Zoom Video Communications Inc. has gotten off to a great start in its life as a publicly traded company, reporting strong earnings in its first financial report since its initial public offering.

The company, which sells videoconferencing software for enterprises that works across every type of device, reported first-quarter earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation of 3 cents per share. Revenue jumped 103%, to $122 million, from a year ago. Wall Street had pegged Zoom’s earnings at just 1 cent per share on revenue of $111.7 million.

Zoom Chief Executive Officer Eric Yuan (pictured), who previously served at WebEx Communications Inc. before it was acquired by Cisco Systems Inc., said it was thanks to the strength of the company’s products that its revenue more than doubled in the quarter.

“While we remain focused on strong growth, we are also pleased that our highly efficient business model and disciplined investment approach contributed to positive non-GAAP profitability and free cash flow,” Yuan said.

Zoom is unusual among tech unicorns in that it was profitable when it launched its IPO, which may have explained why its stock popped more than 80% on its first day of trading in April. The company’s shares are now 120% above the $36 price range at which it launched. The stock gained 12% in after-hours trading today.

“We believe the combination of very effective sales and marketing, a superior product to its direct competitors and significant long-term market opportunity highlight Zoom as a premier vendor moving forward,” Stifel analysts led by Tom Roderick wrote in a note in May, according to CNBC.

Zoom’s customers seem to think so too. In the quarter just gone, it increased its count of customers paying more than $100,000 in revenue to 405, up from 344 three months before.

“Some of the key drivers of our revenue performance were our acquisition of new customers and the execution of our “land and expand” strategy with existing customers,” said Zoom Chief Financial Officer Kelly Steckelberg. “Specifically, the year over year increase in revenue was split between subscription services provided to new customers which accounted for approximately 64% of the increase, while the remaining 36% increase was due to subscription services for existing customers.”

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. also attributed Zoom’s success to the strength of its technology, which he said is not only reliable but also a breath of fresh air compared to that of its competitors.

“Zoom has achieved what no other collaboration vendor has achieved before, becoming the all-knowing, highly desired and almost status symbol-like collaboration tool for businesses in the last year,” Mueller said. “Its success was largely made easy by the ineptitude of the competition, which have frustrated business users with their subpar performance.”

He also credited a massive marketing campaign by Zoom, noting that it was impossible to pass a terminal of a major airport without seeing numerous Zoom ads.

The icing on the cake was a strong outlook. Zoom said it’s projecting second-quarter revenue of $129 million to $130 million, with earnings of between 1 and 2 cents per share. Wall Street had forecast the company to break even on revenue of $122.2 million.

For the full year, Zoom is forecasting profits of 2 to 3 cents per share on revenue of $535 million to $540 million. Analysts had forecast full-year earnings of 3 cents per share on revenue of just $520.3 million.

Photo: Zoom/Facebook