UPDATED 08:08 EDT / MARCH 25 2014

Box seeks to raise $250M in IPO

BoxIt’s no secret that Box, the cloud storage service, was seeking to debut publicly. And now Box’s S-1 filing is finally out, with the company reportedly looking to raise $250 million in its IPO.

The amount it seeks to raise seems reasonable if you consider that Box has quickly grown its revenues. For the full year that ended in January 2014, its incoming revenue grew to $124 million, a significant increase from the previous year’s $58.8 million.

Unfortunately, as Box’s revenue grows, so does its net loss. During the same period, Box’s total net loss was $168 million, up from the previous year’s $112 million.

Box’s massive loss is attributed to the fact that it’s been spending more to market its products than the revenue it generates.

In the period that ended in January 2013, Box’s expenses totaled $99.2 million for the full year, and that increased to $100 million for the full year that ended in January 2014.

Though Box is generating revenue at a positive rate, its expenses are also growing, making you question as to why the company decided that it’s time for an IPO when it has only $108 million in cash equivalents.

It could simply be that the company needs money.  Though Box can opt to go to private markets to raise a round of funding, like Dropbox’s recent $350 million Series C round of funding, going public has the potential to generate more cash for the company and ultimately make it more competitive in the cloud space. Spanning the consumer and enterprise markets, Box needs all the resources it can get to take on established cloud providers, as well as top vendors now developing cloud tools specifically for organizations. An IPO could double the amount of money than what Box could expect from another round of funding from private markets.

Despite its losses, it seems Box is hoping that investors see its strong revenue as a silver lining.


A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU