Why Zoom Video’s IPO Is Exploding

April 18, 2019 by Chris Lange

Zoom Video Communications Inc. (NASDAQ: ZM) is another IPO making a splash in the markets to close out the week. In this case, the stock practically doubled its pricing when it entered the market. Shares originally priced at $36, just above the expected price range of $33 to $35. However, it actually entered the market at $65. Considering its 20.87 million shares, and 3.13 million share overallotment option, the entire offering is valued at roughly $840 million.

The underwriters for the offering are Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Merrill Lynch, RBC Capital, Wells Fargo, JMP Securities, KeyBanc Capital Markets, Piper Jaffray, Stifel and William Blair.

This firm provides a video-first communications platform that fundamentally changes how people interact. Zoom connects people through frictionless video, voice, chat and content sharing and enables face-to-face video experiences for thousands of people in a single meeting across disparate devices and locations.

Its cloud-native platform delivers reliable, high-quality video that is easy to use, manage and deploy, provides an attractive return on investment, is scalable and easily integrates with physical spaces and applications.

The cornerstone of the platform is Zoom Meetings, around which the firm provides a full suite of products and features designed to give users a frictionless communications experience. Users are comprised of both hosts who organize video meetings and the individual attendees who participate in those video meetings. Many customers also choose to implement Zoom Rooms, a software-based conference room system, which enables users to easily experience Zoom Meetings in their physical meeting spaces.

In the filing, Zoom described its finances as follows:

Our revenue was $60.8 million, $151.5 million and $330.5 million for the fiscal years ended January 31, 2017, 2018 and 2019, respectively, representing annual revenue growth of 149% and 118% in fiscal 2018 and fiscal 2019, respectively. We had a net loss of $0.0 million and $3.8 million for the fiscal years ended January 31, 2017 and 2018, respectively, and net income of $7.6 million for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2019. Cash provided by operations was $9.4 million, $19.4 million and $51.3 million for the fiscal years ended January 31, 2017, 2018 and 2019, respectively.

The company intends to use the net proceeds from this offering for working capital and general corporate purposes.

Shares of Zoom were last seen up about 82% at $65.53, in a 52-week range of $60.32 to $66.00. So far over 16.5 million shares have moved as of 12:45 p.m. Eastern.


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