The video conferencing company was a prime beneficiary of the Covid-19 pandemic as many workers and students stayed at home.
2 min
Zoom Video Communications posted better-than-expected results for its fiscal fourth quarter, ended Jan. 31, and stronger-than-expected guidance, driving the stock sharply higher in after-hours trading.
The video conferencing company, a prime beneficiary of the Covid-19 pandemic as many workers and students stayed at home for the last year, reported revenue for the quarter of US$882.5 million, up 369% from a year earlier, with adjusted profits of US$365.4 million, or $1.22 a share. Under generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP, the company earned US$256.1 million, or 87 cents a share.
Zoom shares, which had rallied 9.7% to $409.66 in Monday’s regular session, gained another 9% in late trading to $446.63.
For the full year, Zoom had revenue of $2.65 billion, up 326%, with non-GAAP profits of $995.7 million, or $3.34 a share. The company finished the year with $4.2 billion in cash and short-term investments.
Zoom had projected revenue for the quarter of $806 million to $811 million, with non-GAAP profits of 77 to 79 cents a share. Management has predicted full-year revenue of between $2.575 billion and $2.58 billion, with non-GAAP profits of $2.85 to $2.87 a share.
The consensus call on Wall Street was for January quarter revenue of $811.8 million, with non-GAAP profits of 79 cents a share.
The company said it had 467,000 customers with more than 10 employees, up 33,400 from a year ago. Enterprise customers, those with annual revenue above $100,000, rose 355 to 1,644. Zoom Phone customers increased 269% year-over-year to 10,700.
The company’s financial guidance was higher than Wall Street expected, but still underlines the fact that growth will slow considerably from here as the world begins to get past the pandemic.
For the April quarter, Zoom is projecting revenue of $900 million to $905 million, with non-GAAP profits of 95 to 97 cents a share. The Street had been projecting revenue of $804.8 billion and profits of 72 cents a share.
For the full year ending in January 2022, the company expects revenue of $3.76 billion to $3.78 billion, up 42% from the previous year at the midpoint of the range, with non-GAAP profits of $3.59 to $3.65 a share.
The Street previously had been projecting fiscal year January 2022 revenue of $3.52 billion with non-GAAP profits of $2.96 a share.
“The fourth quarter marked a strong finish to an unprecedented year for Zoom,” CEO and founder Eric Yuan said in a statement. “As we enter [fiscal year] 2022, we believe we are well-positioned for strong growth with our innovative video communications platform, on which our customers can build, run, and grow their businesses; our globally recognized brand; and a team ever focused on delivering happiness to our customers.”
Piper Sandler analyst James Fish noted in a brief research note published Monday after earnings that results came in above expectation on all metrics and that the full-year guidance suggested “the market dynamics remain strong” in cloud-based communications.
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Selloff in bitcoin and other digital tokens hits crypto-treasury companies.
3 min
The hottest crypto trade has turned cold. Some investors are saying “told you so,” while others are doubling down.
It was the move to make for much of the year: Sell shares or borrow money, then plough the cash into bitcoin, ether and other cryptocurrencies. Investors bid up shares of these “crypto-treasury” companies, seeing them as a way to turbocharge wagers on the volatile crypto market.
Michael Saylor pioneered the move in 2020 when he transformed a tiny software company, then called MicroStrategy , into a bitcoin whale now known as Strategy. But with bitcoin and ether prices now tumbling, so are shares in Strategy and its copycats. Strategy was worth around $128 billion at its peak in July; it is now worth about $70 billion.
The selloff is hitting big-name investors, including Peter Thiel, the famed venture capitalist who has backed multiple crypto-treasury companies, as well as individuals who followed evangelists into these stocks.
Saylor, for his part, has remained characteristically bullish, taking to social media to declare that bitcoin is on sale. Sceptics have been anticipating the pullback, given that crypto treasuries often trade at a premium to the underlying value of the tokens they hold.
“The whole concept makes no sense to me. You are just paying $2 for a one-dollar bill,” said Brent Donnelly, president of Spectra Markets. “Eventually those premiums will compress.”
When they first appeared, crypto-treasury companies also gave institutional investors who previously couldn’t easily access crypto a way to invest. Crypto exchange-traded funds that became available over the past two years now offer the same solution.
BitMine Immersion Technologies , a big ether-treasury company backed by Thiel and run by veteran Wall Street strategist Tom Lee , is down more than 30% over the past month.
ETHZilla , which transformed itself from a biotech company to an ether treasury and counts Thiel as an investor, is down 23% in a month.
Crypto prices rallied for much of the year, driven by the crypto-friendly Trump administration. The frenzy around crypto treasuries further boosted token prices. But the bullish run abruptly ended on Oct. 10, when President Trump’s surprise tariff announcement against China triggered a selloff.
A record-long government shutdown and uncertainty surrounding Federal Reserve monetary policy also have weighed on prices.
Bitcoin prices have fallen 15% in the past month. Strategy is off 26% over that same period, while Matthew Tuttle’s related ETF—MSTU—which aims for a return that is twice that of Strategy, has fallen 50%.
“Digital asset treasury companies are basically leveraged crypto assets, so when crypto falls, they will fall more,” Tuttle said. “Bitcoin has shown that it’s not going anywhere and that you get rewarded for buying the dips.”
At least one big-name investor is adjusting his portfolio after the tumble of these shares. Jim Chanos , who closed his hedge funds in 2023 but still trades his own money and advises clients, had been shorting Strategy and buying bitcoin, arguing that it made little sense for investors to pay up for Saylor’s company when they can buy bitcoin on their own. On Friday, he told clients it was time to unwind that trade.
Crypto-treasury stocks remain overpriced, he said in an interview on Sunday, partly because their shares retain a higher value than the crypto these companies hold, but the levels are no longer exorbitant. “The thesis has largely played out,” he wrote to clients.
Many of the companies that raised cash to buy cryptocurrencies are unlikely to face short-term crises as long as their crypto holdings retain value. Some have raised so much money that they are still sitting on a lot of cash they can use to buy crypto at lower prices or even acquire rivals.
But companies facing losses will find it challenging to sell new shares to buy more cryptocurrencies, analysts say, potentially putting pressure on crypto prices while raising questions about the business models of these companies.
“A lot of them are stuck,” said Matt Cole, the chief executive officer of Strive, a bitcoin-treasury company. Strive raised money earlier this year to buy bitcoin at an average price more than 10% above its current level.
Strive’s shares have tumbled 28% in the past month. He said Strive is well-positioned to “ride out the volatility” because it recently raised money with preferred shares instead of debt.
Cole Grinde, a 29-year-old investor in Seattle, purchased about $100,000 worth of BitMine at about $45 a share when it started stockpiling ether earlier this year. He has lost about $10,000 on the investment so far.
Nonetheless, Grinde, a beverage-industry salesman, says he’s increasing his stake. He sells BitMine options to help offset losses. He attributes his conviction in the company to the growing popularity of the Ethereum blockchain—the network that issues the ether token—and Lee’s influence.
“I think his network and his pizzazz have helped the stock skyrocket since he took over,” he said of Lee, who spent 15 years at JPMorgan Chase, is a managing partner at Fundstrat Global Advisors and a frequent business-television commentator.
