Zoom blew past expectations for its first quarter earnings as the video conferencing company added millions of new users amid the global pandemic.
Revenue came in at $328 million, up 169% year-over-year, with earnings per share at $0.20. Analysts expected revenue of $202 million and earnings per share of $0.09.
Zoom stock was down slightly in after-hours trading. Shares have more than doubled since the pandemic began as more people rely on the company’s software to work and socialize due to shelter-in-place orders. Zoom does not report monthly active user numbers but CNBC cited its mobile app at a whopping 173 million monthly active users, up from 14 million in March.
Zoom CEO Eric Yuan gave a special shout-out to longtime partner Amazon Web Services and its CEO Andy Jassy for helping the company meet demand.
“As our demand increased and we had limited visibility into the growth, AWS was able to respond quickly by provisioning the majority of the new servers we needed, sometimes adding several thousands a day for several days in a row,” Yuan said in prepared remarks following the earnings report. He also praised Oracle and its CEO Larry Ellison for other cloud-related support.
Zoom and AWS are among a group of tech companies seeing demand surge due to the pandemic. AWS posted net sales of $10.2 billion in Q1, an increase of nearly 33% from a year ago, and profits of more than $3 billion.
Zoom video conferencing rival Microsoft Teams is also growing rapidly. A The Wall Street Journal report Tuesday highlighted how Microsoft is using “sharp-elbowed business tactics reminiscent of an earlier era” to help attract more Teams customers, noting the company’s aggressive move to land 110,000 additional users from New York City’s education department after it banned Zoom due to security reasons. The department later approved Zoom for use on May 6 after the company addressed concerns.
