RingCentral Stock

RingCentral, Inc. (RingCentral) provides AI-driven cloud business communications, contact center, video and hybrid event solutions.

The company's cloud-based business solutions are designed to be easy to use, providing a global user identity across multiple locations and devices, including smartphones, tablets, PCs and desk phones. The company's solutions can be deployed rapidly and configured and managed easily. The company's cloud-based solutions are location and device independent and better suited to address the needs of modern mobile and global enterprise workforces than are legacy on-premises systems. Through the company's open platform, the company enables third-party developers and customers to develop integrations and workflows using the company's robust set of Application Programming Interfaces ('APIs') and software developers' kits ('SDKs').

For mobile and highly distributed workforce, RingCentral empowers people to connect from anywhere on any device, across any mode of communication. This gives today's workforce the ability to communicate more productively and seamlessly in ways that traditional on-premises systems do not support.

RingCentral offers a fully integrated business communications platform, which includes cloud private branch exchanges ('PBX'), cloud contact center, video meetings and webinars, and events. RingCentral is focused on embedding AI into the company's product portfolio, which is a key product differentiator for the markets and customers the company serves.

The company's cloud communications and customer engagement solutions are based on its Message Video Phone (MVP) platform. This open platform enables seamless integration with third-party and custom software applications, helping improve business workflows, drive higher employee productivity and enhance better customer service. The company's global delivery capabilities support the needs of multi-national enterprises in multiple countries.

The company's multi-product portfolio includes:

RingCentral MVP, an AI-driven Unified Communications as a Service ('UCaaS') platform, which includes team messaging, video meetings, business SMS and a cloud phone system;

Contact Center as a Service ('CCaaS'), a set of cloud-based customer experience solutions that includes RingCentral Contact Center, and RingCX, a native omnichannel contact center with generative AI capabilities and conversation analytics launched in 2023;

RingCentral Video, the company's branded video meeting solution with team messaging that enables smart video meetings, rooms solutions, and webinars;

RingCentral Events, announced in November 2023 following the acquisition of Hopin Events and Session Platforms provides a robust set of features to host virtual, hybrid, and in-person events of all sizes and formats, spanning from single-session events to multi-day & multi-session conferences; and

RingSense, announced in March 2023, is an AI platform for enhanced business communications and revenue intelligence that helps organizations unlock powerful insights from conversation data. RingSense for Sales, the first offering in this portfolio, analyzes interactions among salespeople and their prospects to surface key insights and performance measures, helping increase sales efficiency.

The company primarily generates revenues from the sale of subscriptions to its offerings. The company's subscription plans have monthly, annual, or multi-year contractual terms. For the year ended December 31, 2023, subscriptions revenues accounted for 90% or more of the company's total revenues. The remainder of the company's revenues has historically been primarily consisted of product revenues from the sale of pre-configured phones and professional services. The company does not develop or manufacture physical phones and offer them as a convenience to the company's customers. The company relies on third-party providers to develop and manufacture these devices and fulfillment partners to successfully serve the company's customers.

The company continues to support its direct inside sales force while also developing indirect sales channels to market the company's brand and its subscription offerings. The company's indirect sales channels who sell the company's solutions consist of:

Regional and global network of resellers and distributors;

Strategic partners who market and sell the company's MVP or other solutions, including co-branded solutions. Such partnerships include Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise ('ALE'), Amazon Web Services ('Amazon'), Atos SE ('Atos'), Avaya LLC ('Avaya'), and Mitel US Holdings, Inc. ('Mitel' or 'Unify'); and

Global Service Providers including AT&T ('AT&T'), TELUS Communications Company ('TELUS'), BT Group plc ('BT'), Vodafone Group Services Limited ('Vodafone'), Deutsche Telekom ('DT'), Optus Networks Pty Ltd ('Optus') in Australia, 1&1 Versatel and Ecotel in Germany, MCM in Mexico, Frontier, Charter Communications and others.

'RingCentral' and other of the company's trademarks are its property.

Solutions

The company's AI-driven cloud-based business communications, collaboration, and customer engagement solutions function across multiple locations and devices, including smartphones, tablets, PCs and desk phones, allow for communication across multiple modes, including high-definition ('HD') voice, video, SMS, messaging and collaboration, conferencing, and fax. The company's proprietary solutions enable a more productive and dynamic workforce and are architected using industry standards to meet modern business communications and collaboration requirements, including workforce mobility, 'bring-your-own' communications device environments and multiple communications methods.

The company's solutions are delivered using a highly available, and rapidly and easily scalable infrastructure, allowing the company's customers to add new users regardless of where they are located within the company's service footprint and promote business continuity. The company's solutions require little to no upfront infrastructure hardware costs or ongoing maintenance and upgrade costs commonly associated with on-premise systems and can be integrated with other existing communication systems.

The company's solutions go beyond the core functionality of existing on-premise communications solutions by providing additional key benefits that address the changing requirements of business to allow business communications using HD voice, video, SMS, messaging, collaboration, conferencing, and fax. The key benefits of the company's solutions include:

Location Independence. The company's cloud-based solutions are designed to be location independent. The company seamlessly connects distributed and mobile users, enabling employees to communicate with a single identity whether working from a central location, a branch office, on the road, or at home.

Global. The company's core UCaaS capabilities support multinational enterprise workforces, connecting multinational workforces globally, while reducing the complexity and high costs of maintaining multiple legacy private branch exchanges ('PBX systems') with a single global cloud solution.

Generative AI. The company is focused on embedding AI capabilities into all of its products, providing the company's customers with an affordable way to benefit from advancements of this key technology. RingCentral has developed a set of unique AI models that deliver conversational speech analysis and emotional sentiment recognition, which allows the company to deliver a set of enhanced features across its product portfolio.

Device Independence. The company's solutions are designed to work with a broad range of devices, including smartphones, tablets, PCs, and desk phones, enabling businesses to successfully implement a 'bring-your-own' communications device strategy.

Instant Activation and Easy Account Management. The company's solutions are designed for rapid deployment and ease of management. The company's intuitive graphical user interfaces allow administrators and users to set up and manage their business communications system with little or no IT expertise, training, or dedicated staffing.

Analytics. The company's solutions enable superior user experience and drive business decisions through a single, real-time intuitive interface with configurable, out-of-the-box KPIs and metrics for monitoring all users, calls, meetings, devices, numbers, and queues, along with call quality scores and parameters.

Scalability. The company's cloud-based solutions scale easily and efficiently with the growth of the company's customers. Customers can add users, regardless of their location, without having to purchase additional infrastructure hardware or software upgrades.

Lower Cost of Ownership. The company's customers experience significantly lower cost of ownership compared to legacy on-premise systems. Using the company's cloud-based solutions, its customers can avoid the significant upfront costs of infrastructure hardware, software, ongoing maintenance and upgrade costs, and the need for dedicated and trained IT personnel to support these systems.

Seamless and Intuitive Integration with Other Applications. Applications are proliferating within businesses of all sizes. Integration of these business applications with legacy on-premise systems is typically complex and expensive, which limits the ability of businesses to leverage cloud-based applications. The company's platform provides seamless and intuitive integration with multiple popular cloud-based business applications, such as Microsoft productivity and CRM tools, Google G-Suite, Salesforce CRM, Oracle, Okta, Zendesk, Box, and Workday, as well as line-of business applications.

Enterprise-grade Security and Compliance. RingCentral emphasizes data security through a secure cloud platform demonstrated through numerous third-party attestations and certifications. These certifications and attestations highlight RingCentral's strong commitment to maintaining high standards of data security and regulatory compliance.

Mission Critical Reliability. RingCentral has a long-standing industry-leading service level agreement (SLA) of 99.999% uptime offered in over 45+ countries. With over 15 geographically dispersed data centers and media points of presence, RingCentral provides a global infrastructure that ensures mission critical continuity for the organization.

The company has a portfolio of cloud-based offerings that are subscription-based and made available at different monthly rates, varying by the specific functionalities, services, and number of users. The company primarily generates revenues from the sale of subscriptions to its offerings, which include the following:

RingCentral MVP. RingCentral MVP, the company's flagship solution, provides an AI-embedded experience for communication and collaboration across multiple modes, including HD voice, video, SMS, messaging and collaboration, conferencing, online meetings, and fax. RingCentral MVP offers a unified Message, Video, and Phone experience on the company's global platform. Customers can extend RingCentral MVP to support their multinational workforce in many countries around the world. This subscription is designed primarily for businesses that require a communications solution, regardless of location, type of device, expertise, size, or budget. Businesses are able to seamlessly connect users working in multiple office locations on smartphones, tablets, PCs and desk phones. The features, capabilities and price per user increase from Core to Ultra. The solution capabilities include high-definition voice, call management, mobile applications, business SMS and MMS, fax, team messaging and collaboration, audio/video/web conferencing capabilities, out-of-the-box integrations with other cloud-based business applications, and business analytics and reporting. The company's platform also enables customers to create, develop, and deploy custom integrations using the company's APIs.

Key features of RingCentral MVP include:

AI-driven Cloud-Based Business Communications Solutions. The company offers multi-user, multi-extension, AI-driven cloud-based business communications solutions that do not require installation, configuration, management, or maintenance of on-premise hardware and software. The company's solutions are instantly activated and deliver a rich set of functionalities across multiple locations and devices.

Team Messaging and Collaboration. The company offers team messaging and collaboration solutions which allow diverse teams to stay connected through multiple modes of communication. In addition to team messaging and communications, teams can share tasks, notes, group calendars, and files.

RingCentral Video ('RCV') and RingCentral Rooms. RingCentral Video leverages RingCentral's open platform to address the demand in work from anywhere by leveraging technologies to enable a fast, unified, open, and trusted video meetings experience. It includes a robust analytics platform that gives IT system administrators access to key performance indicators such as adoption, usage, and quality of service metrics. RCV is also integrated with business productivity applications such as Google Workspace, Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft 365, Slack, Theta Lake, and Zoho, among others. RingCentral Rooms and Rooms Connector bring a cloud web conferencing solution to meeting rooms and meeting spaces that have dedicated video conferencing equipment, such as monitors, speakers, microphones, and cameras, and support for large meetings and webinars for a monthly per license add-on fee.

Mobile-Centric Approach. The company's solution includes smartphone and tablet mobile applications that customers can use to set up and manage company, department, and user settings from anywhere. The company's applications turn iOS and Android smartphones and tablets into business communication devices. Users can change their personal settings instantly and communicate via voice, text, team messaging and collaboration, HD video and web conferencing, and fax. RingCentral MVP installed on personal mobile devices are fully integrated into the customer's cloud-based communication solution, using the company's numbers, and displaying one of its caller ID for calls made through the company's mobile applications.

Easy Set-Up and Control. The company's user interfaces provide a consistent user experience across smartphones, tablets, PCs, and desk phones, making it intuitive and easy for the company's customers to quickly discover and use the company's solution across devices. Among other capabilities, administrators can specify and modify company, department, user settings, auto-receptionist settings, call-handling, and routing rules, and add, change, and customize users and departments.

Flexible Call Routing. The company's solution includes an auto-attendant to easily customize call routing for the entire company, departments, groups, or individual employees. It includes a robust suite of communication management options, including time of day, caller ID, call queuing, and sophisticated routing rules for complex call handling for the company, departments, groups, and individual employees.

Cloud-based Business Application Integrations. The company's solution seamlessly integrates with other cloud-based business applications such as Salesforce CRM, Google Cloud, Box, Dropbox, Office365, Outlook, Oracle, Okta, Zendesk, Jira, Asana, and others. For example, the company's integration with Salesforce CRM brings up customer records immediately based on inbound caller IDs, resulting in increased productivity and efficiency. The company's open platform is supported by APIs and software developers' kits ('SDKs') that allows developers to integrate the company's solution with leading business applications or with other custom applications to customize their own business workflows.

RingCentral Global MVP. The company's solution includes RingCentral Global MVP, a single global UCaaS solution designed for multinational enterprises that allows these companies to support distributed offices and employees globally with a single cloud solution. With RingCentral Global MVP, multinational enterprises can operate in other countries while also acting as one integrated business, with capabilities, including local phone numbers, local caller ID, worldwide extension-to-extension dialing, and included minute bundles for international calling.

RingCentral Cloud Connector. RingCentral Cloud Connector is a hybrid PBX solution where businesses can interconnect their on-premises PBX systems with RingCentral MVP. This allows for seamless internal employee dialing between on-premises PBX users and RingCentral cloud users. Previously, internal employee communication between both groups would be difficult to be connected, which caused increased overall telecommunications spend and IT complexities due to roaming charges and PSTN connectivity. Modern UCaaS providers like RingCentral changed that model and now include a hybrid PBX solution with offering.

RingCentral Direct Connect. RingCentral Direct Connect is a service that allows enterprises to leverage their dedicated and secure connections to exchange data directly with the RingCentral cloud. Customers use their preferred network service provider to connect to the RingCentral cloud through a secure data exchange enabling lower latency, greater network reliability and availability, and added security.

High-Volume SMS. High-Volume SMS is a service that enables businesses to send high-volume and commercial SMS messages and updates to their customers eliminating the need to purchase and program a separate number. The company's service also provides access to message status, logs, store, and analytics for advanced insights and regulatory compliance.

RingCentral Business Analytics. RingCentral offers a suite of add-on analytics that provide real-time information and customizable dashboards so that customers can better monitor their agents and business performance. These offerings include RingCentral Live Reports, RingCentral Business Analytics and RingCentral Business Analytics Pro.

RingCentral for Microsoft Teams. RingCentral for Microsoft Teams is an embedded app for Microsoft Teams users, giving companies the ability to integrate RingCentral's cloud PBX capabilities directly into the Microsoft platform.

RingCentral for Frontline Workers. RingCentral for Frontline Workers is an add-on or standalone product designed for essential workers or field staff to enhance employee- or company-owned mobile devices with walkie-talkie, voice, AI-powered video capabilities, team messaging, file sharing, and more.

RingCentral Live Reports. RingCentral Live Reports is an add-on for RingCentral MVP customers to gather real-time information needed to maximize the performance with dashboards that contain information on agent utilization and overall customer experience.

RingCentral Fax. RingCentral Fax provides online fax capabilities that allow businesses to send and receive fax documents without the need for a fax machine. RingCentral Fax capability is made available to all RingCentral MVP customers or as a stand-alone offering at monthly subscription rates that vary based on the desired number of pages and phone numbers allotted to the plan.

RingCentral Overlay. RingCentral Overlay provides partners with the ability to retain existing calling capability and add on additional collaboration tools offered by RingCentral, such as messaging and video conferencing. Through the company's Global Service Providers unit, the company makes it easy for strategic partners to leverage the RingCentral platform to launch co-branded offerings.

RingCentral Contact Center and RingCX. RingCentral Contact Center is a collaborative contact center solution that delivers AI-driven omni-channel and workforce engagement solution with integrated RingCentral MVP. RingCentral Contact Center brings together the powerful integration of CCaaS which leverages technology from NICE inContact, Inc., along with RingCentral MVP, enabling an easy collaboration while delivering seamless omnichannel experiences across more than 30 digital and voice channels. In August 2023, the company launched RingCX, its next generation, AI-driven contact center solution that delivers a complete native omnichannel experience.

RingCentral Video. RingCentral Video is a smart video meeting service, which includes the company's RCV video and team messaging capabilities. It is an easy-to-use solution that offers high quality and high availability video and audio conferencing, seamlessly integrated with team messaging, file sharing, contact, task, and calendar management. It includes pre-meeting, in-meeting, and post-meeting capabilities, and provides a completely integrated team collaboration capability. RingCentral Video is provided in two editions: Pro, which is a free service, and a paid Pro Plus subscription service which offers a higher number of meeting participants and additional video meeting and administrative management capabilities.

RingCentral Professional Services. Professional Services helps guide the company's customers through the many points of the cloud adoption lifecycle: consultation, UCaaS and CCaaS implementation, VoIP phone system adoption, configuring custom workflows, customer and user onboarding, ongoing support, advanced support, managed services, and more.

Customers

The company has a diverse and growing customer base across a wide range of industries, including financial services, education, healthcare, legal services, real estate, retail, technology, insurance, construction, hospitality, and state and local government, among others. The company seeks to establish and maintain long-term relationships with the company's customers.

The company sells its solutions to enterprise customers, and small and medium-sized businesses. The company defines a 'customer' as a party that purchases or subscribes to its products and services directly or through the company's indirect sales channel, which includes resellers and distributors, strategic partners and global service providers. The company continuously expands its solution offering globally and there are additional growth opportunities in international markets.

Marketing, Sales and Support

The company uses a variety of marketing, sales, and support activities to generate and cultivate ongoing customer demand for the company's subscriptions, acquire new customers, and engage with the company's existing customers. The company sells globally through both direct and indirect channels, which includes resellers and distributors, strategic partners and global service providers. The company provides onboarding implementation services to help its customers set up and configure their newly purchased communications system, as well as ongoing self-service, phone support, online chat support, and training. The company also closely tracks and monitors customer acquisition costs to assess how the company is deploying its marketing, sales, and customer support spending.

Marketing. The company's marketing efforts include search engine marketing, search engine optimization, affiliates, list buys, shared leads, content leads, appointment setting, radio advertising, online display advertising, sports sponsorships, billboard advertising, tradeshows and events, and other forms of demand generation. The company tracks and measures its marketing costs closely across all channels so that the company can acquire customers in a cost-efficient manner.

Direct Sales. The company primarily sells its solutions and subscriptions through direct inbound and outbound sales efforts. The company has direct sales representatives located in the U.S. and internationally.

Indirect Sales. The company's indirect sales channel consists of global and regional networks of resellers and distributors, strategic partners and global and regional service providers. The company's indirect sales channels help broaden the adoption of the company's solutions and enable the company to leverage the channel to sell its services, as well as access their customer bases.

Customer Support and Services. While the company's intuitive and easy-to-use user interface serves to reduce its customers' need for support and services, the company provides online chat and phone customer support, as well as post-sale implementation support, as an option to help customers configure and use the company's solution. The company tracks and measures its customer satisfaction and the company's support costs closely across all channels to provide a high level of customer service in a cost-efficient manner.

Strategy

As part of the company's strategy to expand its technological capabilities, the company engages in strategic transactions from time to time. Such strategic acquisitions enable the company to complement the company's technology and skill sets and expand the company's solution reach.

Intellectual Property

The company's worldwide intellectual property portfolio includes over 450 issued patents, which expire between 2024 and 2041, and over 90 patent applications, pending examination in the U.S. and in foreign jurisdictions, all of which are related to U.S. applications.

Competition

The company faces competition from a broad range of providers of business communications and collaboration solutions. Some of these competitors include:

Traditional on-premise, hardware business communications providers such as Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, Avaya Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., Mitel Networks Corporation, NEC Corporation, and Siemens Enterprise Networks, LLC, any of which may now or in the future also host their solutions through the cloud;

Software providers such as Microsoft Corporation and Cisco Systems, Inc. that generally license and/or host their software solutions, and their resellers including major global service providers and cable companies;

Established business communications providers that resell on-premise hardware, software, and hosted solutions, such as Comcast, COX, TMU, Orange, and others, all of whom have significantly greater resources than the company and now develop and/or host their own or other solutions through the cloud;

Other cloud companies such as 8x8, Inc., Amazon.com, Inc., DialPad, Inc., GoTo, Microsoft Corporation, Nextiva, Inc., Twilio Inc., Vonage Holdings Corp. (acquired by Ericsson), and Zoom Video Communications, Inc.;

Video meeting and collaboration service providers such as Amazon.com, Inc., Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc. (Google G-Suite and Meet), Meta Platforms, Inc., Microsoft Teams, Slack Technologies, Inc. (acquired by Salesforce.com, Inc.), and Zoom Video Communications, Inc.;

Other technology companies such as Alphabet Inc. (Google Voice), Meta Platforms, Inc., Oracle Corporation, and Salesforce.com, Inc., any of which might launch its own cloud-based business communication services or acquire other cloud-based business communications companies in the future;

Providers of communications platform as a service solutions and messaging software platforms with APIs such as Twilio Inc., Vonage Holdings Corp. (acquired by Ericsson), and Slack Technologies, Inc. (acquired by Salesforce.com, Inc.), on which customers can build diverse solutions by integrating cloud communications into business applications;

Contact center and customer relationship management providers such as Amazon.com, Inc., Alvaria, Inc., Avaya Inc., Five9, Inc., NICE InContact (including LiveVox Holdings, Inc.), Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc., Serenova, LLC (acquired by Enghouse Systems Ltd.), Talkdesk, Inc., Vonage Holdings Corp. (acquired by Ericsson), Salesforce.com, Inc., Twilio Inc., and Zoom Video Communications, Inc.; and

Digital engagement vendors such as eGain Corporation, LivePerson, Inc., among others named above that may offer similar features.

Regulatory

As a provider of communication services over the Internet, the company is subject to regulation in the U.S. by the FCC. Some of these regulatory obligations include contributing to the Federal Universal Service Fund, Telecommunications Relay Service Fund, and federal programs related to phone number administration; providing access to E-911 services; protecting customer information; complying with caller ID authentication and anti-robocall measures; and porting phone numbers upon a valid customer request. The company is also required to pay state and local 911 fees and contribute to state universal service funds in those states that assess interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol ('VoIP') services. In addition, the company has certified a wholly owned subsidiary as a competitive local exchange carrier in thirty states and the District of Columbia, and registered as an IP-enabled Service Provider in an additional eleven states. This subsidiary, RCLEC, is subject to the same FCC regulations applicable to telecommunications companies, as well as regulation by the public utility commissions in states where the subsidiary provides services.

In the United Kingdom, for example, the company's subscriptions are regulated by Ofcom, which, among other things, requires electronic communications services providers such as the company's company to provide all users access to both 112 (EU-mandated) and 999 (U.K.-mandated) emergency service numbers at no charge. Similarly, in Canada, the company's subscriptions are regulated by the CRTC, which, among other things, imposes requirements like those in the U.S. related to the provision of E-911 services, in all areas of Canada where the wireline incumbent carrier offers such 911 services. Over the course of 2023, many countries across Europe implemented the EU Electronic Communications Code, clarifying and updating obligations on PSTN-connected voice service providers as well as imposing new requirements on number-independent services such as videoconferencing and team messaging. Additionally, the French regulatory agency, ARCEP, has made major changes to its telephone numbering plan that went into effect in January 2023, allowing for greater nomadic use of services like the company, and prohibiting the sub-assignment of phone numbers to resellers, requiring each provider to obtain numbers directly from ARCEP. The company's regulatory obligations in foreign jurisdictions could have a material adverse effect on the use of the company's subscriptions in international locations.

History

RingCentral, Inc. was founded in 1999. The company was incorporated in California in 1999 and was reincorporated in Delaware in 2013.