Zoom provides disappointing revenue forecast for first quarter and full year

Date: February 28, 2022

 

News Author(s): Jordan Novet and Ari Levy
Photo Credit: Victor J. Blue | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Source: cnbc.com

 

Zoom issued a weaker-than-expected revenue forecast for the first quarter and full fiscal year on Monday. Shares of the video-chat software maker, which posted its fiscal fourth-quarter results, initially sank as much as 13% in extended trading before rebounding.

Here’s how the company did:

• Earnings: $1.29 per share, adjusted, vs. $1.06 per share as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.
• Revenue: $1.07 billion, vs. $1.05 billion as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.

Zoom’s revenue increased 21% from the year-earlier period ended on Jan. 31. That’s a deceleration from 35% growth in the prior quarter, according to a statement.

Zoom said it had 509,800 customers with over 10 employees at the end of January, down from 512,100 in October. It plans to stop reporting that number as of this quarter, though the figure will still show up in its investor deck through the end of the year.

“What’s happened over time as we see this tremendous growth in online as a channel, it started to kind of overlap there, which is why we don’t think it’s really the appropriate metric to use any longer going forward,” said Kelly Steckelberg, Zoom’s finance chief, on a video call with analysts.

Instead, Zoom will disclose the number of enterprise customers and the net dollar expansion rate among those clients, reflecting how much they’re increasing their spending. The video-chat leader said it now has 191,000 enterprise customers, up 35% from a year earlier. The net dollar expansion rate is 130%.

The enterprise business should grow about 20% year over year in the current fiscal year, while the online business will be roughly flat, Steckelberg said. Smaller customers tend to leave and come back, she added.

Net income rose 88% in the quarter to $490.5 million as gross margin widened to 76% from 74.2% in the prior period.

Conversely, in the first quarter and for the full year, Zoom is projecting revenue that’s below what analysts were expecting. Sales in the current quarter will be $1.07 billion to $1.075 billion, representing growth of about 12%. Analysts polled by Refinitiv had expected $1.1 billion in revenue.

For the current fiscal year, the company sees $4.53 billion to $4.55 billion in revenue, implying 10.7% growth. Analysts polled by Refinitiv had been looking for a bigger figure: $4.71 billion.

Zoom’s business took off in the early months of the pandemic as workers, students and consumers adjusted to life at home and communications over video. The company’s market cap peaked in October 2020 at about $159 billion.

At the time, it was worth almost as much as Cisco, whose market cap sat at around $170 billion. Zoom is led by its founder, Eric Yuan, an early developer at Webex, which Cisco acquired in 2007. Since its stock hit a high, Zoom has lost over three-quarters of its value. The market cap spread between the two companies is now about $190 billion.

Zoom said Bill McDermott, CEO of service-desk software maker ServiceNow and formerly CEO of software developer SAP, will replace investor Bart Swanson on the Zoom board.

Prior to the after-hours move, shares of Zoom were down almost 29% for the year, underperforming the S&P 500 index, which is down about 9% over the same period.

 

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