NEW YORK: Zoom Video Communications Inc has agreed to acquire Five9 Inc for US$14.7bil (RM61.98bil) in its largest-ever acquisition, targeting a call centre provider to bolster its popular video conference app against stiffening competition.

       Zoom will use its surging stock to pay for the deal, giving Five9 investors 0.5533 shares of its Class A common stock under an agreement.

       The target firm will become an operating unit of Zoom’s after the deal, which is subject to shareholder approval and slated to close in the first half of 2022.

       Zoom, a fixture of pandemic work-from home and remote schooling, has been looking for ways to keep growing as workers in some countries return to the office and schools reopen.

       The acquisition could propel Zoom into a US$24bil (RM101.20bil) market for contact centres, the company said, helping it better compete with the likes of RingCentral Inc and Amazon.com Inc in letting clients provide customer service via the Internet.

       One beneficiary could be Zoom Phone, a cloud-based calling service.

       “We are continuously looking for ways to enhance our platform, and the addition of Five9 is a natural fit,” Zoom chief executive officer Eric Yuan said in a statement.

       Five9’s customers include big names like Under Armour, Citrix, Athena Health and Lululemon, according to its website, and the transaction is designed as a way for Zoom and Five9 to sell products to each others’ customers.

       Rowan Trollope, CEO of Five9, will become a president at Zoom while continuing to run Five9 as an operating unit.

       Zoom rose to prominence after the pandemic hit in early 2020, becoming ubiquitous as people forced home by lockdowns used the service to connect remotely to work, school, friends and family.

       However, investors have raised concerns this year about whether that growth will continue as vaccinations increase and shutdowns end.

       As pandemic lockdowns have waned, the future of remote work has become a pressing question, and Zoom’s competitors have launched hybrid work features in a race to accommodate companies’ needs.

       Microsoft Corp unveiled design changes to its Teams platform in order to improve remote workers’ interactions in meetings.

       Alphabet Inc’s Google has revealed updates to its Workspace productivity suite, including new tools for its Meet videoconferencing system.

       The unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) market share of total IT spending may remain stable at around 5% as companies shift to cloud-native platforms, and should stay so post-pandemic.

       That’s because organisations are rethinking their plans for digital technologies to include video, voice and team collaboration tools as flexible or hybrid-work models gain traction.

       UCaaS should stay a key growth driver for the US$47bil (RM198.18bil) UC&C industry, with companies increasingly bundling video and collaboration solutions on the cloud to accommodate the secular change in work culture.

       Zoom is taking advantage of a stunning stock rally to bankroll the acquisition of Five9.

       Its stock soared about five-fold during 2020 and has risen another 7.3% in the year to date, pushing its market value past US$100bil (RM421.65bil).

       Five9 competes in a market for cloud services that help companies handle customers. Amazon entered the market with Amazon Connect in 2017. Other vendors include Talkdesk Inc. and Vonage Holdings Corp.

       The acquisition, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, is the fourth deal by Zoom since the start of the pandemic.

       In June, Zoom announced without disclosing terms that it had signed a deal to acquire German startup Karlsruhe Information Technology Solutions-kites GmbH, a translation software maker. — Bloomberg