Zoom Communications reports on November 23, twenty days out from the November 3 morning scan, and this ZM pre-earnings setup rests on one number: implied volatility of 43.5, the ninth cheapest of the one hundred names on the board. The scanner's November 3 reading carries ZM at $89.36, down 2.85% from the $91.98 close of Monday November 2, at a score of 67 and rank 51.

What makes the row worth a look is that the price has come off its high while the options market is charging one of the lowest prices on the board for the print. The only column holding the score down is the sentiment reading.

The row, twenty days out

Score 67, rank 51, sector Technology, print date November 23, earnings sentiment Mixed, short interest 2.4% of float, market capitalization $26.07 billion, implied volatility 43.5, and a price of $89.36 at the November 3 scan.

Decomposed, the 67 is 25 points for coverage, 15.83 for a 63.3% buy-side share, 4 for the two strong buys, the full 15 for the implied move and 7 for a Mixed sentiment reading. Coverage is maxed out, so the score is not hiding a thin book. It is the sentiment column, and only that column, that costs ZM eight points against a 75.

Zoom has not reported. The print is on November 23, so the November 3 decline cannot be a reaction to its own quarter, and there is no company event on the row to attach it to.

The long-runway group was mixed on the session, with ADI up 4.04%, DELL up 3.10% and CRWD up 2.17% against CRM down 3.27% and NCNO down 3.89%. ZM fell into both halves of that, which is what a stock carrying no news of its own usually does.

When does ZM report earnings, and is it a buy before the print?

Zoom Communications reports on November 23, 2026, twenty days after the November 3 morning scan. On the scanner's own numbers it is a watch rather than a buy, at a score of 67 against a board where sixty names carry 65 or better.

The case for owning it is the cheap insurance and the runway. The case for waiting is the Mixed sentiment reading, the single sell rating in the book, and the fact that the stock is already sitting at a low the option market is not charging for. Every number behind this page is in our open data, and the scan that produces them runs at 6:30 Pacific time.

The cheapest insurance in the long-runway group

At 43.5, ZM's implied volatility is the second cheapest of the twenty-three names with eighteen or more days to their print, behind DE at 42.8. The board median is 79.0.

The straddle puts a figure on it. It costs $7.62 on a three-day expiry, which is 8.5% of the $89.36 share price. Scaled by the square root of time, that one measurement gives a seven-day band of $77.72 to $101.00, a 13.0% move, and a fourteen-day band of $72.90 to $105.82, an 18.4% move.

The analyst consensus objective is $96.98, 8.5% above the price, and the scanner's downside objective on the same row is $81.74. That target sits inside the seven-day band and $81.74 sits just above its floor, so the street's number is not asking for anything the options have not already priced.

The cheap end of the board is not a software list. The eight names cheaper than ZM are DUK at 27.4, AME at 35.0, GWW at 36.3, STE at 42.2, JD at 42.4, DIS at 42.8, DE at 42.8 and ZTO at 42.9.

They are utilities, industrials, healthcare and consumer names. ZM is the cheapest Technology name on the board by implied volatility, and the only software name in that group.

One sell rating and a small short base

Thirty analysts cover ZM: two rate it a strong buy, seventeen rate it a buy, ten hold it and one rates it a sell. Nineteen of thirty ratings are on the buy side, which is 63.3%, and ten of thirty are holds, which is 33.3%.

That hold share is a lighter fence than the typical well-covered name carries. Among the forty-nine names on the board covered by more than twenty-five analysts, FISV holds at 73% and ROK at 53.6%, while ZM sits sixteenth on that measure.

Fifty-one of the one hundred names on the board carry at least one sell rating, and ZM is one of them, with a single one. It is also the thirty-fifth most covered name on the list, behind NVDA at sixty-two analysts, CRM at fifty-six, PANW at fifty-five, SHOP at fifty-five and AMD at fifty-four.

Short interest is 2.4% of float, against a board median of 4.55%, and it is the seventy-eighth highest of one hundred names. There is no concentrated short base here to accelerate a decline and no squeeze mechanism to accelerate a rally, so position in this name is almost entirely long.

The price is what changed. ZM closed October 28 at $100.26, the high of its one-month window, and November 2 at $91.98, the low. The scanner's $89.36 is 2.85% under that low and 10.87% under that high. The settled close series reads $95.50 on October 30 and $91.98 on November 2, a fall of 3.69% on the day, 6.18% on the week and 1.75% on the month.

What would have to change for ZM to be a buy before the print?

Three numbers on the row can still change, and all three are published every morning by the 6:30 Pacific scan. The sentiment reading would have to turn Positive for eight points and a score of 75. The price would have to stop making new lows.

None of those is a forecast. They are the three things on the row that can still move, and the one that cannot change before November 23 is the price, which is already at a low the insurance is not charging for. The sell rating is the third: it would have to stay where it is or go away.

How does ZM's implied volatility compare with the rest of November 23?

Only two names on the board report on November 23. HPE carries implied volatility of 79.5 at a score of 77, against ZM's 43.5 at 67, so the dearer of the two is nearly twice as expensively insured for the same event.

Against the wider long-runway group the gap is wider still. VEEV prices 51.6, ADI 52.8, WDAY 54.5, NCNO 56.1, ADSK 56.4, CRM 62.2 and MDB 64.3. Only OKTA, at 155.1, breaks the pattern the other way, while NTNX at 77.7 and HPE at 79.5 sit close to the board median of 79.0.

So the ZM pre-earnings setup is a cheap-insurance name with a long runway and a score held back by one sentiment column rather than by anything expensive. At $89.36 it sits below its own one-month low, and the November 23 print is twenty sessions away with the option market charging less for the surprise than any long-runway name on this board except DE.