Zoom hails 2020 a “pivotal year” as Q4 revenues surge

Zoom has revealed its financial results for the fourth quarter 2020, which reveal that revenues increased by 369% year-on-year to $882.5 million (£635.9 million).

The video conferencing platform’s full-year revenues also increased by an impressive 326% to $2.65 billion (£1.9 billion),.

It was the third quarter in a row that the company recorded quadruple growth, with paid customers with more than 10 customers increasing by approximately 470% since Q4 2019. However, this growth was slightly smaller than for the third quarter, when Zoom revealed that the number of customers paying to use its service had increased by 485% year-on-year.

Nevertheless, the slight dip in customer subscriptions didn’t stop CEO Eric Yuan from describing the fiscal year 2021 as “a pivotal year for Zoom”. Yuan also remained optimistic about the possibility of customers returning to the office, which could mean that video conferencing becomes less of an essential working tool.

“As the world emerges from the pandemic, our work has only begun,” Yuan said on an earnings call on Monday. “The future is here with the rise of remote and work-from-anywhere trends. We recognise this new reality and are helping to empower our own employees and those of our customers to work and thrive in a distributed manner.

"As companies begin their safe return to the office and reimagine their working models, Zoom here to help, leading the transformation with an extensive and growing portfolio of offerings and product features.”

Yuan’s comments come days after prime minister Boris Johnson dismissed the notion that remote working will become the new normal, suggesting instead that people will be keen to get back into the workplace and resume in-person meetings. The statement was met with a rebuttal from cloud giant Citrix, which said that remote working will play a "huge role" in post-pandemic life due to UK employees wanting hybrid working models.

Commenting on Zoom’s financial results, Rufus Grig, chief strategy officer at cloud and managed services company Maintel, said that “even as we transition out of the pandemic, we'll likely see reliance on these cloud-based applications continue to grow”.

“We'll start seeing businesses move towards hybrid models of working, where staff will be allowed to work from both remote locations and in the office. As employees will be dotted across these different locations, they'll need to have the same level of access to these cloud-based applications and services in both environments.

"Making sure employees have access to cloud-based telephony systems and ensuring caller experience is consistent, will be crucial to support this transformed way of working,” he added.