Emailed on April 19th, 2019 in The Friday Forward

Despite being less than half the size of Pinterest, Zoom is being given a higher valuation in the public markets. 

Zoom reported revenue in its latest fiscal year of $330.5 million, while Pinterest generated sales of $755.9 million.

When it comes to emerging tech companies, investors are clearly rewarding growth and profitability above all else.

Videoconferencing company Zoom and social media site Pinterest both debuted on the public markets Thursday and immediately rallied from their IPO prices. But Zoom went up significantly more, giving it a valuation of $15.9 billion as of the close of trading, topping Pinterest’s market capitalization of nearly $13 billion.

Zoom's last private valuation was $1 billion. 

Zoom founder Eric Yuan told the New York Times that the share price made him think, "Wow, I better go back tonight to get back to work."

Related: Untold thousands of investors have bought stock in Zoom Technologies Inc. (ZOOM) in the last few weeks, apparently mistaking it for Zoom Video Communications (ZM). 

Zoom Technologies' ticker symbol is ZOOM, and it's traded over-the-counter, while Zoom Video Communications uses the symbol ZM and is traded on the NASDAQ.

Zoom Technologies, in case you're wondering, is a tiny developer of mobile phone components based in Beijing. They have 10 employees and as of a month ago was trading at .005 cents a share.

Starting around the time Zoom Video Communications filed for its initial public offering in late March, Zoom Technologies' price began flying upward. It peaked at more than $5, and it's about $2.70 today, a rise of about 54,000 percent that can only be explained by a massive case of mistaken identity.