LONDON: Zoom Video Communications Inc. shares tumbled nearly 17 percent on Tuesday, after the video conferencing company signaled a faster-than-expected drop in demand and analysts questioned its future plans as people return to office.
Zoom and other video conferencing services such as Cisco , Microsoft’s Teams and Salesforce’s Slack raked in millions of new users as the pandemic forced people to work, study and communicate with friends and family remotely.
With easing pandemic curbs, Zoom will need to find new avenues for growth. The company already made a $14.7 billion bet on Five9 in July to bolster its contact center business.
Analysts said it would take a few quarters for Zoom to return to its true underlying growth rate.
“There are significant questions outstanding regarding how new customer demand and customer churn rates will stabilize in the core business following the loosening of COVID-19 restrictions,” analysts at Daiwa Capital wrote in a note.
Zoom forecast current-quarter revenue between $1.015 billion and $1.020 billion on Monday, indicating a rise of about 31 percent, compared with multiple-fold growth rates in 2020.
At least six brokerages cut their price targets on Zoom, according to Refinitiv data, with Piper Sandler being the most bearish — slashing its price target by over $100 to $369.
Shares of the company fell by the most in more than nine months to close at $289.50 on Tuesday.
The company’s shares rallied to stratospheric highs since February last year, with its valuation touching $175 billion in October. Since then, the shares have eased and Zoom’s current capitalization is half of the October peak.
Zoom shares record worst day in 9 months as searing growth tapers off
https://arab.news/z3p55
Zoom shares record worst day in 9 months as searing growth tapers off
- Zoom shares tumbled nearly 17 percent after the video conferencing company signaled a faster-than-expected drop in demand
Lebanon’s official media scale back Hezbollah coverage after Cabinet ban
- Information Minister Paul Morcos instructs outlets to comply with government decision
- Journalists, social media urged to avoid content that could provoke hate speech, incitement
BEIRUT: Lebanon has begun implementing a Cabinet decision taken earlier this month to ban Hezbollah’s security and military activities by scaling back coverage of the group on official media platforms.
The measure, which was described in political circles as a significant and bold step, came after decades during which news about the party and the speeches of its leaders were published verbatim and broadcast live through official media outlets, like the state-run National News Agency, TV station Tele Liban and Radio Lebanon.
“No one is imposing censorship,” an official source told Arab News.
“Rather, there is a commitment to the decisions of the state. It is no longer possible for a speech that attacks the Lebanese government and the state to be published through its official media outlets.”
Information Minister Paul Morcos issued a circular instructing directors of official media outlets to comply with the government’s decision to ban the broadcast of speeches or statements by Hezbollah Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem and statements issued by the group’s armed wing, particularly when they contain criticism of the state.
Morcos also ordered that Hezbollah statements be handled in the same manner as those issued by other political parties, meaning they should not be published verbatim. He further instructed media outlets to avoid using the term “Islamic resistance,” except when it appears directly within Hezbollah statements.
The first manifestations of the decision were Tele Liban’s abstention from live broadcasting a speech by Qassem and a statement made on Tuesday by lawmaker Mohammed Raad, who heads the Hezbollah parliamentary bloc.
The group’s supporters described the move as an attempt “to restrict the resistance, Hezbollah and its leadership in the official media.”
Some argued on social media that preventing the use of terms like “resistance” or “holy warriors (Mujahedin)” and replacing them with expressions such as “Hezbollah” and “fighters” was “aimed at brainwashing and stripping the party of its resistance identity.”
During a Cabinet session on Thursday, Morcos raised the issue of content circulating on social media that incites murder and sectarian strife. This comes against the backdrop of the war that Hezbollah waged from Lebanon against Israel on March 2, without state approval, which led to a sharp division in Lebanese public opinion.
Morcos, who is also Cabinet spokesperson, said after the session that what was being published “exceeds the bounds of freedom of opinion, the press and expression.”
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam considered it to fall under the penal code, specifically regarding crimes that harm national unity, he said, and that “we are against strife in all its forms.”
Morcos also urged journalists, influencers and social media users to remain aware of the sensitivity of the current situation and to avoid content that could provoke strife, hate speech or incitement.
He acknowledged, however, that, according to a legal study, he has no authority over social media, even on media-related matters.
“The Ministry of Information does not exercise a guardianship role and lacks judicial police powers,” he said.
“These authorities rest with the public prosecution offices, which are overseen by the minister of justice and fall within the domain of criminal law and criminal prosecution.”
The ban was agreed during a Cabinet session on March 2, after Hezbollah launched six rockets from Lebanese territory toward northern Israel, the first such attack since the November 2024 ceasefire, prompting retaliatory strikes.
The Cabinet reaffirmed that “the decision of war and peace rests exclusively with the Lebanese state and its constitutional institutions,” and called on Hezbollah to hand over its weapons to the state while limiting its role to political activity within the legal and constitutional framework.
