Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Shares of Zoom are in high demand on Thursday morning but there's one problem: It appears to be a case of mistaken identity. Zoom Technologies (ticker ZOOM) is not the company Zoom Video Communications (ticker ZM) that began publicly trading Thursday on the Nasdaq. Rather, Zoom Technologies is a tiny Chinese wireless communications company that "does not have significant operations," according to its profile on Yahoo. But within two hours of trading, shares of ZOOM surged more than 80%, with trading volume that was quadruple the amount of shares that change hands on the average day. The stock later returned most of those gains, ending the day up 10.2%. Zoom Technologies also has a market value of just $14 million and began 2019 trading at 1 cent a share. At a high of $5.50 a share in midday trading, the stock was up more than 47,000% this year. Zoom Video Communications stock is in high demand Thursday, as the shares made their debut on the Nasdaq at $65 a share – nearly double the $36 a share the company priced its IPO at Wednesday.<doc-sep>Text size Some Wall Street investors are getting rich off Zoom—just the wrong one. Much has been made of the buzzy public debut of Zoom Video Communications (ticker: ZM), the enterprise videoconference software company with a $1 billion valuation that made its debut on the Nasdaq exchange Thursday midday, but the shares of another unrelated company have been more aptly zooming over the past 30 days. Zoom Technologies (ZOOM), an over-the-counter penny stock, has soared an eye-popping 56,000% in the past 30 days, raising the question of whether it has been riding the euphoria surrounding the other Zoom. Read:Zoom Video Stock Catches Fire in Its IPO Most recently Thursday, shares of Zoom Technologies, which describes itself as a telecommunications company, were up 61%. Editor's Choice Its recent gains mean that $100 invested in the entity on March 21, when shares were around $0.005, would have netted an investor about $84,000 as of Thursday morning. Business Insider spotlighted the apparent ticker confusion back in March, but the shares have only extended their parabolic surge, indicating that seemingly clueless investors continue throwing money (rightly or wrongly, depending on one’s perspective) at the wrong Zoom. Zoom Tech, for one, hasn’t reported revenue since 2011 and apparently filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to end its tenure as a publicly listed company, to no avail. Attempts by MarketWatch to contact the company weren’t immediately successful. This sort of confusion between a tiny company with a similar-sounding name or ticker symbol and a buzzier privately listed entity set to go public isn’t unprecedented. Back in 2013, as Twitter (TWTR) was set to go public, Tweeter Home Entertainment Group saw its shares soar more than 500%, forcing a halt of its stock. At that time, Tweeter shares continued to score bids despite the fact that the Boston-based consumer electronics chain had gone into chapter 11 bankruptcy and liquidated its assets in 2008, six years before Twitter’s IPO. Newsletter Sign-up Review & Preview Every weekday evening we highlight the consequential market news of the day and explain what's likely to matter tomorrow. PREVIEW Read: Pinterest Stock Is Hot After Its IPO. Just Keep Your Cool. On a year-to-date basis, Zoom Tech’s shares have climbed 44,900%, compared with the S&P 500 index’s meager-by-comparison 15.5% gain, the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s 13.4% return and the Nasdaq Composite Index’s nearly 20% return so far in 2019. Meanwhile, Zoom Video Communications kicked off trade at $65 a share, compared with its pricing of $36 the previous day. Its shareholders may be hoping that it performs nearly half as well as its doppleganger. This article originally appeared on MarketWatch. Comments? E-mail us at editors@barrons.com<doc-sep>
Zoom Zoom Video Communications began trading on the Nasdaq on Thursday. Shares jumped 81% as they hit the public market. Zoom is profitable, setting it apart from other unicorns, or private companies worth more than $1 billion. Visit MarketsInsider.com for more information about Zoom. Zoom Video Communications Inc.'s stock jumped 81% in its debut on the public market on Thursday. Shares of the videoconferencing company began trading on the Nasdaq at $65 apiece. Zoom had priced its initial public offering at $36, raising $751 million. That would have valued the business at $9.2 billion, about nine times its private valuation. Shares were expected to price between $33 and $35 apiece. Zoom is profitable, setting it apart from other so-called unicorns, or private companies worth more than $1 billion. Its fast growth has drawn attention to the eight-year-old company, which was founded by Eric Yuan, the former vice president of engineering at the videoconferencing company Webex. Another technology unicorn, the digital-image-board company Pinterest, also debuted on Thursday, gaining 25% in its opening minutes of trading. The ride-hailing giant Lyft was the first tech unicorn to enter the public market this year but has struggled since its debut last month. Zoom's shares trade under the ticker symbol ZM. Now read: A company called Zoom Technologies is surging because people think it is Zoom Video Communications (ZOOM, ZM) NOW WATCH: The founder and CIO of $12 billion Ariel Investments breaks down how his top-ranked flagship fund has crushed its peers over the past 10 years