U.S.-head-quartered teleconferencing solution provider Zoom Video’s revenue for the February-April 2020 quarter sprinted 169% to USD 328.2 million, driven by demand for its services amid work from home and physical distancing measures due to COVID-19 outbreak.
The company’s profit sky-rocketed to USD 27.0 million compared to USD 0.2 million in the year-ago quarter.
The NASDAQ-listed firm also nearly doubled its revenue guidance for the full year 2021 to between USD 1.775 billion and USD 1.800 billion. In March this year, the company had forecast revenues to be in the range of USD 905.0 million and USD 915.0 million for the full year.
“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,” Eric S. Yuan, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Zoom said in a statement.
“Drivers of total revenue include acquiring new customers and expanding across existing customers,” Zoom said, adding that at the end of the first quarter of fiscal year 2021, it had approximately 2,65,400 customers with more than 10 employees, up approximately 354% from the same quarter last fiscal year.
Mr Yuan added, "We also supported an unprecedented number of free participants, including over 1,00,000 K-12 schools around the globe that chose Zoom to deliver the best online education experience.”
Work-from-Home and social distance initiatives have meaningfully accelerated the adoption and traffic on the Zoom video communications platform, Mr. Yuan said, adding that the company has seen many use cases, not only from enterprises to maintain work productivity as part of business continuity plans, but also from first-time consumer users for personal and social use to connect with friends and families when physical gathering is not possible.
On recent security issues with Zoom, Mr. Yuan said prior to the pandemic, Zoom was primarily built for and used by large enterprises and institutions. The platform was opened to “unprecedented numbers” of first-time users during the pandemic without fully considering the challenges it would bring to those who did not have full IT support or established protocols for security and privacy like our enterprise customers.
“As a result, we have experienced negative press related to meeting disruption, security and privacy issues. Since these issues emerged, we have transparently and quickly addressed specific security and privacy issues, including enacted a 90-day plan initiative on security and privacy with a weekly webinar for customers to ask me anything…”
The company had also acquired Keybase to add engineering expertise to build an end-to-end encrypted meeting mode and also released Zoom 5.0 with new security features and enhancements.
Mr. Yuan also expressed his support to the Black community amid protests in the U.S. over the killing of George Floyd. “COVID has brought pain for many, in particular, vulnerable communities. The Black Community in the United States has also recently experienced shocking and senseless loss. To our communities and customers — especially those in the Black community, Zoom is standing with you not only today, but also into the future,” he said.
