Zoom profits shoot higher as it eyes 'future of working anywhere'

Zoom has reported a more than thirty-fold rise in quarterly profits and lifted its outlook as it set its sights on a "future of working anywhere".

The US-based video conferencing platform has thrived during the

pandemic

as lockdowns meant office, school, court hearings and social gatherings were forced online.

It reported a 355% rise in revenues to $663.5m (£494m) for the second quarter to the end of July while profits spiralled to $185.7m (£138m) compared to $5.5m a year ago.

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The company also lifted its revenue outlook for the full year to just under $2.4bn, up from $1.8bn forecast in June, as it sees firms adopting video meeting technology in the longer term - not just as temporary measure.

Zoom had previously warned that it might suffer a wave of cancellations during the second half of the year if efforts to contain the coronavirus allowed more workers to return to offices.

But continued worries about fresh spikes in case numbers mean many companies are holding off full reopenings until the end of the year and possibly into well into 2021.

Zoom boss Eric Yuan said: "Organisations are shifting from addressing their immediate business continuity needs to supporting a future of working anywhere, learning anywhere, and connecting anywhere on Zoom's video-first platform."

The company has been working to convert its mass of free users to paying customers and said by the end of the second quarter it had 370,200 subscribers with at least ten employees, up from 105,000 at the end of April and 66,300 a year ago.

There were 988 customers worth $100,000 or more in annual revenue, doubling from last year.

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Shares in the company have risen fivefold so far this year and were up by 23% in after-hours trading following the release of its update late on Monday.

An upsurge in demand for Zoom's services initially appeared to catch it off guard as hackers and others exploited security weaknesses to snoop on meetings but it now says it has closed most of the loopholes.

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More recently, it suffered a major outage on the same day many schools said they were resuming online lessons after a summer break.