Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash
Clearly there is nothing like a pandemic to get your share price moving. For most companies it has been a rapid downward movement, but for video conferencing platform Zoom it has been a different matter altogether.
Its business growth, share price and profits have zoomed into the stratosphere as the world’s lockdowns and work-from-home realities make online conferencing a vital everyday requirement for hundreds of millions of people.
The company, formally known as Zoom Video Communications, announced its 2020 second-quarter earnings on Monday to much fanfare from the stock markets and market analysts.
Unsurprisingly, its performance has been nothing short of stellar and, in simple terms, the company made as much money in the second quarter as it did in the entire 2019.
Shares in Zoom, which are already up around 400% this year, went up by a further 9% and hit a new record high on Monday as investors looked for a slice of the action in the wake of the announcement of the second-quarter figures.
Although there have been well-publicised around the security of the Zoom – demonstrated on numerous occasions by hacking incidents at high-profile meetings and online conferences – it appears not to have damaged the company’s fortunes.
These incidents have become known as ‘Zoom bombing’ and the company has released a number of updates aimed at enhancing security.
Revenue grew 355% on an annualized basis in the second quarter, which ended on July 31. This is on top of revenue that grew 169% in the first quarter of 2020.
In US dollar terms, revenue was US$663.5-million, which is far better than the US$500.5-million predicted by analysts, who were already optimistic in their forecasts.
Income was almost US$186-million, versus just US$5.5-million in the same quarter a year ago.
Looking at customer numbers, Zoom averaged 148.4-million users, which is a staggering 4 700% increase year-on-year.