[pavlov]

Figma has about $500M annual revenue, AFAICT.

In the current environment, money-losing software companies aren’t exactly hot. The valuation from an IPO would be extremely disappointing for investors compared to the $20 billion Adobe is paying. A price/sales multiple of 10x would be generous, and that would be a $5B valuation.

[drumhead]

Adobe's actually done investors a favour and made a realistic enterprise valuation of the company for everyone. If it's worth $20bn to them then it's not likely to float for $5bn. They clearly think there's value there or some kind of competitive advantage that makes the company worth that much.

[pavlov]

The problem is that the company is worth $20 billion only to Adobe.

And that explains why antitrust authorities around the world are interested in this deal: that kind of discrepancy suggests a market distortion in progress.

[mattkevan]

XD proved that Adobe doesn’t really care about the UX/UI design sector - Figma’s worth 20bn to Adobe to kneecap a potentially existential threat.

[drumhead]

What about Adobe's competitors? It's not going to be worth that much less to them either

[pavlov]

Which competitors? I can’t think of anybody but Adobe who would pay a premium for Figma.

It doesn’t fit in Autodesk’s portfolio, and their acquisition activity tends to be frugal.