UCaaS firm RingCentral reports Q4, full-year revenue jump

RingCentral reported fourth quarter and full-year revenue that surged 33% and 31% respectively, as the company continued to benefit from increasing demand for unified communications as-a-service (UCaaS) solutions amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The fourth quarter revenue figure was $335 million, with revenue for the full year of 2020 coming in at about $1.2 billion, 92% of it coming from subscription services. In its earnings report, RingCentral also forecast the first quarter 2021 revenue should land in the range between $337 million and $340 million, representing year-over-year growth of 26% to 27%. The company’s full-year outlook suggested 2021 revenue in the range of $1.475-$1.490 billion, representing annual growth of 25% to 26%.

“Fourth quarter was outstanding, driven by robust growth across the business with strong contributions from the channel and our key partners led by Avaya, AT&T, and Atos,” said Vlad Shmunis, RingCentral’s founder, chairman and CEO, in a statement. “We are also excited to add Vodafone Business as a key partner as we continue to expand our global distribution network to meet the rising worldwide demand for cloud-based communication solutions.”

RELATED: SD-WAN vendor Cato Networks earned RingCentral certification in 2019

RingCentral’s Vodafone partnership was announced in December and was the most recent of the company’s partnerships with major carriers. The arrangement sets up RingCentral for a U.K. market launch and new exposure to Vodafone multi-national customers throughout Europe later this year. Other new market launches that will result from the partnership include Spain, Germany and Italy. Also in December, RingCentral announced its acquisition of conversational intelligence company DeepAffects, whose artificial intelligence-based technology it plans to use to enhance its virtual meeting experiences for customers.

The Covid-19 pandemic is believed to have generated a boom in demand for UCaaS systems, video meeting technologies and other remote networking and communications platforms. AVANT Analytics, for example, said in a recent report that customer interest in UCaaS surged about 86% at the outset of the pandemic. RingCentral’s stock value has surged over the last year as a result, rising from $134 in January 2020 to a high of $443 last week, though the price dipped a little over 1% after the earnings report.

Aside from the earnings report, RingCentral also announced that it had named Arne Duncan, who was the U.S. Secretary of Education for most of the Obama administration, to its board of directors.