Zoom’s stock tanked Monday morning after the video conferencing company revealed plans to buy call center software company Five9 for $14.7 billion.
An hour after markets opened, Zoom shares were trading down 3.9 percent at $348.00, according to MarketWatch data, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index was down just 1.5 percent.
Meanwhile, shares of Five9 — which sells software used by call center workers for companies like Under Armour and Lululemon — were up about 4.3 percent at $185.17.
Under the terms of the all-stock deal, which was approved by the boards of both companies, Five9’s shares are valued at about $200 each — a serious premium over their current price.
“It’s a best case scenario for Five9 investors,” Wedbush Securities managing director Dan Ives told The Post. “If you said a few years ago they’d get bought out $200 a share, investors would’ve thought you were way off base.”
Zoom’s situation is more complicated, Ives said.
“It becomes a bit of a ‘prove me’ story from here for Zoom to show the acquisition makes sense,” added Ives. “An acquisition adds integration risks. It makes their story a little less pure.”
Nonetheless, Zoom argues that the deal will help the company expand its offerings for business clients beyond its core video tools, giving a company that was not a household name until the pandemic struck a reliable stream of income as workers return to offices.
“The acquisition is expected to help enhance Zoom’s presence with enterprise customers and allow it to accelerate its long-term growth opportunity by adding the $24 billion contact center market,” Zoom said in a statement late Sunday.
Ives compared Monday’s deal to cloud-computing giant’s Salesforce’s $27.7 billion acquisition of workplace messaging service Slack in December. That deal was also pitched as increasing the company’s offerings to business clients and momentarily tanked Salesforce’s stock.
“Salesforce buying Slack kind of set of the fireworks for Zoom to think out of the box strategically,” said Ives.
Under the terms of the deal, Five9 CEO Rowan Trollope will remain as head of his company while reporting to Zoom CEO Eric Yuan.