Zoom expands into the cloud for contact centers

The videocall company prepares for a billion-dollar operation with the acquisition of Five9, a company that provides cloud services for contact centers

(Photo by Smith Collection / Gado / Getty Images) 326% of turnover in 2020, Zoom is preparing for its first billionaire acquisition: the company founded and led by Eric Yuan will buy the entirety of Five9, a cloud software provider dedicated to the functionalities of contact centers, i.e. advanced call centers, for a total of 14.7 billion dollars. If approved by the shareholders' meeting and regulatory authorities, it will be the second largest operation in the United States this year after Microsoft's on Nuance ($ 16 billion), a company specializing in cloud and artificial intelligence, although it will actually be possible conclude only in the first half of 2022.

Five9 is led by Rowan Trollope and offers data analysis services, automated workflows, artificial intelligence for customer-facing business communication technologies, with the aim of increasing the productivity of agents and supervisors. The platform grew during the pandemic, thanks to the cloud infrastructure on which the contact center as a service is based, which allowed representatives forced to work from home to continue business activities. Five9's revenues grew 33% to $ 435 million and now its features are expected to integrate primarily with Zoom Phone.

Listed on Nasdaq, Five9 closed on Friday at $ 177.6, for a market capitalization of $ 11.9 billion. During the transaction, each shareholder will receive 0.5533 Zoom shares for each Five9 share. This will give a 13% premium valuation to Five9's shares, which will reach $ 200.28, making up 14% of the buying company's market cap, or nearly $ 107 billion.

Le Zoom's shares have jumped 400% from last year, although they are down 36% from their October peak. The company seeks new sources of revenue to satisfy Wall Street, which is not satisfied with organic growth, as offices reopen and people come back to meet more and more live. The deal, meanwhile, will have the effect of reuniting two former Cisco executives who had never crossed paths before. Yuan was one of the developers of WebEx before it was bought for $ 3.2 billion in 2007 by the multinational, left in 2011 to found Zoom. Trollope, on the other hand, joined Cisco in 2012, after a 22-year career at Symantec, before becoming CEO of Five9 in 2018, a role he will maintain while becoming one of the presidents of Zoom.


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Cloud computing Finance Artificial intelligence globalData.fldTopic = "Cloud computing, Finance, Artificial intelligence"

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