Multiple analysts increased their price targets on Zoom Video Communications Inc.'s stock after the company delivered record earnings, as usage continued to rise during the pandemic.
Zoom continued to benefit from significant growth in its customer segment with 10 or more employees, which jumped 458.4% year over year in the company's fiscal 2021 second quarter to 370,200 customers. The company also ended the quarter with 988 customers contributing more than $100,000 in trailing 12 months revenue, up 112%.
"For the quarter, the year-over-year growth in revenue was primarily due to subscription provided to new customers, which accounted for approximately 81% of the increase, while subscriptions provided to existing customers accounted for approximately 19% of the increase," Zoom CFO Kelly Steckelberg said during the company's recent earnings conference call. "This demand was broad-based across industry verticals, geographies and customer cohorts."
Zoom's fiscal second-quarter revenue spiked to $663.5 million, up 355% year over year and well above the company's guidance and analysts' expectations.
"How do you follow up one of the best quarters in software history? By reporting numbers so strong that investors have to triple-check to make sure these aren't typos," D.A. Davidson & Co. analyst Rishi Jaluria wrote in a note to clients.
Jaluria noted that Zoom's customer additions in the quarter were more than the company's entire customer base at the end of fiscal 2020. This prompted him to increase his price target on Zoom's stock to $460 from $240 and to reiterate his "buy" rating.
FBN Securities analyst Shebly Seyrafi also reiterated his "outperform" rating on Zoom's stock and increased his price target to $525 from $250.
Seyrafi said that "the broad-based nature of the growth" was impressive, noting that Zoom's business in the Americas grew by 288% year over year, while international grew by 628% year over year.
"Total international is now almost a third of revenue, up from 19.7% a year ago, and we see this percentage continuing to increase," he added.
Zoom raised its guidance for fiscal 2021, saying it now expects total revenue to be between $2.37 billion and $2.39 billion and non-GAAP EPS to be between $2.40 and $2.47. Analysts, however, think the updated forecast is on the conservative side.
"We continue to envision the potential for growth to accelerate even from current levels through the second half of the year," RBC Capital Markets analyst Alex Zukin wrote in his analyst note. Even if Zoom's bookings decline by 35% in the second half of fiscal 2021 and then decline by an additional 50% in fiscal 2022, the company can still grow its revenue by more than 60%, he said.
D.A. Davidson & Co.'s Jaluria also called the guidance conservative, noting that growth is likely to be more than the company is forecasting because the pandemic is showing no signs of ending and the nature of work has irreversibly changed.
"In addition, we note that Q2 revenue likely showed little upside from education turning virtual and that upside should show in 2H numbers," he said.
The blockbuster earnings drove Zoom's stock to an all-time high, ending trading Aug. 31 at $377.81. In comparison, Zoom's stock was at $208.08 on June 2 after the company reported its fiscal 2021 first-quarter results. In all, Zoom's stock price, as of Sept. 1, had increased a whopping 572.7% since Dec. 31, 2019.
"Zoom definitely has an overall user-experience advantage over competitors like Microsoft's Teams and Cisco's Webex," said Raul Castanon, a senior research analyst covering workforce collaboration and communication platforms at S&P Global Market Intelligence's 451 Research unit. "It's very easy for an end-user to hop onto a Zoom call for personal or professional affairs, and it's also very easy for anyone to set up a Zoom account and upgrade it to a premium account."
Setting up a Cisco enterprise account also involves dealing with the company's channel partners, Castanon said, while Microsoft typically bundles several of its products, some of which a company may not need. This makes Zoom more appealing to average users, especially small companies.
"Zoom is definitely eating the competition's lunch now and is a much more serious threat than it was prior to the pandemic," Castanon said. "They've turned into the benchmark for unified communications and it's no secret that Microsoft and Cisco are now trying hard to catch up in this space."
However, Castanon does think that the buzz surrounding Zoom's growth in the last two quarters may be a bit over-hyped.
"I think the surge in demand for video communications will level off because in many ways it was a reaction to a sudden situation," Castanon said. "We're now about six months into the shutdown, and soon people will start adapting to different ways of working and rely on methods beyond just video calls."