Like many other technology companies, Zoom had its best year ever in 2020 despite a global pandemic that destroyed the economy and cost millions their job.
The company’s fourth quarter and year end earnings report blew expectations out of the water, leading to at one point an 11% increase in the company’s stock price after the earnings report was released Monday. The company reported monster numbers, with quarterly revenue of $882.5 million up 369% year over year and full year revenue of $2.7 billion up 326% year over year.
Even though companies will begin transitioning to more in-office work or hybrid work models that will rely less on videoconferencing, Zoom still expects to keep growing, with first quarter revenue expected to be a tick over $900 million, and full year revenue expected to come in around $3.8 billion.
In a conference call with investors, the company said it plans to continue its growth and help the world transition to hybrid work and education models that will necessitate services like Zoom. Although it wasn’t discussed on the call, Zoom is reportedly developing a larger product platform that includes email, messaging, and calendar. And, Zoom has recently announced several new features designed to make the transition to the office easy and safe.
Zooms plans represent new opportunities for AV Integrators
Opportunities in education
If Zoom executes on its business strategy, new opportunities could be in line for AV integrators fluent in Zoom installations. Chief Financial Officer Kelly Steckelberg said the company has 125,000 K-12 domains using the product, and many of them are expected to continue its use even when some students return to the school campus.
Steckelberg responded to a question about when Zoom would start charging its education customers, many of whom are currently using free versions of the service.
“We always joke, right, that students are going to hate us because there’s no such thing as a snow day any longer,” Steckelberg said. “And imagine the benefit that the parents have also received from being able to attend PTA meetings from home, to be able to do parent-teacher conferences.”
“So there are many, many use cases that extend beyond just the students being in the classroom that we foresee these domains wanting to continue to work with us on.”
Zoom Apps, Phone
CEO Eric Yuan also commented on ways the platform intends to monetize its users, including Zoom Apps.
That’s overall our platform play. So today, in addition to having the APIs and SDKs to give the third-party companies and partners vertical apps like online education, telemedicine apps via our platform, SDK, we also introduced the Zoom Apps. I think that’s our future.”
Because the reason why some not only built for the business indications but also offer our people-centric interface. You and I kind of use Zoom and also have a window, right? You and I can play games together, you approve my expense report, integration with the ServiceNow, Workday, and Salesforce, and all kinds of applications, not only for business apps but also for consumer apps. Well, today, you look at our marketplace, we already have over 1,000 apps published in the marketplace. So we are going to double down on our Zoom App ecosystem.
Essentially, that’s the future for our platform play. And down the road, let’s say, you have a lot of new applications or existing integrations, you have many ways to monetize down the road. The goal is to offer a people-centric Zoom interface for other applications to be integrated into Zoom.
The company is also focusing other products, including Zoom Phone, which Yuan billed as the next great enterprise tool to modernize phone systems. Zoom is banking on the VoIP service to sustain its record growth as customers look for more integrated UCC tools.
According to Steckelberg, that product was actually the fastest-growing product line quarter over quarter. The company plans to sell into its existing install base.
“So based on the customers that we have today, we see tremendous opportunity for further upsells with Zoom Phone,” Steckelberg said.
