Video-conferencing tool, Zoom has had an outstanding year, to say the least. After the unexpected happened and everyone who could turn their living room into an office, the start-up telecommunications company saw a 553% rise in traffic between January and March this year.
In the second quarter, ending July 31, Zoom saw a 355% growth in revenues to hit $663.5 million, with profits hitting $186m. That’s higher than the firm’s total revenue in 2019 and a big leap from the 270% growth the company saw in the growth after the pandemic hit.
The exponential growth, which was apparently down to their ability to add paying customers, led to a surge in share prices, too, which went up by as much as 47% to $478 in morning trade, reported on Tuesday.
Zoom blasted past analyst predictions, who expected a quarterly revenue of some $500m, but experts warn that the growth might not last. According to Reuters, J.P.Morgan analyst Sterling Auty, of a pullback in revenue as the pandemic eases, stating “The surge in growth has come increasingly from the riskiest customer segment,” he said. “Customers with less than 10 employees reached 36% of total revenue in the quarter.”
As schools reopen and people companies make their way back into the office, it’s possible that Zoom’s growth will begin to taper off.
But Zoom has been putting in work this year. After a series of technical difficulties regarding privacy and security early on and even some recent outages in the US, Zoom has continually bounced back better. In the months since the pandemic, Zoom has moved into hardware and opened a new data center in Singapore, distancing itself from mainland China and subverting any related controversies.
It’s clear Zoom knows how to innovate and, as a startup, it has a clear potential to continue to grow and keep itself in the lives of all of us, pandemic or not. I suppose only time will tell.
