Video-conferencing mainstay Zoom is stepping into its first major acquisition by buying cloud call centre service provider Five9 for about $14.7-billion in an all-stock transaction.
Having achieved unprecedented popularity during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom has grown from strength to strength even after a few stumbles early on. Now the company is valued at $9-billion.
After the acquisition, the 20-year old Five9 will become an operating unit of Zoom. The acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2022, according to the two firms. The two firms will do a joint Zoom call today to share more about the transaction.
This comes as part of Zoom’s latest attempts into expanding its offerings. In the past year, the company has added several office collaboration products, a cloud phone system and an all-in-one home communications appliance to its already-existing video conferencing software.
Five9, which has amassed over 2,000 worldwide customers including Citrix and Under Armour, processes over 7 billion minutes of calls annually. The company is expected to help Zoom enter the $24-billion market for contact centres.
“We are continuously looking for ways to enhance our platform, and the addition of Five9 is a natural fit that will deliver even more happiness and value to our customers,” said Eric S. Yuan, founder and chief executive of Zoom, in a statement.
The firms are hoping that ‘joining forces’ will offer both significant cross-selling opportunities in each other’s respective customer bases, according to Tech Crunch.
Five9’s EVP of Product Management, Anand Chandrasekaran shared his thoughts on the acquisition:
“Businesses spend significant resources annually on their contact centres, but still struggle to deliver a seamless experience for their customers,” said Rowan Trollope, chief executive of Five9.
“It has always been Five9’s mission to make it easy for businesses to fix that problem and engage with their customers in a more meaningful and efficient way.”
“Joining forces with Zoom will provide Five9’s business customers access to best-of-breed solutions, particularly Zoom Phone, that will enable them to realize more value and deliver real results for their business. This, combined with Zoom’s ‘ease-of use’ philosophy and broad communication portfolio, will truly enable customers to engage via their preferred channel of choice,” Trollope concludes.
By Luis Monzon
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