Top video conferencing firm Zoom won’t be buying Five9 after the two companies have confirmed the acquisition deal they’d been planning since July has fallen through after Five9’s shareholders decided to reject the deal.
Zoom had offered Five9 a $14.7 billion all-stock deal, which the latter had employed proxy advisory company Institutional Shareholder Services, to analyze – and roughly two weeks ago, the company advised Five9 to turn the deal down.
The value of the deal was apparently the main issue, with Five9 shareholders reportedly only seeing a 13% increase in the value of their shares, reportedly too low for them to accept.
Five9 is a cloud-based contact center platform, whose Crunchbase page shows eight investment rounds, totaling $114.1 million in funding. So far, the company has acquired four other firms, including two in 2020 – a cloud-based Intelligent Virtual Agent platform provider, Inference Solutions, and workforce engagement management solution, Virtual Observer.
Foundations intact
Announcing the news in a blog post, Zoom’s founder and CEO, Eric Yuan, said buying Five9 was an “attractive means to bring to our customers an integrated contact center offering. That said, it was in no way foundational to the success of our platform, nor was it the only way for us to offer our customers a compelling contact center solution.”
After the news broke, Five9 shares fell 2% in extended trading, after falling another 11% when the news of the possible acquisition was first announced. Zoom’s shares also fell on the initial news, 28%.
CNBC believes Zoom was interested in Five9 because it seeks to reduce its dependence on video and audio meetings. Together with Five9, Zoom expected to have an addressable market worth $91 billion in 2025.
Via: CNBC
