What's going on?

Zoom announced a bleak outlook for 2022 earlier this week, just as demand for acceptable office attire boomed among the teleconferencing company�s customers.

What does this mean?

Office workers might�ve gotten used to only showing their torsos on a 3×3 inch video chat window, but that changed last quarter when the Great Office Return began in earnest. This is the moment Zoom�s been dreading, and with good reason: the number of business customers with 10-plus employees fell last quarter from the one before. And since big business customers are a key driver of revenue, that could be why Zoom�s total sales came in just 21% higher last quarter than the same time the previous year � a huge drop from the previous quarter�s 35%. The company topped it all off with a weaker-than-expected revenue outlook for both this quarter and 2022 as a whole, and its shares cratered 13%.

Why should I care?

For markets: If in doubt, bribery.
Investors have been worried about Zoom�s future for a while now, making the case � clearly a pretty accurate one � that growth would slow dramatically when offices started opening up again. That might be why its stock price has now fallen over 75% from its peak in October 2020. Still, Zoom is trying to put their minds at ease: the company announced plans to buy back $1 billion worth of its own shares, which will reduce the supply of those in circulation and should increase the price of those left over.

The bigger picture: Zoom�s branching out.
Zoom had planned to offset some of this slowdown in growth by buying customer support software provider Five9 last year, but the deal fell through. So now it�s going it alone, launching its own rival online customer support center platform last week. That could be a wise move: the so-called �global contact center software� market is predicted to be worth $150 billion by 2030 � up from $24 billion last year.