If you’ve watched the news at all during the past month, you’ve probably noticed a lot of guests (and even some TV hosts) broadcasting from home offices and living room studios via Skype as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak.
That’s great news for Skype owner Microsoft.
Shares of Microsoft (MSFT) surged 6% Monday after the software and cloud computing giant announced that 40 million people are now using Skype daily — an increase of 70% over the past month.
“Recently, we have seen significant increases in Skype usage… we are seeing a 220% increase in Skype to Skype calling minutes month over month,” said Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for modern life and search & devices, in a blog post.
Microsoft has also benefited from increased demand for its Teams collaborative software, which competes with Slack. But Slack has also experienced an uptick and is holding its own with its much larger rival.
That’s a big reason why both Microsoft and Slack (WORK) have held up better than the broader market lately. Slack’s stock is up 5% in the past month and more than 26% this year, while the S&P 500 has plunged.
The work-from-home trend has been an even bigger boon for video conferencing company Zoom (ZM), whose shares have soared nearly 130% in 2020.
CNN
