On Feb. 23, 2022, Zoom Video Communications (ZM -0.99%) expanded its business beyond its ubiquitous videoconferencing platform and into the contact-center space. According to management, this will be a $21 billion opportunity by 2026.
The contact-center space is full of competition, leading some investors to dismiss Zoom's prospects in capturing a meaningful sliver of the opportunity. But there's a simple reason to believe the company can win. And it starts with an understanding of its mission.
Zoom is on a mission
At the top of many of its filings, Zoom says, "Our mission is to make communications frictionless and secure." I believe that by "frictionless," management means it strives to be easy to use.
Zoom's frictionless mission is guiding decisions as it launches new products, including Zoom Contact Center. A contact center is how the general public gets in touch with a business, usually through automated messages that tell people which button to press to have their calls routed to the right place.
In the fourth quarter of 2023, Zoom announced that it won its biggest contact center customer yet, with the customer needing 2,000 seats. And at the JMP Securities Technology Conference earlier this month, chief financial officer Kelly Steckelberg noted that Zoom competed with other players in this space for this particular contract.
According to Steckelberg, Zoom won this new customer because its product is easier to use and, as a result, more cost effective. She said, "The reason that Zoom Contact Center won is because ... when it came to the configuration of the voice response system and the agent flows, [the customer] realized that it was simple enough for them to do it themselves rather than having to pay for expensive third-party services, which is what the other provider was going to have to have."
If this large enterprise had signed a contract with Zoom's competition, it would have needed someone else to come in and make it work. By using Zoom's contact center product instead, it could keep everything in-house. That's a surprisingly simple reason that Zoom can compete well in this $21 billion market.
Buy Zoom stock?
When Zoom went public in 2019, it was as high as $66 per share on its first day of trading. As of this writing, it's $69 per share, meaning it has basically gone nowhere over the last three years.
Zoom stock has gone nowhere because investors believe its videoconferencing tools are waning in significance after becoming extremely relevant in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic. But what many investors miss is how much the company is diversifying away from just videoconferencing.
This diversification includes its new contact center business. But it also extends to its other enterprise-level products, such as its internal business-phone systems, hybrid in-person and remote conference rooms, and Zoom IQ -- a transcription and analytics tool that can help organizations assess and improve communication.
Admittedly, Zoom is a low-growth investment opportunity at the moment. Management expects only about 1% year-over-year revenue growth in its fiscal 2024, which started on Feb. 1. It's expecting only modestly better 2% to 3% growth for adjusted income from operations. And this stagnation turns many growth investors off.
However, much of the stagnation is due to customers on the consumer level (individuals) stopping their subscriptions. On the flip side, the growth and retention of enterprise clients is still strong. Zoom ended its fiscal 2023 with 213,000 enterprise customers, up 12% from fiscal 2022.
These enterprise customers are management's target audience with its new products and services. Therefore, it seems reasonable that Zoom's overall growth will eventually reaccelerate as its huge enterprise customer base adopts other services from the company -- perhaps including its contact center.
And as long as it stays focused on its mission of being easy to use, I think it has a good chance of winning. In short, this is why I believe out-of-favor Zoom stock is still worth buying today.
