“Until… the old days”

What happened to Zoom?

In fact, video conferencing emerged in the late 1990s with the advent of WebEx (owned by Cisco since 2007) and made available to consumers via Skype (now owned by Microsoft). ) and Apple’s iChat. But, the great moment with Zoom happened when they were the right guy, March 2020.

As the pandemic hit the United States, use of Zoom skyrocketed in a short period of time, popular with anyone doing a desk job or trying to stay connected with friends and family. family while social distancing. There are even weddings on Zoom.

All of that created one of the most glorious moments in Zoom’s history: Revenue grew 326% and in 2020, to $2.6 billion, while profits also skyrocketed to $672 million, from level of only 22 million USD in 2019.

Zoom’s stock skyrocketed during the first year of the pandemic: from $89 a share on February 7, 2020, to a peak of $559 in October. The frenzy was propelled. reached such a climax that other publicly traded companies with “Zoom-like” names also saw their shares skyrocket.

While virtual conferencing competitors like Google (Google Meet) and Microsoft (Teams and Skype) offered similar products, Zoom had distinct strategies back then, and they represented an opportunity. pure investment by investors looking to get exposure to the budding telework revolution. The company offers a free version of the product to consumers (with time limits on calls) but makes money through business-to-business sales.

But, just over two years later, travel restrictions have eased, the tech market has sagged due to rising interest rates and Zoom’s stock price has dropped to pre-pandemic levels, down 83% from all-time highs. era in October 2020. Now, when the pandemic has not ended, everything with Zoom has become a “faded past”.

The sadness of the “dear children” of the pandemic

Since the start of this year, Zoom has lost about half of its market capitalization – falling from $54 billion to $27 billion with the tech stock market slumping.

But, now everything is a thing of the past.

However, Zoom is not the only “baby” of the pandemic: Since the beginning of 2022, Peloton, the media and fitness equipment company, is down 55%, and Docusign, the pioneering and standing technology company. No. 1 in the digital signature segment in the world decreased by 52% and Netflix, the world’s No. 1 streaming service also decreased by 68%. While “pain” didn’t spare social media companies either, Meta (40% off), Pinterest (40% off) and Snap (48% off).

In fact, it seems that investors are getting tired of the bad value drop of a dismal tech market after the pandemic. With Zoom, things are getting worse, the threats to competition and the return of workers to the office.

Without different strategies and finding new growth drivers, Zoom may never return to the old days…

According to Nguyen Chuan