https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/30/21242421/zoom-300-million…
Zoom now says it has 300M “meeting participants” not users. So someone who takes part in 5 meetings in a day may be counted as 5 users.
At best another PR issue due to massive growth. At worst another reason to doubt management credibility.
Does not change what I continue to see: people find it easiest to use Zoom.
Not a big fan of these stories - seems they need better PR person but will stay long.
BD
Sorry, Dan, I just posted the same article right after you. You can remove my link and I hope everyone who responds to the article gives BD the thread it will deserve.
In the original blog post from ZM (see below), they stated they had 10M daily participants in Dec 2019, and 200M daily participants in Feb 2020 so even if they are saying the March number is 300M ‘daily participants’ and NOT ‘daily active users’ it is still the same metric they were using for the Dec and Feb updates i.e. a 30 fold increase in daily participants.
So, yeah not a great look but it doesn’t change the thesis in my book. In fact, it might be a chance to get some more on before the market realizes it is still a 30 fold increase on Dec and a 50% increase from a month ago!
https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/04/01/a-message-to-our-u…
Long ZM
In the original blog post from ZM (see below), they stated they had 10M daily participants in Dec 2019, and 200M daily participants in Feb 2020 so even if they are saying the March number is 300M ‘daily participants’ and NOT ‘daily active users’ it is still the same metric they were using for the Dec and Feb updates i.e. a 30 fold increase in daily participants.
I believe they edited that blog post after they were alerted to saying 3000M USERS.
https://www.businessinsider.com/zoom-blog-post-daily-active-…
Denny Schlesinger
Mmmmmm. The Verge itself is being a little misleading. Zoom did not say “Daily Active Users” anywhere in original post as the Verge is claiming they did. They provide links to the original and the updated. If you compare side by side screen shots. Title said 300M daily users. That is an important distinction as “daily users” does not convey DAU, a very technical term. Also in original post said daily participants in the body of blog.
Importantly this is same language, that is “participants”, that Zoom CEO used in April 1 blog in “Message to our users” about “200 million daily meeting participants” that we have been basing our investment discussion on for a month. See the original here:
https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/04/01/a-message-to-our-u…
And here is Saul’s original highlight from April 2. Zoom quote is “daily meeting participants”.
Darth
Here’s the quote from the April 1st Zoom report:
To put this growth in context, as of the end of December last year, the maximum number of daily meeting participants, both free and paid, conducted on Zoom was approximately 10 million. In March this year, we reached more than 200 million daily meeting participants, both free and paid
https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/04/01/a-message-to-our-u…
Couldn’t be clearer! That Verge article is fake news, or at best, picking up on a single misquote by Zoom somewhere!
Saul
Didn’t link to Saul’s original post on April 2 that had quotes from Zoom blog.
https://discussion.fool.com/zm-daily-users-200-million-up-fro-10…
Point is that’s the original from April 1 on the 200M.
Here is original and unedited first paragraph for the more recent 300M blog.
In today’s “Ask Eric Anything” webinar, Zoom founder and CEO Eric S. Yuan provided more progress updates on our 90-day security plan, including exciting announcements about Zoom 5.0 and surpassing 300 million daily Zoom meeting participants.
What Zoom changed is the title wording.
Zoom Surpasses 300M Daily Users, Announces Zoom 5.0 with AES 256-Bit GCM Encryption
To the meeting participant language. The actual body of the blog didn’t need editing.
Media trying to hard?
Darth
Yes. You have to be careful where you get your information. Saul always advocates getting from the source. For example, that is where you get your company numbers from (e.g., income, balance sheet, …) and not from Yahoo Finance or other. So get info from company website if possible.
From this thread:
https://discussion.fool.com/excellent-article-re-the-surge-in-zo…
Info was posted from this source:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/zoom-daily-users-surge-300-21…
which said:
“On April 21, more than 300 million people used Zoom’s flagship videoconferencing app, up from about 200 million on April 1, Chief Executive Officer Eric Yuan said Wednesday during a webinar focused on security. While some companies and school districts have dropped the app, Zoom’s response has reassured investors and sent shares climbing.”
Isn’t it misleading to say 300M daily meeting participants when a great percentage of those users are participating in multiple meetings? They obviously don’t have anywhere near 300M users per day.
Isn’t it misleading to say 300M daily meeting participants when a great percentage of those users are participating in multiple meetings?
Would you be happier if they had said “daily uses” or “daily meeting participations”? The real point here is that the 300M, 200M, and 10M are all the same metric so that the growth in usage is phenomenal.
Being forgotten in this is that there are a lot of users who are not using it daily. So, in addition to the users which are using it many times a day, there is a large pool of users who don’t show up in any one day’s statistics.
a great percentage of those users are participating in multiple meetings
Good morning, PLynchJr.
A great percentage? Really? Do you really think that the percentage of users who regularly participate in multiple meetings in the course of a single day is large or even significant?
I reached out to the author (i.e. Tom Warren) of the article at The Verge. I will need to go back and re-read his piece, but he stands by the fact that he correctly reports that the body of the original blog post was also edited in addition to the headline:
"Tom Warren
10:49 AM (4 minutes ago)
to me
Not sure if you read the article properly, but the content of the blog was also edited. Thanks for your concern either way.
Tom"
Anyone interested in contacting Tom Warren directly to flush this out could email him at: tom@theverge.com
We later exchanged the following emails:
"Tom Warren
10:57 AM (0 minutes ago)
to me
That’s fair, I’ve noticed the same. I think a lot of it stems from some fairly shady tactics from Zoom, and it not being transparent. Updating the blog post isn’t the issue here for example, it’s not notifying people to correct stories that will have materially impacted the stock.
Tom Warren
Senior Editor
THE VERGE
@tomwarren
_______
From: Harley Carroll harleymcarroll@gmail.com
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2020 3:54 pm
To: Tom Warren
Subject: Re: Zoom Participants
Thanks Tom. I will go back and read your article again. I always find them to be of interest. As a Zoom shareholder, I think there has been a “piling on” mentality as of late from the media while others in this space seem to be getting a free pass."
Being forgotten in this is that there are a lot of users who are not using it daily.
Is there data available for this “statistic”?
I don’t use Zoom but I use Teams. I COULD see a good number of people using Zoom multiple times a day if they use it like I use Zoom. Teams has replaced my phone. I want to talk to someone internally, I’m doing it via Teams because it’s easier to use than the phone.
This isn’t like the old WebEx days where you send out a meeting invite and wait for everyone to join the call, using your phone.
This is from the author’s bio:
Tom Warren is a Senior Editor for The Verge. Tom previously founded WinRumors, a site dedicated to Microsoft news, before joining The Verge. Tom also used to work as an enterprise project manager in a variety of investment banks, and has a background in IT and Windows engineering.
Does his background make a difference? It certainly makes me think Saul is correct and this is a hit piece.
12x
Agree. I use teams during my workday - likely 20-40 separate occasions. and it is easier than the phone.
10M daily meeting participants to 300M daily meeting participant… may look like apples to apples but its not…
before pandemic, Zoom (and others) were being used for specific conferencing meetings as a small % of daily interactions… now they become much bigger % of daily interactions…
So what - one person that used be in average 1.5 or 2 zoom meetings per week is now in 1.5 to 2 zoom meetings per day… or even more… this only translates to more cost for Zoom (since their pricing is per host per month)
so think somewhere between 5x to 10x of the 30x comparison above is just translating to cost… not more revenue…
Compound this with the fact that host to user ratio in schools, colleges and public meetings etc, is much smaller than a typical enterprise, and you will see that actual revenue generating hosts will again be much smaller even with new client gained… this will be somewhat balanced by SMB clients but those SMB will exit paying account or switch to free stuff from Google in no time…
Ofcourse Zoom has gained lot more paying customers through Pandemic… it will be much smaller multiple than 30 compared to its cost multiple to 30 times…
And yes, you think the gross margins are high and incremental cost is zero because it is cloud… think again, this is video streaming, both compute and bandwidth cost matters when you have step increase like 30x… so look for sizable reduction in gross margins %…
I am not a Zoom short and not here to try to scare… I have no position in Zoom…
To me, Zoom is just difficult to value right now on any available metric… I much prefer CRWD and LVGO… and DDOG and NET where clarity is much higher… new customers getting on board should be as sticky as existing customers and margin model does not get skewed like it likely will in case of Zoom.
Some clarifications:
Daily User and Daily Active User (DAU) is technically the same. There is no space for argumentation.
Darthco said “The actual body of the blog didn’t need editing.”. That’s not correct. They changed the body as well.
From
"We’ve been adding capacity in our data centers and working with our public cloud partners to scale as needed to ensure reliability, even with more than 300 million daily users."
to
"We’ve been adding capacity in our data centers and working with our public cloud partners to scale as needed to ensure reliability, even with more than 300 million daily meeting participants"
The real big news was the blog post on April 1st. There they already stated correctly “daily meeting participants” (Wayback Machine Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20200402063459/https://blog.zoom…)
Saul said “picking up on a single misquote by Zoom somewhere!” I think this is the case.
Whatever the metric is - DAU or DMP, they grew from 10 mio to 300 mio to 400 mio, which is still 3.000% and 4.000%.
Carver/12x,
Are you saying you are using Teams for voice to replace your phone or video to replace your phone. I’m kind of working on a theory that while Teams is seeing a lot of increase in use/seats it’s not necessarily for video.
Just curious.
And Carver, good catch on authors bio. Second time that windows site has been involved in a Zoom hit piece. Thanks.
Darth
Moo,
Ok way later in the blog, didn’t see that. But still the opening paragraph is the same “participants”.
Darth
Last post on this topic