Zoom Video Communications has arguably been the biggest beneficiary of the remote work and virtual home schooling reality that many Americans now live in as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The stock has soared more than 250% so far this year. Zoom is now worth more than $67 billion. To put that in perspective, Zoom is a more valuable company than 417 of the firms in the S&P 500 — nearly 85% of the members in the blue chip index.
Zoom has a bigger market cap than the once mighty General Electric and is worth more than Dow 30 components Caterpillar, Walgreens, Dow and Travelers.
Not bad for a company that’s only a little more than nine years old, just went public in April 2019 and is expected to generate less than $2 billion in annual sales this fiscal year.
Zoom is growing like mad. The company reported earlier this month that its sales soared nearly 170% in its most recent quarter and the number of business customer using it surged more than 350%.
Zoom is also profitable, something that cannot be said for Uber, Lyft, Slack, Pinterest and other unicorn startups of Silicon Valley that went public last year.
But if Zoom is going to remain at the top of the video conferencing heap, it will need to fight off growing competition from even larger tech rivals such as Cisco, Google owner Alphabet and Microsoft. Verizon is also getting into the business with its purchase of buzzy Zoom rival BlueJeans.