Zoom, the videoconferencing company whose growth was supercharged by the pandemic over the past year, will buy the cloud contact centre provider Five9 in an all-stock deal valued at about $14.7 billion.
That is far greater than Zoom's market valuation a little over two years ago when it went public for slightly more than $9 billion.
Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan said in a blog post Sunday that the acquisition will accelerate the company's long-term growth by adding the $24 billion contact centre market. That will give Zoom greater exposure to more business clients. Yuan added that it also the deal also complements the Zoom Phone, a cloud phone system that is seeing strong demand.
The size of the deal would have seemed unthinkable when Zoom Video Communications Inc. went public in early 2019, before it became a household name. With the arrival of the pandemic and a global shift to working from home, Zoom is everywhere.
Its stock, which could be bought for less than $70 each when 2020 began, is now worth five times that number.
Shares dipped 5% before the opening bell Monday, trading for $358.07.
Shareholders of Five9 Inc. stockholders will receive 0.5533 shares of Class A common stock of Zoom for each share of Five9. Based on Zoom's closing price on Friday, this represents a per share price for Five9 common stock of $200.28.
Five9 will become a unit of Zoom once the transaction closes. Rowan Trollope will become a president of Zoom and continue as Five9 CEO.
The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2022. It still needs approval from Five9 shareholders.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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