Zoom announced better-than-expected quarterly results earlier in the week, but only once the teleconferencing company had found the HDMI cable.
What does this mean?
Even the people who work for Zoom are pretty tired of using Zoom at this point, with chills running down their spines every time Keith in middle management proposes a remote social. The company, then, has recognized the pressing need to broaden its product offerings, which it’s been doing in the form of analytics tools and customer service contact centers.
That diversification has been paying off: Zoom upped the number of business customers by 24% last quarter from the same time last year, with the number of big business customers – those that have spent more than $100,000 over the past 12 months – up 46%. That helped its profit beat expectations, and gave the company enough confidence to deliver a better-than-expected profit outlook for this quarter too. Investors buffered… buffered… buffered, and sent its shares up 5%.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, Visible Alpha
Why should I care?
For markets: Should you give Zoom a second chance?
Zoom’s stock has fallen nearly 50% this year, meaning it’s down around 80% from its October 2020 peak. But some analysts reckon investors have been overlooking the company’s potential in this new hybrid landscape, even if it’s going to struggle to repeat the five-straight quarters of triple-digit percentage revenue growth it enjoyed over the pandemic. That might be why they’re forecasting that its stock will rise over 60% on average in the next 12 months.
Source: Google Finance
They might be onto something, since it doesn’t look like hybrid working will be going anywhere soon: data out last week showed less than 20% of workers have returned to offices full time, and over a quarter of workers now see the choice to work remotely as more important than pay. In fact, one survey from a global recruiting firm noted that 50% of US workers would rather resign than be forced back to the office five days a week.
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Snap’s Shares Plunged As It Cut Its Outlook
Snap’s stock plunged below its listing price this week, after the social media company warned it’ll miss both its revenue and profit estimates.
What does this mean?
Snap already disappointed investors with a bleak quarterly results update last month, in which it predicted weaker-than-expected revenue growth this quarter of 20-25%. But the company just admitted that it’ll probably miss even those targets, warning that the economic backdrop has deteriorated further and faster than it had previously expected. Snap said supply chain shortages and workforce disruptions were hitting advertisers’ spending, and that it’d be putting its hiring plans on hold for the rest of this year to cut back on costs. Investors took it badly: they sent Snap’s stock down as much as 41% on Tuesday – the company’s biggest-ever intraday decline.
Why should I care?
For markets: This isn’t just about Snap.
Snap’s warning doesn’t bode well for other ad-reliant companies, as they all compete for an increasingly small pool of cash. In fact, analysts are taking it as a sign that the entire industry is set to slow down, which might be why social media stocks – including those of Meta, Alphabet, Twitter, and Pinterest – collectively lost more than $160 billion in market value on Tuesday.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, FactSet
The bigger picture: The stock market is growling.
Those tech names represent a substantial portion of the US stock market, so it’s no surprise that their dropoffs helped drag the entire thing down on Tuesday. It’s now fallen 19% this year, which puts it within a hair’s breadth of a technical bear market at the 20% mark. And investors don’t think it’ll stop there: survey data out this week shows they’re on average expecting it to fall at least another 10% before it bottoms.
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