Zoom Shares Benefit From COVID-19 Outbreak
The increase of confirmed COVID-19 cases outside of China has negatively impacted the US stock market, with the exception of one sector: web conferencing tools.
Indeed, Zoom Video shares climbed inversely to the market’s rapid downward trend. Zoom’s stock rose 3.2% on 24 February and went on to break its all-time high as the week progressed.
Zoom’s solutions have surged in demand due employees’ need to work remotely and avoid contracting COVID-19. US employees in China have especially led this demand.
Source: SoftwareReviews Scorecard for Zoom. Accessed February 26, 2020
Our Take
The remarkable staying power of capitalism is its ability to adapt to changing global preferences – whether it is from selling the Guy Fawkes masks that made up the 99% Occupy Movement or increasing the value of web conferencing tools from a looming pandemic. On this latter point, Zoom is especially benefitting from this potential global crisis: it offers a great business continuity solution for working remotely and avoiding the worst of the COVID-19 spread.
Web conferencing capabilities have improved dramatically over the past ten years and Zoom has become the “go to” web conferencing best-of-breed software. SoftwareReviews labels Zoom as a market leader, in no small part due to Zoom’s simplicity of use and installation. While Zoom may fall marginally short of the benefits Cisco Webex is now offering through Webex Assistant to Meetings (such as machine learning and sentiment analysis), Info-Tech members looking for a quick-to-install web conferencing tool will not go far wrong with Zoom.