Okay, great. Let's get started. I'm Karl Keirstead. Thank you, Kelly and Charles, and the Zoom team for participating in our event. I was just mentioning to Kelly, because Zoom's revenue mix is shifting a little bit more to the phone and contact center, the growth engines, at least our in-house expert on broadly on that UCaaS space, Taylor McGinnis. I thought it would be great to have Taylor up, and Taylor and I will quiz Kelly on those growth vectors.
Great. I can take it.
Yeah, you can take it? Great. Kelly, thanks for joining. So when I was reflecting on how to conduct this fireside, I would typically, because your print wasn't that long ago, just drill you a little bit on 3Q, but let's not do that this time.
Okay.
Let's like, look forward into 2024, 2025-
Yeah.
and talk about what can take Zoom from a call it low single-digit growth story to something bigger. So let's talk growth drivers.
Yeah.
- instead of dissecting the 3Q.
Thank you.
How does that sound?
That's much more fun to talk about.
Yeah, more fun, right?
Yes.
So you gave us, Kelly, a little bit of a hint where you mentioned, at least as a baseline for thinking about next year, you obviously didn't give any guidances, to look at the exit growth rate. So that's 1%-ish. So maybe you could just describe for a little bit what some of the key growth variables could be that could lift that 1%.
Yeah. So I'm gonna say it one more time. I'm not giving guidance, but in terms of the outlook and thinking about the future of Zoom, obviously, one of the really critical growth drivers is Zoom Phone. You know, we announced that we crossed over the 7 million seat mark in Q3, so really excited to see the ongoing momentum there. But that continues to be a significant opportunity for us when you think about how many landlines or, you know, on-prem seats are still sitting out there. And that's an area that we're continuing to innovate around, invest in, as well as think about our channel relationships, especially on an international basis. That's a really significant opportunity.
You know, we disclosed a few quarters ago that we'd crossed over the 10% of revenue mark, and we certainly aspire to have Zoom Phone comprise at least 25% of our revenue at some point in the future. So that's a really, really key driver. And then, of course, there's Contact Center, which is very, very early in its life cycle, but we announced on the call that we've grown to 700 customers there. And there's a couple things that need to happen for that to start, well, I would say accelerate in terms of its overall contribution. Some of it is features and functionality. There's a few areas of functionality that we still need to really be able to compete for those big, you know, 10,000 contact center seat deals, but we'll get there.
And then also, channel relationships and international expansion are going to be important as well. So just as a quick reminder, when we were, you know, primarily a meetings company, we were 95% direct lead, and that worked very well when we were selling meetings. But as we've grown into these additional areas of phone and contact center, you know, customers and prospects look to third-party experts to help them with this, and so that's been an area of, of focus and investment for us, is continuing to, to grow those relationships, as well as invest in our own internal processes and systems to enable those third parties. And then the other area of growth that's really important for us is international.
You know, if you saw our Q3 results, you know, we grew in the U.S., but we, you know, declined a little bit in both EMEA and Asia- Pac. And part of that is in response. We did a pretty significant sales reorg earlier this year, and it's just taken longer internationally to get sort of back into stabilization and growth mode. And then it's also, as I said, we have been investing in our channel relationships in the U.S. for a couple of years, but we're now really focused on driving that internationally as well.
Okay. So, maybe let's take those in order. So let's start with phone. Taylor, I'll ask one, and then feel free to jump in. So, Kelly, if you're gonna take phone from, call it, low double digits % of revs to 25%, as you mentioned-
Yeah
... what, what needs to happen organizationally to execute on that? It seems to me like, especially if a lot of that's gonna land overseas, it's going to require some decent investment in sales and marketing. Maybe you could,
Yeah.
talk about that.
Yeah. So there's absolutely an investment in sales and marketing, as I said, especially internationally, as we're doing FY 2025 planning. We have a new leader in EMEA, we have a new leader in ANZ, who are both great and amazing, so really excited about that. And continuing now to support them as they, you know, expand and build out their teams. As I said, channel is gonna be a really important part of that. And then we are really focused internally on working with our customers, especially our meetings customers, that have been with us a while, and having them move from a pure meetings, you know, deployment to a bundle.
We announced on the call that growth in our Zoom One bundle, so a bundle that includes Zoom Phone, that's the definition that we used for this metric, had grown 330% year-over-year. That's really important for many reasons, 'cause it, it drives the growth of phone, it exposes people to the broader, you know, communications and collaboration platform that we have, but it's also really important from retention, because we know that customers that have more than one product are much more retentive. Overall, setting the stage to, to grow and retain these customers for the long run.
Yeah, and, the channel strategy makes a lot of sense because historically, the incumbents relied heavily on the channel, right? So that's, that's where all the landlines are sitting, is with those-
Yeah.
partners. But I guess as you make that shift, historically, that channel has been heavily incentivized, right?
Yeah.
How are you thinking about balancing, building out those relationships, digging deeper, but also, you know, considering margins?
Yeah.
and profitability as well.
Yeah, it's a really, really good point, and we have this debate internally all the time, because part of it is absolutely. What you want to do is make sure that those channel partners are not selling against you. However, we also know that we have the most modern platform out there today, and that there is a love and a brand awareness for Zoom that it separates it from some of the competitors. And so the velocity of those sales cycles are quicker. And so we do incentivize those channel partners. We don't actually incentivize them at the same levels that some of our competitors do. And if you talk to channel partners, you will hear that. But we do it...
I mean, that's it. It's a very thoughtful, by design, because we believe that they should be able to get through those sales cycles with a Zoom product more quickly than they're getting through a competitive product. And so finding that right balance is something that we always talk about and think about, especially as we go through these negotiations on a regular basis with the channel partners. And then it's balanced with also, how are you incenting your internal teams to work with them? I think that's the interplay, and we're constantly thinking about our own internal comp plans as well. I think that over time...
At the beginning, our sales reps were learning how to work with channel partners, and we had to incent them in a different way, and now as they start to see them as more bringing incremental and not necessarily competition, you can start to normalize a little bit your comp plans internally as well. So, yes, it's an investment. I don't think it's gonna have significant impact on our margins over time, though.
Maybe just a quick follow-up. In terms of the channel strategy that you guys are that you think is the best approach, 'cause you have master agents or system integrators, there's a lot of diversity-
Yeah.
in the UC space. So which are you guys betting on, and which do you think is the best approach?
Yeah. Well, the answer is it varies, because it varies by country, and it varies by market.
Yeah.
And so we are learning ourselves what works best in each of these markets, and it's definitely not a one-size-fits-all. And so we are building the relationships, you know, with the systems integrators, making sure that they're enabled and really understand our technology, how the collaboration platform comes together, but also master agents from a distribution perspective are really important. So it's both where we're investing.
Kelly, on the switch maybe to the Contact Center side, tough question, but over what timeframe should investors think about Zoom making those required product functionality improvements?
Yeah.
... such that you're, you have a seat at the table and are being considered for large deals? Or hard to put a timeframe on it, but are we talking 6 months, 18 months, any sense?
Yeah. It's definitely closer to 6 months than 18.
Okay.
So just as a quick reminder, the platform today, the Contact Center platform, integrates natively with voice, with video, and with SMS. There's a couple of areas that are really needed to jump into that true enterprise realm, which include integration with social, and we're in beta with several of the social channels today, including Facebook and WhatsApp. There, we need integration with email, which is coming next month, and then we also need to be PCI compliant, which PCI compliance are the standards in which your contact center is enabled to take credit card information over the phone in a secure manner. And that's, of course, very important for anybody who's using a contact center for sales.
Mm-hmm.
And that's coming within the next 6 months. So I would say within about 6 months-
Okay.
... we should be at a stage where you have the majority. Now, there's always gonna be added features and functionality that are coming, but, you know, as a reminder, in addition to the core contact center desktop that we have, we also have a workforce management tool that we've built.
Mm.
We have a quality management tool we've built, and we also have Zoom Virtual Agent, which is a standalone SKU that is literally a virtual agent that can take lots of the queries as well. It's starting to be a pretty complete contact center offering, and within six months, it will be even more so.
Yeah, maybe just adding on to that, so I think historically we've heard that it's more smaller and mid-size customers that want that UC and CC integrated offering. I think the enterprise space, it can be a little bit different, but I'm just curious what you're hearing from your customers, because historically, you haven't had a single vendor that's sold both.
Yeah.
It's been a very disparate selling motion. So do you feel like that's changing at all, and, and what are you hearing from your, your larger accounts?
Yeah, for sure. Our larger accounts are excited and anxious to see the features and functionality that I just mentioned, you know, become available, because they're excited about having the opportunity to have a modernly built, natively integrated platform. Like I said, it doesn't exist today, and we by far are going to have the most modern platform that they can, you know, start to seamlessly bring together their UC and their CC offering. And they know how well we've transformed their meetings experience in the past and expect us to do the same for phone and for contact center. So they're just, they're just waiting, 'cause there are some gaps, but we are very well aware of what they are and working as quickly as we can to fill them.
Perfect.
Kelly, just to keep going on the growth levers, you touched on the Zoom bundle.
Yeah.
That gets to a question broadly on, like, price and bundling.
Yeah.
So how much, how much room is there to go on, on Zoom One, and are you contemplating any other, pricing bundling changes that we should think about as a potential growth driver next year-
Yeah.
... and the year after?
Yeah. So Zoom One is a really important growth driver overall when you think about the company-
Yeah.
... as we want our customers and our prospects to move beyond just the core of meetings, which is, you know, a really important aspect of the platform, but it's so much more than that. It's, and it goes even beyond... We've talked a lot about phone and contact center, but it goes way beyond that even. We have Whiteboard, we have Scheduler, we have Team Chat that is integrated in our meetings platform for free. So it starts to, you start to see we have Clips, which is asynchronous video communication. So the platform itself can really cover all of your synchronous and asynchronous communications needs. And as I mentioned earlier, it's really important from a retention perspective as well.
When you think about starting to have all of this on one platform, the total cost of ownership, the ease of use, the reliability, all of that for your employees even, it's all in one, right? It's such an easy way. It reduces the toggle tax. Like, there's just so many advantages to it that it's really important. And, it's, it's important from a pricing, but it's really also really important from a retention perspective over time.
Okay. I'm intrigued by your comment about Clips. It sounds like a small product, but investors listening or in attendance know that Atlassian bought Loom.
Yeah.
That seemed to validate that space.
Yeah.
Also, it seemed like a relatively high price tag when rivals like Zoom have that already as part of the suite. Any observations on that Loom deal, Kelly?
First of all, we have, we have a high regard for Atlassian.
Sure.
... so I want to be very thoughtful about that.
Yeah.
But, you know, there are a lot of companies today that exist that I always say they're features. They aren't standalone products.
Yeah, yeah.
You see them in our platform.
Exactly.
And we've innovated, and we've built them.
Yeah.
I think that what you're gonna see over time is they're going to have to consolidate, which is obviously what-
Yeah.
... Loom did. But there's many others still sitting out there today-
Yeah.
... and I think especially given the environment, you'll probably see them, see more and more consolidation.
Okay. What about on the AI front? Most of the companies up here on stage, when they're thinking about next two-year growth drivers, are talking about their AI suite.
Yeah.
It seems like the leadership at Zoom, you included, are talking a little bit more about embedding a lot of this AI features-
Yeah.
... in the suite, rather than having some standalone SKU that we can all try to model out as this new revenue source. Maybe you could articulate whether AI can actually be a growth driver for you or not?
Yeah. So we have both aspects in our platform, meaning we have some standalone products that are powered by AI.
Mm-hmm.
These are things like Zoom Virtual Agent, we have a translation SKU, we also have Revenue Accelerator. Those are all standalone SKUs that are monetized. But the core of our AI companion is included for all of our paying customers at no additional cost, and that includes things like Meeting Summary, which I, I keep saying this, that there's gonna come a day when you're gonna wanna go into a meeting and you're gonna say, "I'm gonna turn Zoom on, because that way I don't have to take notes, because this Meeting Summary is so good. This is what I'm gonna file away, and these are gonna be my meeting notes." And it really is getting to the point that it's that good.
It's also a feature called Catch Me Up, so if you join a Zoom meeting a little bit late, you can just chat in there like, "Hey, what did I miss?" And it's gonna give you, like, this really quick little Meeting Summary of what just happened. Or you can clarify. Like, we test this in our staff meetings all the time, like, "What did Eric just say are the top three initiatives for this quarter?" And it just goes, and it just types them up really quickly.
Yeah.
So that, and along with things like chat compose, email compose, we believe are just table stakes in terms of making our platform that much better.
Yeah.
That's why it's included for free.
Okay. There's two more growth drivers I wanna hit on. One is enterprise new logos. So I think there might be a perception that the core meetings and video conferencing space is, like, fully tapped out. Yet, you're still adding I think you added something like 1,600 new enterprise logos, and I'm sure the majority, if not all of those, are core meetings-
Yeah.
... customers. So clearly, it's not at 100%.
Yeah.
Maybe talk a little bit about where we are in the penetration-
Yeah.
... and-
Yeah.
... who are those enterprise logos you're adding?
Yeah.
Who's not already using Zoom, Kelly?
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I used to work there, but I think it's phenomenal that Webex still has $1 billion in revenue today. So there's obviously opportunities to continue to take share from our old alma mater. And then what is also really interesting, though, in adding new logos is that, you know, both Phone and Contact Center are starting to attract logos from themselves.
Mm-hmm.
That is also really exciting when you think about the future. It's, I mean, I think Contact Center, even in some ways more than Phone, again, because there hasn't been real innovation in the contact center space in a very, excuse me, in a very long time.
Yeah.
And so that stands apart. And especially as we continue to move more upmarket in terms of our offering, I think you'll see more and more of that driven from there as well.
Okay. The last growth driver I can think of is M&A. That's always a lever that you can pull.
Yep, for sure.
You've got an incredible balance sheet and cash flow profile-
Yeah.
... that, some of us are sort of waiting for you to put to work.
Yeah.
So I know you, you get this question a lot, but I can't help but ask.
Sure.
... when you think about the potential for transformative M&A, what, what are the guardrails that Zoom-
Yeah.
... uses to decide what's an attractive asset or not?
Yeah. So we think about this every day, and we certainly have the discussion with our board every quarter around capital allocation. And, you know, we do have, you know, over $6 billion of cash on our balance sheet, and we are preserving that for the flexibility that gives us when we think about M&A opportunity. And we look for M&A opportunities through three lenses. So the first one is the technology and what would that bring to our customers. We are very, very proud of our platform, of the ease of use and the reliability that you get and people have come to expect from Zoom, and we would never want our customers to have to compromise that through an acquisition. The second is culture.
We, you know, take great pride in our culture at Zoom and also view that as a key indicator of the potential success of an integration. If you're trying to bring two divergent cultures together, that can be very, very difficult, and we would obviously wanna go into something with as much success insurance as, as possible... And then last but not least, of course, is valuation.
Yeah.
You know, we're a very thoughtful, very frugal company by nature, and so trying to find an organization that meets all of those without lowering the bar has been challenging. We've obviously gotten very, very close in the past. You know, unfortunately, with the previous, you know, Five9 transaction, we were just gonna have to put too much cash in at the end, and we just didn't feel like that was the right decision for shareholders at the time. I think looking back, given where their market cap is today, that was the right decision. But it was unfortunate that we weren't able to do that. We continue to look for opportunities, you know, to leverage the trade-off is always: what could we do to drive top-line growth versus potentially leveraging that cash to return to shareholders?
Yeah.
We would rather, at this point, you know, be using our cash for acquisition than issuing stock, given where the stock price is today, and that's why we're really maintaining the flexibility that we have.
Got it. Okay, makes sense. Can I ask you a couple about the quarter?
Sure.
... while I've got you?
Yeah.
The online or downmarket part of Zoom, as you guided to, decel sequentially a little bit more.
Yep.
Part of that is just going to be waiting out when macro stabilizes and improves-
Yeah, true.
... But there are some levers that, you can, pull to try to accelerate that. So what are the one or two ways that maybe you've got a little bit of control that you're pressing on to try to stabilize that online segment?
Yeah. So there's two really important components of the online business in terms of getting to stabilization, and then ultimately, the goal is to get it back to growth.
Yeah.
First is the retention rate. So we now announce the churn rate on a quarterly basis, and the rate of 3% per month that we announced in Q3 is the lowest that we've ever seen. And that's great, right? That means we've made a lot of progress. And as we continue to see this differentiation between free and paid, including AI Companion being included for online customers that are paying, we expect that to continue to contribute to that retention rate, you know, stabilization and potentially improvement over time. So that's a really important component. And then there's the platform growth or the online growth itself. And there's a couple of things that we're working on there. First of all, it's the free-to-paid conversion. You know-
Mm-hmm.
... we have a lot of free customers still. So how do you incent them to convert? Historically, there was really no differentiation between the free and paid product other than-
Mm.
... the time limit in which you could use it. That is now changing and has been changing-
Yeah.
... over time. So there's more and more value in the paid product itself to really compel people to upgrade. We actually just announced or are in the process of implementing a price increase. So as a reminder, we did one earlier this year for Pro, which is the lowest offering online. We announced in November that we will be increasing the price now for the Biz and Biz Plus packages, increasing it by $2 per user per month. We saw a really good response to the price increase earlier, that we did last year, and the learnings from that were that we saw lower churn than we expected. So that, you know, implies people see a lot of value in the platform and are willing to pay for it.
Yeah.
So going forward now with that price increase, as well as continuing to expand and open the top of the funnel, meaning adding, the online segment is much more international than the direct business because you don't need a salesperson, right? It's just whoever accesses the web.
Mm-hmm.
But the way you can even expand that opportunity is by increasing the payment types in which you offer, the currencies in which you sell-
Mm-hmm.
... and that, those are the initiatives that we continue to drive and then continue to expand.
And then, Kelly, on the enterprise side, you had signaled three months ago that even the enterprise segment could see some sequential decel, yet it, it came up a little bit better than that.
Yeah.
It was actually relatively stable.
Yeah.
Now, I'm sure your aspirations are to have it a whole lot better than stable, but that was a upside surprise. Was there any part of the enterprise business that might have contributed to that, at least slight outperformance?
Yeah. You know, what we saw was as a reminder, we, you know, we had this reorganization at the beginning of the year, and that took a little bit of time for everybody to get sort of you know, reoriented again, as change like that often does. And so what we saw was momentum at the back half of Q3. I mean, it was very you know, back-end loaded, as we've seen. You know, customers have returned to their buying motions of waiting to the last-
Mm-hmm.
... parts of the quarter to leverage what they can from a discount perspective. But what we saw was some momentum at the back half of the quarter, which is not typical for a Q3.
Mm-hmm.
We have reps that are on six-month quotas, so typically, historically, Q2 and Q4 have been our larger bookings periods.
Yeah.
What we saw in Q3 was actually almost even with Q2, which is not the normal cycle that we see. Usually, we see Q2 up, Q3 down, Q4 up. Like, that's been sort of the what we've seen the last few years. So that was a nice momentum.
You would attribute that more to, you know, better execution given the reorg-
Yeah...
... as opposed to-
Exactly.
... a signal that the environment's improving. Is that correct?
I don't know that the environment's really improving that much yet.
Yeah.
Because on the other hand, you know, the thing that we're working through with our customers is many of them have gone through their own retractions in employee count this year.
Sure.
Helping them reallocate that spend, this is why we've spent a lot of time with our customers this year who were potentially, you know, wanting to reduce the number of meeting licenses they have, but take that spend and preserve it by moving them to a bundle.
Yeah.
What that does is, it's all really good for the long term because now what you've done is you've moved them from a single product to a multi-product, which is-
Mm-hmm..
... great for retention.
Mm-hmm.
You've moved them from, you know, a lower dollar SKU to a higher dollar SKU, and over-
Yeah
... time, as the economy improves... that they're starting from a different point in which they can grow.
Yeah.
and that will grow as well.
But evidently, there must be enough of those that are contracting their own headcount, and that's probably, Kelly, contributing to the NRR number, the trailing twelve-month for Enterprise.
That's right. Yeah.
So you had mentioned in this last quarter that it was 105%. You signaled that it wouldn't be shocking if it kinda dipped down a little bit more.
Yeah.
to, towards 100.
Yeah.
Any sense for how long it might take for that number to stabilize, Kelly?
Well, it's a trailing 12-month metric.
Yeah.
So until we start to see kind of that re-acceleration in enterprise-
Yeah.
You're gonna continue to see that it drift a little bit more.
Okay.
Again, I think the good news is, you know, the preservation of spend, the move into the bundle, you know, the Zoom One, and also the growth in the RPO shows you that-
Mm.
Their customers are committing to longer term contracts. So those are all really positive signs in the metrics.
Yeah.
But, I guess and the other thing that I would say is, we know that the majority of our customers have had a renewal event during this year.
Mm.
So we believe that we have moved through most of that downselling or right sizing, as it's been happening during this year, as most of the customers have had the opportunity, if they needed to do so, that they've gotten it accomplished.
Okay. Taylor, unless you had another one, I was gonna close with a question on margins. Did you have anything else?
I've. Yeah, I have one more. Just on generative AI, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how that could potentially change the UC landscape. Like, when you hear Microsoft talk, they talk about how important Copilot, like, Teams is to Copilot adoption. So I guess when you think about how that might change the competitive landscape or how you guys are approaching, like, the evolvement of your own UC offering.
Yeah.
... maybe you could just provide a little bit more color there.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we really believe also that what AI is going to... Our AI Companion is gonna enable on the platform. It's gonna make everybody much more productive. It's going to really reduce, you know, repetitive tasks, also freeing up your time. If you don't have to go to a meeting, just the ability to come back and quickly skim through a summary to save all of us from having to take notes in meetings, like, it's really going to be compelling over time. Yeah.
I'll close with a margin question. So, Kelly, your... One of the standout metrics from your Q3 print was those crazy EBIT margins you put up of 39%. That's, like, almost, like, best in class in software.
Yeah.
It's also way above what you mentioned your long-term target was-
Yeah.
- which is, I think, 28-32.
Yeah. Yeah.
Why not throttle back on that, Kelly? Because we've just spent the last 30 minutes-
Yeah.
intentionally running through all the pretty cool-
Yeah.
- growth drivers you've got.
Yeah.
So why not lean into those-
Yeah.
- and sacrifice margins?
Yeah. Thank you. And we will. As we've had this period of lower growth rates, we have intentionally been very, very thoughtful about our margins-
Mm-hmm.
... and wanting to ensure that investors know we are being very thoughtful about that.
Yeah.
However, where there is an opportunity to invest, whether it's in innovation, you know, R&D, AI, go-to-market, branding, awareness, any of those components, as we're thinking about FY 25, to re-accelerate top-line growth, we will.
Mm-hmm.
So, you know, the ideal would be when you start to see top-line acceleration, and that could come at the expense of some margin contraction. But we want to be very thoughtful. We won't do one without the other necessarily.
Well, my opinion, probably the better trade-off for the stock, Kelly.
Yeah.
Okay, great.
We agree.
Okay. Thanks, everybody, for, for listening in. Thank you, Kelly and Charles, for coming to the event.