisted the companies that have 10-year revenue growth of over ~10%. Next, we selected stocks that were the most popular among elite hedge funds. We have ranked the stocks in ascending order of hedge fund sentiment.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
A team of engineers and scientists collaborating at a workstation surrounded by their applications and solutions.
Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE)
10-year Revenue Growth: ~17.8%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 117
Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE) operates as a diversified software company. Andy Yu CFA from DBS maintained a “Buy” rating on the company’s stock with a price objective of $660.00. The analyst’s rating is backed by factors demonstrating its healthy financial performance and strategic positioning. Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE) remains well-placed to benefit from the current digitalization trend, thanks to its early adoption of the SaaS model, which continues to aid its significant revenue and margin improvements.
Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE)’s innovative product offerings, including the Firefly AI platform, and its capability to capture an expanding addressable market continue to fuel its growth prospects, says the analyst. Furthermore, despite the global economic uncertainties and competitive pressures, the analyst believes that a diverse product range and increased customer retention offer a stable foundation for growth. Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE)’s extensive integration of AI throughout the product suite places it well to capitalize on the elevated demand for AI-enhanced creative as well as productivity tools.
Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE)’s existing user base offers a ready market for upselling AI-powered features, resulting in increased average revenue per user and improved customer retention. Guinness Global Innovators, an investment management company, released its Q4 2024 investor letter. Here is what the fund said:
“Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE) faced challenges this year, ending as the Fund’s worst-performing stock (-25.5% USD). Investor concerns about Adobe’s AI strategy and underwhelming earnings reports played a key role in performance over the year. Adobe started the year with optimism surrounding its generative AI innovations and the company seemed poised to capitalize on the surging demand for creative and marketing automation tools. Its AI-driven platform, Firefly, launched in March 2023, quickly gained traction, generating over 16 billion creative outputs and setting adoption records. However, despite this strength, Adobe’s stock has underperformed, as earnings reports over the year have appeared softer than initially expected from investors. The market reaction however was not caused by scepticism about Adobe’s AI products and tools, but rather driven by concerns on the ability to monetise these quickly. The creative design market has seen intensifying competition with competitors like OpenAI, Canva and even startups introducing generative AI content tools such as text-to-video tools. Adobe’s strategy has appeared to be focused on prioritising widespread adoption over immediate monetization, echoing its successful strategy with PDF in previous years. While larger enterprises have adopted and appreciate Adobe’s ‘commercially safe’ tools compared to peers, Adobe sees a large opportunity amongst those that were not traditionally users of the Adobe’s tools, whether enterprise employees or non-enterprise customers and have thus chosen to drive proliferation of their tools in these ‘untapped’ consumers and delay monetisation. Whilst some AI tools have missed revenue expectations through the year, the increased proliferation and the increasing costs of creating content should improve Adobe’s prospects of monetisation into FY25. Further, despite these short-term challenges, Adobe has a track record of high-quality attributes and long-term growth prospects. Its extensive distribution network, and loyal customer base provide it with a durable competitive edge. The company’s subscription-based model, which accounts for over 90% of its revenue, ensures stable cash flows and high margins. Finally, its brand equity as the industry standard in creative and document solutions supports ongoing market leadership, allowing us to remain confident in Adobe’s ability to navigate current challenges and deliver sustained value over time.”
Overall, ADBE ranks 8th on our list of best stocks for 15 years. While we acknowledge the potential of ADBE as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some deeply undervalued AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for a deeply undervalued AI stock that is more promising than ADBE but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
