Zoom shares drop after Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine announcement

Zoom, the video conferencing app with nearly 300 million daily users, witnessed a drop in share prices in the wake of Pfizer's announcement about its coronavirus vaccine candidate. The pharmaceutical giant said on Monday that its Covid-19 vaccine has proven to be 90 per cent effective in building immunity against the virus.

In April of this year, video conferencing app Zoom witnessed a massive surge in daily users. From roughly 10 million daily users in December 2019, the app recorded 200 million daily users in March.

While confirming the same in a blog post, Zoom had also clarified that the number of users per day are counted on the basis of daily meetings.

After Pfizer's announcement on Monday, Zoom shares fell by 15 per cent in pre-market trading, according to a report by The Independent. The publication also reported that Zoom shares gained 635 per cent in 2020 to now falling back to what they were worth in September of this year.

This fall in share prices of the video conferencing app can be attributed to concerns that a safe vaccine will lead to the relaxation of lockdowns resulting in more and more office meetings taking place physically rather than virtually.

Earlier this year the government of India among others had cautioned its employees that using Zoom for official meetings is "unsafe".

What is the vaccine announcement?

Pharma giant Pfizer, which is working with German company BioNTech SE to develop a coronavirus vaccine, said its candidate showed positive results in clinical trials. Pfizer is likely to seek US authoritisation later this month for emergency use of its Covid-19 vaccine.It is also interesting to note that Pfizer's shares indicated 14.2 per cent higher in pre-market trading in New York. At the same time, its partner BioNTech's stock was up nearly 23 per cent in Frankfurt in the wake of the announcement.