Pandemic helps Zoom triple revenues

Zoom

Zoom’s revenues more than tripled in the last quarter as millions of people continued to use its platform to keep in contact with colleagues, friends and relatives during lockdowns.

The online video conferencing company beat Wall Street’s expectations with a 369 per cent jump in sales, which hit $882.5 million in the three months to January 31.

Zoom concluded its financial year with 467,100 business customers with more than 10 employees — up by 470 per cent on the year earlier.

Based in San Jose, California, Zoom was founded a decade ago by the engineer Eric Yuan, a veteran of the rival platform Webex. It went public in New York in 2019, with a base of 1,700 staff which has since more than doubled to 3,800. Yuan, 50, remains chief executive with a stake of about 15 per cent in the business. It swiftly took locked-down countries by storm last year, with daily participants surging from 10 million in December 2019 to 300 million.

Its market value rose sharply, but has since fallen back amid questions over the platform’s role in a post-coronavirus world. Last night shares in Zoom, which had already risen 10 per cent during the day ahead of its quarterly earnings, jumped by a further 10 per cent, or $40.67, to $450.33 during after hours trading.

Net income hit $260.4 million in the last quarter; up from $15.3 million in the same period last year. Yuan said: “Our ability to rapidly respond and execute drove strong financial results throughout the year.” He added that Zoom was “well positioned for strong growth”.

Zoom has sought to avoid an exodus of users when Covid-19 restrictions are loosened by launching features designed to appeal to a hybrid workforce functioning across homes and offices.

“Everybody agrees that these things have changed for ever,” Harry Moseley, its chief information officer, told The Times last month. He predicted that Zoom “will probably be one of the last” employers to summon staff back to their desks.

Not everyone is convinced. David Solomon, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, has described working from home as “an aberration that we are going to correct as quickly as possible”.

-=[]\And academics at Stanford University recently highlighted causes of “Zoom fatigue”, which included close-up eye contact and a reduction in mobility during video calls.