Video meetings goliath Zoom has confirmed it has entered into an agreement to acquire Five9, the cloud contact centre specialist. The all-stock transaction is valued at $14.7 billion.
The transaction is still subject to approval by Five9 stockholders, regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2022.
Zoom has been subject to many rumours around how it would expand its offering into adjacent markets. After experiencing one the most impressive growth stories in the modern era of communications by amassing over 300 million users on its meetings platform its sights are clearly focused on the contact centre space.
Five9’s cloud-based contact centre software is a natural fit for the business. Like Zoom, its highly-scalable and delivers a comprehensive suite of applications that allows management and optimisation of customer interactions across many different channels.
Eric S. Yuan, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Zoom commented, “Zoom is built on a core belief that robust and reliable communications technology enables interactions that build greater empathy and trust, and we believe that holds particularly true for customer engagement. Enterprises communicate with their customers primarily through the contact centre, and we believe this acquisition creates a leading customer engagement platform that will help redefine how companies of all sizes connect with their customers. We are thrilled to join forces with the Five9 team, and I look forward to welcoming them to the Zoom family.”
Rowan Trollope, Chief Executive Officer of Five9 said, “It has always been Five9’s mission to make it easy for businesses to fix that problem and engage with their customers in a more meaningful and efficient way. Joining forces with Zoom will provide Five9’s business customers access to best-of-breed solutions, particularly Zoom Phone, that will enable them to realise more value and deliver real results for their business. This, combined with Zoom’s ‘ease-of use’ philosophy and broad communication portfolio, will truly enable customers to engage via their preferred channel of choice.”
Zoom Phone recently surpassed 1.5 million seats, a feat it achieved in just two and a half years. Zoom Phone enables companies to simplify the management of voice and video from a central portal, and maintain business continuity with features like call forwarding, hold, transfer, park, call queues, and even call recording
Following the close of the transaction, Five9 will be an operating unit of Zoom and Rowan Trollope will become a President of Zoom and continue as CEO of Five9, reporting to Eric Yuan.
