The COVID-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc on the global economy! While a large number of businesses are staring at unprecedented losses due to the situation prevailing, few have reached peak growth! As the government across the world has placed its citizens under lockdown, video conferencing app downloads soared to a record high, especially Zoom.
Zoom: 169% growth from the previous year!
Founded 9 years ago by Chinese-American businessman Eric Yuan, Zoom has reported revenue growth of a huge 169% from the previous year in its first-quarter earnings report with total revenue of $328.2 million (approx €290 million). Furthermore, the company has around 265,400 customers with more than 10 employees, a number that’s grown 354%.
Eric S. Yuan, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Zoom said: “We were humbled by the accelerated adoption of the Zoom platform around the globe in Q1. The COVID-19 crisis has driven higher demand for distributed, face-to-face interactions and collaboration using Zoom. Use cases have grown rapidly as people integrated Zoom into their work, learning, and personal lives. I am proud of our Zoom employees who dedicated themselves to support customers and the global community during this crisis. With their tremendous efforts, we were able to provide high-quality video services to new and existing customers.”
Expects revenue of around $1.8 billion!
It’s worth mentioning that the company’s gross margin fell in the quarter, compared to its last year from 80% to 68%. Moving ahead, Zoom expects total revenue to be between $495 million (approx €436 million) and $500 million (approx €441 million) in the second quarter. For the full fiscal year, Zoom anticipates revenue around $1.7 billion (approx €1.5 billion) and $1.8 billion (approx €1.6 billion). This revenue outlook takes into consideration the demand for remote work solutions for businesses.
Eric S. Yuan, said: “We also supported an unprecedented number of free participants, including over 100,000 K-12 schools around the globe that chose Zoom to deliver the best online education experience.” Notably, the company has added 175,000 licenses for new customers as well. However, the company didn’t mention anything about total daily/monthly active users on the platform.”
Worth €42 billion!
Eric Yuan also suggested that the company has no plans to start building out a consumer-specific product beyond the free calling experience it already offers. All said and done, the valuation of video platform Zoom rose at rocket speed in a short time. Right now, Zoom is worth $48.8 billion (approx €42 billion), more than some of the companies listed below, which are expected to file IPO in 2020!
Airbnb
Valuation: €27 billion
Based out of San Francisco, Airbnb is an online community marketplace for people to book accommodation around the world. This platform acts as the easiest way for people to monetise their extra space and showcase it to an audience of millions. The company has a satellite office in Dublin, London, Barcelona, Paris, Milan, Copenhagen, Berlin, Moscow, São Paulo, Sydney, and Singapore.
Deliveroo
Valuation: €1.76 billion
Founded by Greg Orlowski and William Shu in 2012, Deliveroo is an online food delivery platform that allows users to order food from local restaurants. The company is on a mission to transform the way the world thinks about food delivery.
Beyond Meat
Valuation: €1.32 billion
The company is on a mission to create the future of protein including delicious plant-based burgers, beef, sausage, crumbles, and more from animal to plant-based meat. According to the company, this will address four growing global issues: human health, climate change, constraints on natural resources, and animal welfare.
WeWork
Valuation: €2.5 billion
WeWork is a commercial real estate company that provides shared workspaces for technology startups and services for other enterprises. This platform helps eliminate a big point of friction when it comes to finding office spaces and negotiating with landlords.
Gitlab
Valuation: €2.4 billion
Based out of San Francisco, GitLab is an open-source code collaboration platform that enables developers to create, review, and deploy codebases.
Main image credit: Zoom
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