Zoom Adds Contact Center Capabilities to Enhance its UCaaS Stack

I’m publishing this series to discuss a topic that I follow closely - cloud stocks, trends, strategy, acquisitions, and more. Please subscribe to my Cloud Stock Analysis series and never miss an article. I like fundamentals-focused business building, and teach the principles of fundamentals-focused business building at 1Mby1M.?Learn what to expect from 1Mby1M.

According to?a report published earlier this year, the global video conferencing market is expected to grow at 11% CAGR to reach $9.95 billion by 2028. Zoom (Nasdaq: ZM) recently reported its quarterly results that continued to outpace market expectations.

Zoom’s Financials

Revenues for the fourth quarter grew 21% to $1.071 billion, ahead of the market’s forecast of $1.05 billion. Excluding items, Zoom reported an EPS of $1.29, again beating analysts’ estimate of $1.07.

Among key metrics, Zoom now has more than 509,800 customers with more than 10 employees, recording a growth of 9% over the year. Customers contributing more than $100,000 in trailing twelve-month revenues grew 66% to 2,725.

For the fiscal year, Zoom’s revenues grew 55% to $4.099 billion and EPS was $5.07.

For the first quarter, it forecast revenues of $1.07-$1.075 million and an EPS of $0.86-$0.88. It expects to end the current year with revenues of $4.530-$4.550 billion and an EPS of $3.45-$3.51. The market was looking for revenues of $1.1 billion and an EPS of $1.03 for the first quarter and revenue of $4.77 billion and EPS of $4.35 for the full year.

Zoom’s Growth Focus

Recently, Zoom announced a partnership with oVice. With the partnership, oVice customers will be able to utilize the Zoom integration to have a seamless meeting from oVice without needing to move between the two tools. They also have the ability to view which users are in Zoom meetings, making it easier to shuffle between multiple Zoom meetings at once, encouraging more interactive collaboration between users.

It also announced the launch of new education features including virtual backgrounds and blur for Chromebooks, Breakout Room enhancements, allowing hosts to share content with audio to Breakout Rooms, adding the ability to share videos with audio, and allowing educators to populate Breakout Rooms from the course roster to assign Breakout Rooms in advance and automatically sort students into them. It also announced the launch of Anywhere Polls, allowing polling content to be accessed from any meeting on an account, allowing instructors to reuse polls. Features also include the ability to rename participants in the waiting room and send audio and video messages in the Zoom chat to record up to a 3-minute long video that goes directly into the out-of-meeting chat channel, making it useful for students that need to submit brief video assignments.

Zoom has been focused on three key areas of growth. First, it wants to become a full unified communications (UCaaS) platform by offering a multiproduct capability that includes video conferencing, events, chat, and phones. As part of this focus area, it recently announced the general availability of Zoom Contact Center, an omnichannel customer engagement solution that is optimized for video and is integrated into the Zoom client. The solution integrates unified communications with contact center capabilities and helps customers connect over the video while having access to channels like voice, SMS, and webchat.

Supporting hybrid work is their second focus area. Zoom is helping with the hybrid work capability by providing features like Zoom Rooms. Finally, it is working on improving collaboration everywhere by leveraging its API marketplace and SDK. As part of this effort, it recently announced a Zoom DocuSign integration that will allow customers to review a document during a Zoom Meeting and approve it as part of the simple business workflow.

Its stock is currently trading at $114.89 with a market capitalization of $34.4 billion. It was trading at a 52-week low of $94.51 in March. It had soared to a record high of $406.48 in July last year.

Disclosure:?All investors should make their own assessments based on their own research, informed interpretations, and risk appetite. This article expresses my own opinions based on my own research of product-market fit, channel execution, and other factors. My primary interest is in product strategy. While this may have bearing on stock movements, my writings tend to focus on long-term implications. The information presented is illustrative and educational, but should not be regarded as a complete analysis nor recommendation to buy or sell the securities mentioned herein. I am not a registered investment adviser and I am not receiving compensation for this article.

Looking For Some Hands-On Advice?

For entrepreneurs who want to discuss their specific businesses with me, I’m very happy to assess your situation during my free online?1Mby1M Roundtables, held almost every week. You can also check out our free?Bootstrapping Course, our?Udemy courses,?YouTube channel,?podcast interviews?with VCs and Founders, and, to?follow my writings, click Follow from?here.

Photo by?Chris Montgomery?on?Unsplash