Zoom struggles to grow beyond a crawl and its stock dips
Shares of Zoom Communications Inc. were trading 4% lower in the after-hours session today, even as the company delivered strong third-quarter earnings results and provided optimistic guidance for the current quarter.
The company reported earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation of $1.38 per share, beating Wall Street’s consensus estimate of $1.31 by a decent margin. Revenue increased 4% from a year earlier, to $1.18 billion, only slightly ahead of the analysts’ forecast of $1.16 billion.
The communications technology provider has endured single-digit revenue growth for 10 successive quarters now, in stark contrast to the COVID-19 pandemic era, when its business tripled in size. Even so, it did make better progress in terms of profitability. The company clocked $207.1 million in net profit during the quarter, up from $141.2 million in the year-ago period.
Zoom also made good progress in terms of customer acquisition. It now has 192,400 enterprise clients on its books, having added about 800 new ones during the quarter.
However, the company’s outlook suggests that revenue growth will continue to be in short supply. For the current quarter, Zoom said it’s looking at earnings of $1.29 to $1.30 per share on sales of between $1.175 billion and $1.180 billion. That’s only just ahead of the Street’s target of $1.29 in earnings per share and $1.17 billion in revenue.
On the other hand, Zoom did bump up its full-year guidance ever so slightly. It’s now expecting earnings of between $5.41 and $5.43 per share on revenue of $4.656 billion to $4.661 billion. The middle of that range implies growth of about 3% compared to the year prior.
During the quarter, at its annual Zoomtopia event, Zoom announced plans to expand its artificial intelligence offerings with a “Custom AI Companion” that will be made available to premium customers in the first half of next year. According to the company, it’s a kind of chatbot that will help connect Zoom’s platform to corporate glossaries and knowledge bases, as well as services such as ServiceNow, Salesforce and Workday. And in another update, the company rolled out support for single-use webinars with room for up to 1 million attendees on its platform.
Those moves are in line with Zoom’s ongoing efforts to expand beyond video-based communications into areas such as AI-supported customer service that can boost its customer’s productivity. Much of the focus is on Zoom’s Contact Center platform, which powers enterprise’s customer service operations.
In a research note earlier this week, analysts from JPMorgan said Zoom’s Contact Center has emerged as a “key growth area” for the company, even though its revenue declined in the proper quarter. It was a different story this time, though, as third quarter Contact Center revenue rose 5.8%.
Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said it’s encouraging to see Zoom continue on its transformation into a more comprehensive communications services provider, because it widens the total addressable market for its products.
“Revenue growth remains slow, despite the substantial growth in its capabilities,” the analyst said. “The problem is the stiff competition it faces in the communications industry, and the commoditization of synchronous communication in general.”
That said, Mueller believes the company is on the right track. He pointed out that its net profit grew more than 50% in the quarter, with most of that increase derived from “other income” rather than its core videoconferencing platform.
“Zoom is doing everything right in terms of growing its portfolio, but it is challenged to find avenues to growth with its new offerings at a time when the core business itself is under increasing pressure from rival,” he said. “The next quarter will tell us more about its future prospects.”
In addition to the results, the company said it’s changing its corporate name from “Zoom Video Communications Inc.” to just “Zoom Communications Inc.”
On a conference call with analysts, Zoom founder and Chief Executive Eric Yuan (pictured) said the name change reflects the company’s “evolution into an AI-first work platform for human connection,” as well as its overall “vision for long-term growth.”
Following today’s after-hours action, Zoom’s stock is up about 24% this year, slightly behind the broader S&P 500 Index, which is up 25%.
Photo: CNBC/YouTube
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