ZOOM BUYING FIVE9 IN $14.7B ALL-STOCK TRANSACTION

Zoom, the videoconferencing company whose growth was supercharged by the pandemic over the past year, will buy the cloud call center company 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 that the acquisition will accelerate the company’s long-term growth by adding

the $24 billion contact center 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 at the start of 2020 just before the detection in the U.S. of COVID-19, is now worth five times that.

There was indications that Zoom might be in the hunt for acquisitions early this year that would accommodate more growth. In January, the company announced a secondary offering of shares that could raise up to $1.5 billion for, among other things, “acquisitions or strategic investments.”

Shares dipped almost 4%, trading for $348.88.

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 last 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.