Melia Robinson/Business Insider
- Salesforce has scored a 370% return on its Zoom investment in just 12 months as the coronavirus pandemic continues to fuel demand for video-conferencing.
- Marc Benioff’s enterprise-software giant bought $100 million worth of Zoom stock at the time of its IPO last April.
- Zoom’s stock price has skyrocketed since then, boosting the value of Salesforce’s stake to about $470 million.
- More than 300 million people logged into Zoom meetings on April 21, marking a 2,900% increase from the 10 million daily users at the end of December.
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Salesforce is cashing in on Zoom‘s surging popularity during the coronavirus pandemic. The enterprise-software giant has scored a 370% return on its investment in the video-conferencing platform in the space of a year.
Billionaire Marc Benioff’s company bought $100 million worth of Zoom stock at $36 a share when the company went public last April. Zoom’s stock price has skyrocketed to $169 since then, boosting the value of Salesforce’s stake to about $470 million.
Widespread travel restrictions and lockdowns to slow the spread of coronavirus have fueled demand for online-communication tools in recent months. More than 300 million people joined Zoom meetings on April 21, CEO Eric Yuan said this week, marking a 2,900% increase from the startup’s 10 million daily users at the end of December.
Zoom’s rapid growth has spurred investors to raise its market capitalization from about $10 billion at the time of its IPO to north of $47 billion. Its valuation prices in a vast amount of future growth, given Zoom made only $623 million in revenue and $26 million in net income in the year to January 31.
Salesforce isn’t the only software company with a stake in Zoom’s success. Cloud-storage specialist Dropbox and enterprise-software titan Atlassian both secured Zoom shares at the time of its IPO, which are now worth about $24 million and $48 million respectively.
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