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'We are the last service to be turned off' amid the coronavirus: RingCentral CEO

The spike in business for many companies that provide work from home technologies has found its way to messaging and video conferencing giant RingCentral (RNG).

“We are not a nice to have for business, we are a must have — we are lifeblood,” RingCentral founder and CEO Vlad Shmunis said on Yahoo Finance’s The First Trade. About 45% of RingCentral’s annual recurring revenue is tied to small- and medium-sized businesses. With those businesses under severe stress amidst the coronavirus — and having no visibility when the situation will improve — there has been some concern in the market about RingCentral’s near-term business prospects.

RingCentral has about 2 million users on its platform.

But Shmunis — seen by many on Wall Street as a visionary in video conferencing — downplayed those concerns.

“We are the last service to be turned off. We have not seen a wave in exodus yet, people are hanging on and we are hopeful. We are actually seeing an acceleration in the use of our service.”

Shmunis has the compelling stats to back up his claims. He told Yahoo Finance his data shows a 300% increase in RingCentral app downloads month over month, online meetings on the platform are up over 100%, and messaging is up over 70%.

“This is unprecedented growth,” Shmunis says.

Shares of RingCentral popped more than 3% on the disclosures.

Back view of business woman talking to her colleagues about business plan in video conference. Multiethnic business team using laptop for a online meeting in video call. Group of businessmen and businesswomen smart working from home.
Back view of business woman talking to her colleagues about business plan in video conference. Multiethnic business team using laptop for a online meeting in video call. Group of businessmen and businesswomen smart working from home.

Others in the work-from-home tech space continue to benefit right now as well with folks locked at home.

Microsoft has said its Teams workplace messaging platform has seen a 500% increase in the number of meetings. Cisco’s Webex platform has notched a sevenfold increase in the number of signups. Meanwhile, the CFOs of Slack and Zoom have told Yahoo Finance recently they have seen an influx of new free users to their respective platforms.

Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and co-anchor of The First Trade at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.

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