Dropbox Inc. today posted solid quarterly results in its first earnings report since the launch of its initial public offering in March.

The file storage company beat out Wall Street’s expectations for its first quarter, reporting earnings after certain costs such as stock compensation of 4 cents per share on revenue of $316.3 million, up 28 percent from the same quarter a year ago.

Wall Street analysts were anticipating earnings of 4 cents per share on revenue of $309.3 million. Dropbox still lost money, though, booking a net loss of $466 million for the period.

Investors might have been hoping for a bit more. The company’s stock price fell by 4 percent in after-hours trading.

Dropbox Chief Executive Officer Drew Houston (pictured) sought to highlight the positive aspects of the quarter in an earnings call. He noted that the firm now has 11.5 million paying users, up from 9.3 million from a year ago. He added that the average revenue per paying user had also grown, growing to $114.30 from $110.79 last year.

“Growth in paying users and increased adoption of premium plans helped drive first-quarter revenue,” Houston said. “We continued to add value to our platform with new product features, and enhanced our ecosystem through partnerships with Salesforce and Google.”

Dropbox saw its stock price jump 36 percent in its first day of trading last March after raising some $756 million. In its original filing, the company said it intended to use the cash it raises to get more of its users onto paid subscriptions. It also said it would look to integrate its software with other providers, following deals with Google Inc., Microsoft Corp., Salesforce.com Inc. and others.

Houston indicated on the call that the strategy remains much the same: “We didn’t need to go public to raise money,” he said. “We’ll use the proceeds to continue investing in growth and the product portfolio.”

That kind of investment may be necessary if Dropbox is to stay relevant in the months and years to come, one analyst said. Alan Lepofsky, principal analyst and vice president at Constellation Research Inc., told SiliconANGLE that cloud file sync, store and share has become such a hot commodity that it’s forcing companies such as Dropbox to search for new ways to expand their solutions and differentiate themselves. Dropbox is doing well in that regard, Lepofsky said, pointing to efforts such as its new Paper and Showcase features, which give users more opportunity to create content and engage through the platform.

“However, that story can easily get buried if prospects are simply comparing them to Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive for basic file storage,” Lepofsky said. “Dropbox has always had a strong partner ecosystem, but continuing to entice those developers to build new features and integrations is critical.”

The company also provided encouraging guidance for the next quarter and full year. It’s forecasting revenue of about $330 million for the second quarter and $1.35 billion by the end of the year, ahead of Wall Street’s expectations.

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