Zoom’s Market Cap Tops GM’s

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Zoom’s Market Cap Tops GM’s

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Zoom Video Communications Inc. (NASDAQ: ZM | ZM Price Prediction) has a market capitalization of above $50 billion. General Motors Co.’s (NYSE: GM) market cap is near $37 billion. The figures seem absurd. However, they show how investors value a star of the new world of technology compared to one of the largest from the old world of manufacturing.

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Zoom claims that “more than 300 million people around the world are using Zoom during this challenging time.” The statement does not say how many users Zoom actually has. As a matter of fact, its original statement about users was retracted and replaced with the number of people who used Zoom last month. And Zoom has had security problems, which it says it has fixed. Nevertheless, Wall Street pardoned the company. Its market cap is now $51 billion, up 164% this year.

Zoom’s revenue last year was a modest $622 million. On that, the company had $2 million in profit. There is no saying what Zoom’s revenue will be this year. The pandemic has caused most public corporations to tear up their forecasts. However, as video conferencing grows as a result of the spread of COVID-19, it is a safe bet that its top line will rise substantially.

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GM is a prime example of how the pandemic has affected the value of a pillar of the manufacturing sector that has been a part of the U.S. economy for decades. It sold over 2 million cars in America last year. Worldwide, the number was close to 7 million. Last year it had revenue of $132 billion and a net income of $6.7 billion. GM management said it will not forecast numbers for the year. Fair enough, since any prediction would carry little or no weight.

What is certain for GM is that it could lose 10% to 20% of its U.S. sales, based on comments by industry experts about what is likely to happen with overall car sales in America this year.

While the difference in valuations seems hard to believe, it will persist and may widen.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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