A year of working from home may have driven many of us to the brink but it’s been great news for Zoom, the video conferencing business.
On Monday, the company announced its revenues had soared 326% year-over-year to $2.6bn and there was little sign of slowing at the end of the year. Sales soared 369% in the last quarter to $882.5m.
“We are humbled by our role as a trusted partner and an engine for the modern work-from-anywhere environment. Our ability to rapidly respond and execute drove strong financial results throughout the year,” said Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom.
The nine-year-old company has become synonymous with video conferencing during the pandemic. While many now speak of Zoom fatigue, the coronavirus is continuing to spread and traditional office life is still on hold for many.
Zoom expects the shift to continue well into 2021. In the first three months of this year, the company said, it expected to generate revenues of between $900m and $905m, well above analysts’ estimates.
Workers and students are expected to return to their physical spaces in the near future as vaccine supplies grow and the spread of the virus slows, a prospect that has worried some Zoom investors.
But there are signs that the coronavirus may have a lasting impact on office life. According to a Pew Research report, before the pandemic, only one in five workers who said their job responsibilities could mainly be done from home worked from home all or most of the time. Now, 71% of those workers are doing their job from home all or most of the time and more than half want to keep working from home even after the pandemic.
In the UK, seven in 10 employees who have been working remotely told a survey by Boston Consulting Group that they felt as productive at home as in the workplace.
Whether the trend will prove resilient enough for Zoom to continue its astronomical growth remains to be seen. “Zoom’s growth has been remarkable to watch. In under a year, the video conference platform has united a socially distanced world and become the defining app of the coronavirus era. However, with the vaccine programme in full swing and end of the pandemic in sight, Zoom’s growth over the past year could be hard to sustain,” said Rebecca Bezzina, managing director at the digital agency R/GA London.
