Zoom failed with plans to purchase billions

Zoom’s plans to establish itself in the call center business with a billion-dollar takeover have failed.

The shareholders of the company Five9, which Zoom wanted to swallow, rejected the deal, as the company announced on Friday night. Therefore the purchase agreement was terminated.

Zoom announced the acquisition of Five9 in July. Zoom wanted to use its shares, which had risen in the pandemic, as currency in order to pay the purchase price of 14.7 billion US dollars (12.5 billion euros) stated at the time. However, since then the price of Zoom papers has fallen by more than a quarter. That made the deal much less lucrative for Five9 shareholders.

To make matters worse in the past few weeks, the US government announced an intensive examination of the takeover. A special committee headed by the Justice Department investigated whether the deal posed risks to US national security.

Five9 is a specialist in call centers operated in the cloud. With the purchase, Zoom could have expanded its business beyond video conferencing. Zoom CEO Eric Yuan assured in a blog post that the setback would not affect Zoom’s plans to expand the business, as Five9 was not critical to the platform’s success.

Zoom had moved into a new league with the corona crisis. The company was originally supposed to provide video conferencing for companies. In the pandemic, however, it was not only used in companies: private individuals also use Zoom for all sorts of occasions – from family reunions to yoga classes.

After leaps in sales of more than 300 percent last year, growth has normalized. Zoom therefore tries to use the tailwind to expand its business. The plan is, among other things, to take over the provision of telephony in companies in addition to video conferences. dpa