Like most of the biggest pandemic-era winners, Zoom Video Conferencing (ZM +4.49%) has tumbled in value over the past few months. In this Fool Live video clip, recorded on Jan. 24, Fool.com contributor Jon Quast explains to colleague Matt Frankel why he thinks Zoom stock could be worth a look for patient long-term investors right now.
Jon Quast: Well, I don't think that we're the first trio to have different views on Zoom the stock, because the stock market, in general, has been very polarized when it comes to Zoom Video Communications -- stock symbol ZM. This is the chart of Zoom off of its high 74%. Normalized from IPO, it's still a good performer. But one of the things that -- as we're talking about Zoom... I will go ahead and just show the valuation here. So, it actually has earnings, it has GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) earnings.
Matt Frankel: Say that again?
Quast: Yeah, GAAP earnings. This is a technology company with real earnings here, trading at about 39 times trailing earnings. Then you look at the price-to-sales ratio, here at 11, has never been cheaper as a public company. One of the things that is very interesting with Zoom to me: We all know Zoom, we're using it right now, like Matt said. Many companies wound up subscribing to Zoom during the pandemic. At the start of the pandemic, they needed to start subscribing to Zoom.
This is primarily a corporate solution, not a consumer solution. Many, many companies are using it to manage their remote workforces and become this hybrid enterprise in today's modern world. They are continuing to subscribe. Retention rates are extremely good, and the economics of the business are extremely good for Zoom. Now, what makes it interesting to me going forward -- this is assuming that these retention rates hold up as they have -- but the two products on Zoom's radar right now are Zoom Rooms, which modernizes the conference room, and Zoom Phone, which modernizes the internal infrastructure of the phone system at companies.
Only about 5% of Zoom customers have Zoom Rooms. Only about 4% of Zoom customers have Zoom Phone. What makes it interesting to me here is, as the pandemic abates, I would expect that companies are looking to upgrade their corporate offices to more account for the fact that hybrid work is still here, to an extent, for the foreseeable future. When you look at the market opportunity -- and these are cherry-picked, of course, from the company. The company is going to show some very good examples of this. That's just normal, how companies work. So take it with a grain of salt.
But case study No. 1: You can see this little bubble is where companies started their Zoom subscription and as they started adding on Zoom Phone and Zoom Rooms, this is the opportunity over that three-year time frame. Case study No. 2, this is where a company started with Zoom as a subscription as Zoom Phone, Zoom Room expansion comes in. It's an even bigger opportunity than the original Zoom subscription. When you look at how small they're penetrated into their customer base with these two products, and that these two products can actually be higher subscription revenue than the core product itself, it's something that I really like with Zoom going forward as we go back to work, go back to the office. And at this valuation, I really like it.
