3 charts for you today:
Few companies have become as synonymous with the pandemic as Zoom. The video conferencing software that entered most of our lives last March is even starting to enter our language as a verb, much in the same way that Google did for search. Shall we Zoom next week? Yeah, I'm free.
So it's no surprise then that Zoom clocked in a phenomenal $882m of revenue in its latest quarter, up from $188m in its last pre-pandemic quarter — almost a fivefold jump in just a year. That explosive growth even translated into the rarest of things for many fast-growing tech companies — actual profits.
Peak Zoom?
With all that said, the future for Zoom looks slightly less exciting. In their earnings release this week, Zoom indicated to investors that they expect revenue to clock in at just under $3.8bn for the coming 12 months. If that estimate is correct, as the chart shows, it would represent a pretty sizeable slowdown in growth, with revenue expected to grow just ~2% in the next quarter Zoom reports.
Zoom fatigue
It's possible that Zoom management are just trying to be conservative after a stellar year, but it's also true that Zoom fatigue is a very real thing (a recent Stanford study actually found 4 reasons as to why we feel so tired after hours of video calls).
Ask 5 people what they think the future of work looks like, and you'll probably get 5 different answers. For Zoom to keep growing it needs to hope two things happen. The first is that the use of video calls sticks around at this elevated level, and the second is that a bigger tech company doesn't come and eat their lunch in an industry where brand loyalty is unlikely to be very strong.
The latest data out of the UK is increasingly positive for the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines — as the number of hospital admissions and deaths for those aged 85+ appears to be falling faster than for any other group in England.
Hospital admissions in England peaked about a week after the UK went into its third lockdown, and have been steadily falling ever since. The rate of weekly hospital admissions is now down 71% for the 18-64 age bracket, but is down 80% for the 85+ age bracket — which were the among the first group in the UK to be offered the vaccine.
Although it's extremely early days to say anything too definitive, the early evidence is promising, particularly when combined with data out yesterday that showed the Pfizer vaccine was associated with an 83% reduction in deaths from COVID-19 — adding to similar earlier evidence from Israel's programme.
How this data evolves over the next few months is going to be the focus of many a study, as immune responses are estimated to take hold after a few weeks of receiving a dose, and because the 85+ cohort in England have still mostly only had one dose of the vaccine so far. Light at the end of the tunnel.
What on earth is crypto art?
Crypto art is an emerging, but still extremely niche, segment of the digital art market which allows buyers to "own" a distinct piece of media such as an image or video, that is authenticated by blockchain to be unique. Last month on SuperRare, which is one of a few marketplaces where you can buy and sell crypto art, 1900 pieces of digital artwork were sold — a record high for the platform.
The authentication process is technically done by something called a non-fungible token (NFT). An NFT authenticates that a certain piece of media or art is the original, authentic version — no matter how many times it is copied or replicated across the internet.
A number of digital artworks have already hit the headlines:
We won't be buying any crypto art soon, but if someone would like to purchase a blockchain authenticated collection of all of our charts for $6m, please get in touch.
1) NASA's Perseverance rover is an unbelievably high-tech piece of machinery. It is also running on a tiny 233MHz processor that used to power the iMac back in 1998.
2) The European Union is introducing a "right-to-repair" law which means that manufacturers of certain electrical devices will need to ensure that their products can be easily repaired for a lifetime of 10 years in a bid to reduce the 16kg of electrical waste produced on average by each European in a year.
3) Viewership of the Golden Globes fell by more than 60% this year, as a little under 7 million people tuned in, compared to more than 18 million in 2020.
4) 96% of companies surveyed by Flatfile have said they've run into problems with data onboarding. If your business is one of the 96%, try Flatfile Portal.**
5) Greensill Capital, a high-flying Fintech company based in the UK that had been backed by Softbank to the tune of $1.5bn, is set to file for bankruptcy.
6) Volocopter, also known as the "flying taxi startup", has raised another €200m ($240m) to help fund its development. The company expects its service to launch in around 2 years from now.
**This is a sponsored snack.
