The stock market has been extremely volatile since the coronavirus pandemic began, and its recovery has been at least as impressive as its initial plunge in late February and March. The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC +0.10%) has soared 40% from its March lows, and it's within just a couple of percentage points of a new all-time record high. Today's gains of around 0.75% for the index brought it even closer to reaching new heights.
Nasdaq stocks that have demonstrated an ability to thrive during the coronavirus crisis have gone a long way toward helping the index bounce back. Zoom Video Communications (ZM 2.30%) has been the highest-profile play on the corporate world's need to adapt to current business conditions, and investors looked forward to seeing just how much Zoom's business would grow during the first quarter. Zoom's quarterly report sent the stock up another 7% on Wednesday, and it confirmed what many had already anticipated and points toward a bright future for the video collaboration platform pioneer.
How Zoom fared to start 2020
Shares of Zoom Video Communications came into today's session already having seen huge gains. The stock had already soared 27% in the past three trading sessions as investors upped their expectations for the company.
Image source: Zoom Video Communications.
Zoom's numbers certainly didn't disappoint. Revenue of $328 million was up a staggering 169% from the year-ago period, with Zoom counting 265,400 enterprise customers with more than 10 employees using its platform. That client count was up more than 350% from 12 months ago. Moreover, the video specialist saw a rise of 90% in the number of those customers contributing $100,000 or more toward Zoom's revenue over the past year.
Unlike many high-flying tech stocks, Zoom also demonstrated that it's profitable. The company posted a modest profit of $27 million, or $0.09 per share, which was up from breakeven results a year ago. When you make allowances for extraordinary items on the income statement, non-GAAP (adjusted) net income jumped more than sixfold to $58.3 million, or $0.20 per share.
Where Zoom is headed
Investors were also quite pleased with Zoom's outlook for the remainder of the year. Many companies haven't given guidance at all for 2020, citing coronavirus impacts too difficult for them to predict or translate into specific headwinds or tailwinds for their business models. By contrast, Zoom was assertive in its guidance, and its targets show how ambitious the company is to grow as much as it can to serve customers who need its video collaboration platform.
For the current fiscal year, Zoom expects revenue to come in between $1.775 billion and $1.8 billion. If it can reach the upper end of that range, it would represent a near-tripling of sales from the $623 million it brought in during the previous fiscal year. Zoom sees that business translating into huge profit growth as well, projecting adjusted earnings of $1.21 to $1.29 per share. When you consider that Zoom's profit for last year was just $0.35 per share on an adjusted basis, it's easy to see just how monumental a surge the video specialist has enjoyed over the first three months of this year.
Analysts responded with positive comments of their own. RBC Capital upgraded the video collaboration company from sector perform to outperform and put a $250 per share price target on the stock. Similarly, DA Davidson made an upgrade from neutral to buy and boosted its price target from $150 per share to $240. JPMorgan kept its overweight rating and gave a $70 increase to its stock price target to $220 per share. Even the relatively bearish Stifel, which kept a hold rating, increased its price target from $105 per share to $180.
Zoom is driving itself to excel, with updates to improve security and meet user concerns, new incentives for users to upgrade to paid accounts, and ongoing efforts to keep the platform scalable and efficient. Zoom shareholders like what they're seeing, and it'll be interesting to see how well CEO Eric Yuan and his team can capitalize on this groundbreaking opportunity for the budding tech stock. If its leader does well, Zoom stock could keep its upward momentum well into the future.
