Shares in Zoom fall as growth appears to be tapering off

Zoom’s growth is showing signs of tapering off after becoming a fixture in everyday life amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The company’s quarterly results showed revenue more than quadrupled from the same time last year to 777 million US dollars (£582m), yielding a profit of 198 million dollars (£148m), up from just 2.2 million dollars (£1.65m) a year ago.

Both those figures easily topped the estimates among analyst surveyed by FactSet Research, but Zoom’s stock still shed 5% in Monday’s extended trading after the numbers came out.

One possible reason for the reaction is that number of companies signing up for Zoom’s subscription version of its service is not rising as rapidly as during the pandemic’s early stages.

Zoom ended its latest quarter with 433,700 customers with at least 10 employees, an increase of 63,500 customers from July. In each of the previous two quarters, Zoom had added more than 100,000 customers with at least 10 employees.

While that slowdown was considered an inevitable, the drop-off is nevertheless causing many investors to start considering the possibility that Zoom will not be able to maintain the momentum it gained from this year’s stay-at-home orders.

As more investors have concluded Zoom has already reached its zenith, the company’s stock price has fallen more than 20% from its all-time high of 588.84 dollars (£441.50) reached last month.

Despite the decline, the shares are still more than six times higher than where they ended last year.

Kelly Steckelberg, Zoom’s chief financial officer, said: “The trends of remote work had started long before the pandemic and they have just been accelerated by this.

“Given the adoption and the way we have seen all segments, from small business owners to individuals all the way up to large organisations, embrace Zoom, we really expect that those remote working trends will continue even after there is a vaccine.”