Zoom, a relatively under-the-radar tech unicorn, has defied expectations with its initial public offering. The video conferencing business priced its IPO above its planned range on Wednesday, confirming plans to sell shares of its Nasdaq stock, titled “ZM,” at $36 apiece, CNBC reports. The company initially planned to price its shares at between $28 and $32 per share, but following big demand for a piece of a profitable tech business, Zoom increased expectations, announcing plans to sell shares at between $33 and $35 apiece. The offering gives Zoom an initial market cap of roughly $9 billion, or nine times that of its most recent private market valuation. Zoom plans to sell 9,911,434 shares of Class A common stock in the listing, to bring in about $350 million in new capital. If you haven’t had the chance to dive into Zoom’s IPO prospectus, here’s a quick run-down of its financials: Zoom raised a total of $145 million from venture capitalists before filing to go public It posted $330 million in revenue in the year ending January 31, 2019 with a gross profit of $269.5 million It more than doubled revenues from 2017 to 2018, ending 2017 with $60.8 million in revenue and 2018 with $151.5 million Its losses have shrunk from $14 million in 2017, $8.2 million in 2018 and just $7.5 million in the year ending January 2019 Zoom is backed by Emergence Capital, which owns a 12.2 percent pre-IPO stake; Sequoia Capital (11.1 percent); Digital Mobile Venture, a fund affiliated with former Zoom board member Samuel Chen (8.5 percent); and Bucantini Enterprises Limited (5.9 percent), a fund owned by Chinese billionaire Li Ka-shing. Zoom will debut on the Nasdaq the same day Pinterest will go public on the NYSE. Pinterest, for its part, has priced its shares above its planned range, per The Wall Street Journal.<doc-sep>Zoom made an eye-popping market debut on Thursday, with an opening price of $65, well above its offering price of $36. The cloud enterprise video communication company began trading on the Nasdaq market under the ticker symbol "ZM" with an IPO of 20,869,565 shares. Its opening price gives it a valuation North of $10 billion -- well above its last private valuation of $1 billion. The IPO sets high expectations for a newly-public company up against major enterprises like Microsoft and Cisco, as well as a number of other start-ups in the competitive collaboration space. Still, as a Silicon Valley unicorn that's both profitable and growing robustly, Zoom has managed to drum up major market excitement. "While the price is fun to look at, we're thinking about it as a single point in time and a huge responsibility for our shareholders, for the team to deliver upon," Zoom CMO Janine Pelosi told ZDNet. "I think we're going to continue to focus on what has gotten us to this point," she continued. "Our approach is substantially different versus legacy providers. Our platform provides face-to-face video and was built for that. Other legacy providers were built for screen sharing and audio, so their video doesn't work the same way as ours." In its SEC filing, Zoom says it's generated "viral enthusiasm" with a communications platform that "just works" for large enterprises and small teams alike. As ZDNet's Larry Dignan notes, the cloud-based company has adopted pragmatic operations and a tried-and-true sales strategy with a smart vertical approach. It's also forging partnerships with companies like HP to grow its office space presence. The San Jose, Calif. company, founded in 2011 by former Webex engineer Eric Yuan, has grown by more than 100 percent in the past two years and achieved profitability in the last year. For the year ended Jan. 31, Zoom reported net income of $7.58 million on revenue of $330.5 million, up from $151.5 million in fiscal 2018. "Our scale, our growth, our profitability, the way we've been able to move up market... has all pointed to this being the right time" for an IPO, Pelosi said. The strong IPO, Pelosi said, is a testament to the demand for solid unified communications (UC) platforms like Zoom offers. "As we move into this UC market that we're serving, which video is definitely a part of, as well as things like webinar, our Zoom phone system that we recently launched, collaboration, chat -- all of that presents such a large market opportunity," she said. "When companies are doing well, it steps up everyone's game." More on Zoom:<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>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>
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