Displaying items by tag: remote work

Zoom shares soared after the video-meeting service reported that quarterly revenue rocketed as its ranks of users more than quadrupled.

Revenues leaped 355% to $663.5m for the three months ending 31 July, beating analysts' expectations of $500.5m.

Profits soared to $186m, while customer growth rose 458%, compared with the same period in 2019.

Video conferencing apps remain crucial due to the increase in remote working.

Zoom's shares hit a record high, closing at $325.10, as the firm raised its annual revenue forecast by more than 30% to the range of $2.37bn-$2.39bn, from its previous projection of $1.78bn-$1.80bn.

Key to Zoom's success was its ability to add paying customers - high-budget corporate clients - as opposed to those who use its services for free.

"Organizations are shifting from addressing their immediate business continuity needs to supporting a future of working anywhere, learning anywhere, and connecting anywhere on Zoom's video-first platform," founder and chief executive Eric Yuan said in an earnings release.

Zoom shares were up more than 22 percent in after-market trades that followed release of the earnings, which beat market expectations.

The company reported that it ended the quarter with approximately 370,000 customers that had more than 10 employees, more than four times as many than it had in the same period a year earlier.

The increase in customers built on a surge in the previous fiscal quarter, and appeared to offset investor concerns that Zoom's popularity would decline when restrictions on movements ease and people can get back to seeing one another in person.

The earnings come with Zoom still under pressure to deal with security and privacy. It has taken heat over uninvited cyber guests disrupting online meetings with a tactic called "zoombombing."

Zoom was originally built for businesses with dedicated IT teams to handle implementing security features, but first-time users flocked to the service to work or socialize from home due to the pandemic.

Yuan said on a previous earnings video call with analysts that Zoom "learned a hard lesson" that it should have provided more tech support.

"We should have played the role of IT for first-time users. We learned a hard lesson; this was a mistake I made." As a result, the company has poured resources into privacy and security.

Microsoft reported higher results for its fiscal third quarter to end March, powered by sharp demand for its Teams chat and online meeting app and cloud computing services as the world shifted to working and playing from home because of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Microsoft Teams now has 75 million daily active users. This comes as the coronavirus pandemic has forced businesses to operate remotely, and has boosted the demand for Microsoft's products that enable communication and collaboration.

The company said net impact was minimal and that cloud usage increased. There was a slowdown in transactional licensing, particularly among SMEs, and a reduction in advertising spends on LinkedIn.

In the More Personal Computing segment, Windows OEM and Surface benefited from increased demand for remote work and learning, but supply chain constraints in China offset that rise, though these improved late in the quarter.

Gaming benefited from people in lockdown, but Search was negatively impacted by less ad spend. Microsoft noted that the full effects of the pandemic may not be fully felt until later in the future. 

Revenue for the quarter climbed 15 percent from the year before to USD 35.0 billion, the operating profit increased 25 percent to USD 13.0 billion and the net profit rose 22 percent to USD 10.8 billion or USD 1.40 per share. Commercial Cloud helped lift results, generating USD 13.3 billion worth of revenues, up 39 percent. 

Total Intelligent Cloud revenues went up 27 percent to USD 12.3 billion, with server products and cloud services going 30 percent higher and Azure leaping 59 percent. Enterprise Services revenue increased 6 percent. 

Productivity and Business Processes was the next largest division, with revenues rising 15 percent to USD 11.7 billion. These included Office Commercial products and cloud services revenue up 13 percent, driven by Office 365 commercial revenue growth of 25 percent. Office Consumer products and cloud services revenue strengthened 15 percent, also helped Office 365, with consumer subscriber numbers growing to 39.6 million. LinkedIn revenue went up 21 percent while Dynamic products and cloud services had revenues rising 17 percent, driven by Dynamics 365 revenue growth of 47 percent. 

Microsoft said it returned USD 9.9 billion to shareholders in the quarter, in the form of share buybacks and dividends, an increase of 33 percent from the year earlier.