Adobe buys Figma for $20 billion

American software developer Adobe today, September 15, informed about the purchase of a service for designers Figma for $ 20 billion. This is the largest transaction in the history of Adobe. Half of the amount will be paid in cash, half in Adobe stock.

Adobe owns tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat Reader. The acquisition of Figma will allow the company to add the collaborative software popular among designers to its portfolio. Adobe has been interested in such tools in recent years – in 2020 it bought project management and collaboration software Workfront, and last year it bought Frame.io, a video collaboration platform. Simultaneously with the message about the transaction Adobe submitted the reporting for the third quarter — its revenue grew by 13%, to $4.4 billion.

At the same time, Adobe shares after the announcement of the deal fell before the start of trading by 13%. Investors are concerned that the company will have to increase its debts in order to pay $20 billion for Figma – at the beginning of September it had $3.87 billion in cash and cash equivalents. In addition, some investors consider the transaction amount excessive. “We are disappointed with the price we paid for the company (Figma.— “b”),” said David Wagner, equity investment specialist at Aptus Capital Advisors, which owns 1.5% of Adobe.

Yana Rozhdestvenskaya