Tech

Hot video meeting startup Zoom filed to go public, and it's profitable

Eric Yuan Zoom
Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan owns 22% of Zoom, which publicly filed to IPO on Friday. Zoom
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Zoom, the $1 billion video conferencing startup that competes with Cisco WebEx, publicly filed its S-1 on Friday.  The news confirms Business Insider's earlier reporting that the company aims to go public in April

This makes Zoom the latest in a long list of IPO hopefuls expected to closely follow ride-hailing startup Lyft's big market debut, which is anticipated at the end of next week. Pinterest also has its eye on an April IPO and could list Friday as well, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

Zoom didn't price its upcoming IPO in its S-1, but it indicated in the filing that it will list on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "ZM."

Unlike many of the other 2019 IPO candidates, Zoom is profitable. The company saw $7.5 million in profits in 2019, after losing $3.8 million in 2018.

It's also growing. The company brought in $330.5 million in revenue in fiscal 2019, up 118% from $151 million in fiscal 2018.

The more obvious ticker symbol, "ZOOM," is already taken by an unrelated company called Zoom Technologies, which opened at just $0.04 on Friday. That other Zoom's shares shot up 900% on the markets following news of this Zoom's IPO filing.

Zoom was founded in 2011 by CEO Eric S. Yuan, who was previously vice president of engineering at the video-conferencing company WebEx. Yuan joined Cisco in 2007 when it bought WebEx for $3.2 billion.

Zoom, which sells subscriptions for enterprise-grade video-conference services, is used by companies including Uber and Box.

Like many other IPO candidates in years past, Zoom will go public with a dual-class structure which allots Class A holders one vote per share, compared to 10 votes per share for Class B share holders. This will particularly benefit Yuan, who owns 22% of the company.

Among Zoom's biggest outside shareholders are Emergence Capital Partners, which owns 12.5% of the company, and Sequoia Capital, which owns 11.4%, Digital Mobile Venture, which owns 9.8%, and Bucantini Enterprises Limited, which owns 6.1%.

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Becky Peterson was formerly a tech features correspondent focused on long-form profiles and investigations into the most interesting people and companies at the intersection of technology and finance.She's broken news on major tech stories including Palantir's work on Project Maven, Peter Thiel's $18 million estate in Miami (which was once featured on MTV's 'The Real World'), Jeffrey Epstein's tour of SpaceX, and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi's insistence that employees take "the D."Previously, she covered enterprise tech and tech investment banking with a focus on M&A, IPO and venture capital deals in San Francisco. She graduated from New York University with a master's degree in media, culture and communication with an emphasis on technology and society. ExpertiseSilicon Valley, Venture Capital, Investment Banking, Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine MaxwellPopular articlesInside the turmoil at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where employees say divorce, Epstein, and vaccines have left some staffers polishing their résumésThe secret life of Ian Osborne, the shadowy 38-year-old cofounder of Chamath Palihapitiya's SPAC who has built the ultimate black book of billionairesSilicon Valley VCs are at war with the 'far left radicals' running CaliforniaInside the life of Ghislaine Maxwell's secret husband, a once-high-flying tech entrepreneur backed by Eric Schmidt who is now a central figure in one of the country's most high-profile legal casesRent the Runway CEO Jennifer Hyman, one of the most successful female founders, is fighting to save her companyJeffrey Epstein set Elon Musk's brother up with a girlfriend in effort to get close to the Tesla founder, sources sayA drunken late-night assault allegation has roiled the secretive world of Mark Zuckerberg's private family office. Personal aides are speaking out about claims that household staff endured sexual harassment and racism from their colleagues.