4-Star Stocks Poised to Pop: Adobe

Based on the aggregated intelligence of 130,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, software maker Adobe Systems (Nasdaq: ADBE) has earned a respected four-star ranking.

With that in mind, let's take a closer look at Adobe's business, and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.

Adobe facts

Headquarters (founded)	San Jose, Calif. (1982)
Market Cap	$13.65 billion
Industry	Application software
Trailing-12-Month Revenue	$3.48 million
Management	CEO Shantanu Narayen (since 2007) CFO Mark Garrett (since 2007)
Return on Equity (average, last three years)	15.9%
Competitors	Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT)
CAPS members bullish on ADBE also bullish on	Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) General Electric (NYSE: GE)
CAPS members bearish on ADBE also bearish on	Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX)

Sources: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's, and Motley Fool CAPS.

Over on CAPS, 1,607 of the 1,670 members who have rated Adobe -- some 96% -- believe the stock will outperform the S&P 500 going forward. These bulls include All-Star cibient, who is ranked in the top 10% of our community, and ametts1.

In March, cibient tapped Adobe as the multimedia software star:

Great balance sheet and an extremely attractive business model and moat. Not quite like the razor-and-blades physical product model, but they've really enmeshed Flash and PDF across the entire web -- meaning web designers and developers continue to use their Acrobat and Dreamweaver software packages, which are only a few of their software offerings.

In a pitch from one month earlier, ametts1 elaborates on even more of Adobe's franchises:

By controlling ubiquitous technologies like PDF and Flash, emerging new ones like Flex and Air, and a wide range of well-regarded applications like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Illustrator, Adobe stands to benefit from any form of technology growth -- whether on Mac or Windows, Desktop, Internet, or Mobile. Expect technology stocks to lead us out of the market doldrums, and [Adobe] should be right there with the best of them when it happens.