Finance

The video conference service became known through the Corona crisis. But what after the pandemic?

Hardly any other company has benefited as much from the Corona crisis. The video conferencing service Zoom was hardly known to anyone before spring 2020. After that, Zoom began to grow explosively. Mainly driven by home office and social distancing.

For the current financial year, the company is aiming for a sales increase of at least 42 percent. Investors celebrated the fresh quarterly figures and the forecast with a price jump of around 9 percent at times in after-hours trading on Monday.

In the past fiscal year, which ended at the end of January, sales jumped from 623 million to 2.65 billion dollars (2.20 billion euros).

What comes after the home office?

The big question, however, is how far Zoom can still grow – or whether the company has largely exhausted its market potential in the corona boom with lockdowns and home work. And how will video conferencing continue after the end of the pandemic.

Zoom's plan for the future is to use its strong position in video conferences as a bridgehead in order to permanently establish itself in the future everyday office life. The key to this is telephony.

Zoom Phone

Zoom Phone is intended to replace the company's previous telephone systems and at the same time allow seamless integration with video conferencing. In the past quarter, Zoom won telephone customers, among others, the University of South Carolina with 21,000 lines and the world's largest music company Universal Music.

Zoom had moved into a new league with the Corona crisis. The company was originally supposed to provide video conferencing for companies. During the pandemic, however, it was not only used in companies: private individuals also use Zoom for all sorts of occasions – from family reunions to yoga classes.

📣 Calling all office managers! We know between onboarding, tackling admin duties, & coordinating with IT departments, you need technology that simplifies your life. Read the reasons why Zoom Phone is a favorite among other office managers: https://t.co/QAiegFyTJh pic.twitter.com/AFTHdngq2H

– Zoom (@zoom_us) February 24, 2021

Zoom's customer structure

Zoom still earns its money from doing business with larger companies. At the end of the fiscal year, Zoom had over 467,000 customers with more than ten employees – around 33,000 added within three months. Such customers brought in 63 percent of the proceeds.

With its telephony offer, Zoom has so far won 10,700 customers with more than ten employees. He also wants to increasingly establish Zoom as a platform for online events, said founder and boss Eric Yuan in a video conference with analysts.

From March 22nd, the chip manufacturer will push the Finnish network equipment supplier out of the index. Varta has to leave Stoxx Europe 600, Shop Apotheke rises.

As expected by experts, the German chip manufacturer Infineon is replacing the Finnish network equipment supplier Nokia in the Eurostoxx 50. The index provider Qontigo justified the process in a message published late on Monday evening with the so-called fast-entry rule. A share must be on the index provider's selection list and there must be at least 25th place in terms of market value according to free float.

German companies are also affected by changes in the much larger Stoxx Europe 600. The pharmacy mail order company Shop Apotheke will be represented there in the future. Three companies from Germany have to leave the index: the battery group Varta owned by Austrian investor Michael Tojner, Adler Group and Telefonica Deutschland.

All changes will be implemented on March 22nd. They are particularly important for funds that precisely replicate indices (ETF). They then have to reallocate and rebalance their investments accordingly, which can have an impact on share prices.

Subsidiary of the Chinese Geely group: “There is no longer a long-term future for cars with internal combustion engines”.

With Volvo, the next automaker is announcing a complete departure from the internal combustion engine. From 2030, the Swedes, which are part of the Chinese Geely Group, only want to build and sell pure electric cars, as the company announced in Gothenburg on Tuesday. “There is no longer a long-term future for cars with internal combustion engines,” said Volvo's chief technology officer, Henrik Green.

Volvo had already announced a long time ago that by the middle of the decade it wanted to increase the proportion of purely electric models to around half – the rest should then be hybrid drives. According to the plans, however, these will no longer be part of the offer in 2030.

With the project, Volvo joins the growing group of car manufacturers who want to say goodbye to combustion engines completely. US auto giant General Motors recently announced that it would only sell zero-emission cars from 2035 onwards. The British car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover recently announced this for its luxury brand Jaguar from the year 2025. However, German manufacturers have so far held back from a possible phase-out of gasoline, diesel and mixed drives at specific times.

Volvo Cars boss Hakan Samuelsson also wants to take a radical cut in sales. In the future, the all-electric cars from Volvo will only be sold directly via the Internet. The new all-electric XC40 Recharge Pure Electric for model year 2022 will only be available online. The current trading model is facing a fundamental change, according to the company. Nevertheless, the contractual partners in the Volvo dealerships continue to play an important role; they remain the contact point for customers.

The car manufacturer Volvo Cars, based in Gothenburg, has been separated from the Swedish commercial vehicle manufacturer Volvo AB for many years. Volvo Cars is owned by the Chinese auto company Geely, which also has a stake in Volvo AB.

One employee feels disadvantaged towards whites and reports racist insults and sexual harassment.

An employee of the online group Amazon has sued the company in federal court in Washington DC for discrimination. Despite its promise to combat racism, Amazon shows a “systemic pattern of insurmountable discrimination,” said the complaint filed on Monday.

Plaintiff Charlotte Newman is the director of business development at Amazon Web Services and Schwarz.

New: A Black Amazon senior manager, and former Cory Booker adviser, is suing the company and several executives in a discrimination and sexual harassment and assault case https://t.co/Y7AwE5psYf

– Jason Del Rey (@DelRey) March 1, 2021

Racism and sexual harassment

Newman claims the company hires blacks for lower positions and promotes them more slowly than white workers. In her case, Amazon delayed her promotion to senior manager by two and a half years. She also stated that she had been racially insulted by one male employee and sexually molested by another.

Charlotte Newman is now seeking damages and is represented by Douglas Wigdor, who also defended women who sued former film producer Harvey Weinstein and Fox News for alleged harassment or discrimination. Amazon has not yet officially commented on the lawsuit.

Record drop of six percent, but International Energy Agency warns the effect may only be temporary

Well at least: In the epidemic year 2020, the optimistic reports were undoubtedly in short supply, after all the International Energy Agency IEA can report something positive:

Because of the collapse in the global economy caused by the corona crisis and the associated decrease in energy consumption, global CO2 emissions fell by almost 2 billion tons in 2020!

According to calculations by the International Energy Agency (IEA), that was the sharpest decline in history. In the meantime, however, emissions are rising again, and unless countermeasures are taken, the IEA warns that there will be a further increase this year.

Decrease as much as EU emits each year

Energy-related CO2 emissions fell by almost 6 percent or almost two billion tons in the previous year, which is roughly equivalent to the emissions of the entire European Union. About half of this was due to the lower fuel consumption of road transport and aviation.

But as early as December, emissions were 2 percent (60 million tons) higher than in December 2019 because the major economies have recovered. According to the IEA, this is a warning sign. “If the governments do not take the right energy policy measures quickly, this could jeopardize the historic chance of having already passed the peak of global CO2 emissions in 2019,” said IEA chief Fatih Birol.

In March 2020, the IEA appealed to governments to put clean energy at the center of their economic recovery plans to ensure an environmentally sustainable recovery. “But our numbers show a return to carbon-intensive business as usual,” said Birol.

China only reports a small plus

In China, emissions increased by a total of 0.8 percent (75 million tons) in 2020 after China was the first economy to lift the restrictions in connection with the corona pandemic and was the only major economy to even grow in the previous year.

In India, the restrictions were relaxed after the summer and emissions rose above the level of 2019 from September onwards. In Brazil, too, fuel consumption in road traffic rose again after the low in April, and later the demand for natural gas also picked up again, causing emissions in the final quarter of 2020 were again above those of the previous year.

In the EU and the USA, CO2 emissions fell by a tenth in 2020 as a whole, but rose significantly again as the year progressed.

“If current expectations for global economic recovery are confirmed this year – and there are no major changes in the energy policies of the world's largest economies – global emissions are likely to rise in 2021,” said Birol. That is why the International Energy Agency wants to publish a comprehensive roadmap on May 18, 2021, which should show how the energy sector can mathematically become CO2-neutral by 2050.

An ex-soldier and his son are said to have helped the ex-Nissan boss to move to Lebanon.

The US has extradited the two alleged escape helpers of former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn to Japan. “This is a sad day for the family and for everyone who believes that war veterans deserve better treatment from their own country,” said the lawyer for the American accused on Monday. They have already been handed over to the Japanese public prosecutor.

Former US soldier Michael Taylor and his son Peter Taylor are accused of helping Ghosn escape from Japan to Lebanon on December 29, 2019. Lebanon does not have an extradition agreement with Japan. Ghosn wanted to avoid a lawsuit for tax evasion and embezzlement at Renault's Japanese partner Nissan. The US Department of Justice, the US State Department and the Tokyo Public Prosecutor's Office initially declined to comment.

Profit slumped by around 37 percent to CHF 320.1 million

At the chocolate company Lindt & Sprüngli, the corona crisis caused profits to collapse in 2020. Despite everything, the shareholders should enjoy both a dividend and a share buyback program. In addition, sales and profits are expected to pick up again this year. The bottom line was that profits fell by around 37 percent to 320.1 million francs (290.63 million euros), as the fine chocolate manufacturer announced on its website on Monday evening.

The company thus fell even further behind than in 2014. At that time, Lindt & Sprüngli posted a profit of 342.6 million. Analysts had expected a slightly higher net profit. The shareholders should now still receive a distribution of 110 francs per participation certificate or 1,100 francs per registered share. In the previous year, thanks to a special dividend, they received a total of 1,750 francs per registered share. With the dividend, Lindt exceeded even the boldest expectations of the analysts.

In addition, Lindt is launching a share buyback program with a maximum volume of CHF 750 million. The Board of Directors justified this in the announcement with the high liquidity, the solid balance sheet and the continuously high cash flow. At the operational level, profit fell by almost 30 percent to CHF 420.3 million, which corresponds to a margin of 10.5 percent. Lindt had already announced that the margin would be around 10 percent. Most recently, profitability was just as low in 2009, also at 10.5 percent.

In 2019, the Lindorkugeln manufacturer had earned 13.2 percent of its chocolate sales, restructuring costs in the USA even deducted 15 percent. The company, which is otherwise so used to success, wants to reach this level of 15 percent again in 2022. According to the medium-term requirement, the margin is then to be increased again by 20 to 40 basis points annually. For 2021, the chocolate company now expects an operating profit margin of 13 to 14 percent.

For the current year, the management is also forecasting organic sales growth of 6 to 8 percent, and in the medium to long term it should then go up again by 5 to 7 percent. In 2020, Corona tore a revenue gap of almost half a billion francs or 11 percent in the Lindt coffers. Lindt still had sales of around CHF 4 billion, as the company announced in January.

Some of the losses are due to exchange rate losses. But even at constant exchange rates, organic sales fell by 6.1 percent. It was the first organic drop in sales in over 25 years. In the future, among other things, further investments in the online business should further stimulate growth. Lindt is planning to launch its own new online shops, corporate gift platforms and subscription programs in various countries.

iPhone users who want a USB-C port and a fingerprint sensor will probably be disappointed.

There are persistent rumors that the upcoming iPhones will have a USB-C port and can be unlocked again with a fingerprint. But these rumored features have now received a clear rejection.

Apple has no plans to use a USB-C port on iPhones. There is also little evidence that a fingerprint sensor will be installed in one of the next iPhone generations.

Removal for USB-C and Touch ID

This information comes from the well-known and trusted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Kuo has built a name for himself in the industry with his analysis and accurate predictions.

Accordingly, a USB-C connection would reduce Apple's profits and such a port would also be more prone to water ingress than the existing Lightning connection.

Kuo assumes that Apple will leave out the USB-C port and move directly to completely portless devices in its iPhone development. Data transmission would then only work wirelessly, the future iPhones will then only be charged wirelessly via MagSafe.

Fingerprint sensor in the OLED screen?

Kuo also rejects the widely reported fingerprint sensor for upcoming iPhones. He is not assuming that one of the next generation of iPhones will have a fingerprint sensor integrated into the home button.

However, Bloomberg reported a few weeks ago that Apple was testing a fingerprint sensor built directly into the OLED screen. It is still unclear whether this sensor will pass the tests and will be used in the upcoming iPhone.

Is disappointed after the government's decision to keep the restaurant closed: WKÖ boss Harald Mahrer

The gastronomy is disappointed with the result of the Corona summit. Harald Mahrer, WKÖ President, describes the output as “unsatisfactory”.

“Please wait” is the motto for all restaurateurs and hosts even after yesterday's Corona summit. As the federal government announced on Monday, pub gardens should only be allowed to open their doors in around a month, on March 27th. The indoor gastronomy has been put to a halt until further notice. So at least until April, Mr and Mrs Austrians have to go without the schnitzel at the innkeeper's.

In an initial reaction, the industry spokesmen were disappointed with the result, as they vehemently urged a quick opening in advance. The chairmen of the professional associations for the hotel and catering trade in the Austrian Chamber of Commerce (WKÖ), Susanne Kraus-Winkler and Mario Pulker, spoke of the regional opportunities for openings and the announced beginning of the pub season for Holy Week of “bright glimpses” for most businesses the government's decision would cause “frustration and disappointment”.

The close confidante of Chancellor Kurz and President of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, Harald Mahrer, sees it similarly. “Austria's companies are not a threat. On the contrary. Their safety and prevention concepts for safe operation during the Covid pandemic are exemplary worldwide. In numerous countries, for example in Switzerland, companies without such extensive concepts have opened FFP2 masks and additional entry tests would set Austria global standards. “

It is “unsatisfactory that there is no political agreement on the full use of the full tool case in all affected industries for gradually secure openings,” Mahrer explained in a broadcast. Two thirds of the infections would take place in the private sector, argues the WKÖ with reference to the “Agency for Health and Food Safety” (AGES).

“The existing tools, namely FFP2 masks, stricter distance rules and the extensive test options, have shown that they work in retail and at the body-hugging service providers. Each individual test helps to identify asymptomatic infected people quickly and to interrupt chains of infection,” explains WKÖ -General Secretary Karlheinz Kopf, who points out that the number of public tests has been massively increased through the expansion of the test strategy with access tests so far.

In conclusion, Mahrer and Kopf state that the Austrian vaccination program must be accelerated. “Because tests and vaccinations are the key to fighting pandemics on a sustainable basis.”

Declined from 2.5 to 1.5 billion euros – small profit of 2 million euros – Sixt does not yet venture a forecast due to corona uncertainty.

The German car rental company Sixt closed the past year with a loss of 81.5 million euros before taxes – but made a profit of 2 million euros after taxes and with the result from the discontinued leasing division. Sales collapsed from 2.5 to 1.5 billion euros due to travel restrictions and lockdowns in the corona pandemic, the company announced on Tuesday.

The continued stable occupancy of the city offices as well as the areas of long-term rental and car subscriptions would have prevented an even greater slump. The outgoing CEO Erich Sixt said that Sixt had black figures in Europe and invested heavily in the USA. “With the acquisition of highly attractive airport stations in the USA, we have advanced our internationalization strategy,” he said.

The car subscription offer was launched successfully. Sixt did not give a forecast for the current year. He was “cautiously optimistic that after the end of contact bans and travel restrictions we will return to a growth mode”.

The CEO and major shareholder Erich Sixt wants to switch to the post of chairman of the supervisory board in June, shortly before his 77th birthday. His two sons Alexander and Konstantin Sixt, who have been on the board since 2015 and who have driven digitization, will then become co-CEOs together.