Box Inc. posted fourth-quarter earnings and revenue today that beat Wall Street’s expectations and followed up with strong guidance for the next quarter, sending its stock higher in extended trading.

The cloud content management firm reported earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation of 24 cents per share on revenue of $233.4 million, up 17% from a year ago. Analysts had been modeling earnings of 23 cents per share on revenue of $228.6 million.

Box also provided full-year results, saying its fiscal 2022 revenue rose 13% from a year ago, to $874.3 million.

Box co-founder and Chief Executive Aaron Levie (pictured) said the company closed fiscal 2022 with strong results across all of its financial metrics, executing on its vision for Box Content Cloud while beating its own guidance in terms of growth and profitability.

“Businesses today are adopting a digital-first, cloud-delivered focus, reimagining how they work in a world of distributed and hybrid teams,” Levie said in a statement. “Content is at the center of this shift, and Box is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this opportunity.”

Box’s other metrics included remaining performance obligations of $1.1 billion, up 19% from a year ago. Meanwhile, billings for the fourth quarter rose 9%, to $337.9 million. RPO represents the sum of invoiced amounts and the future amounts not yet invoiced for contracts with customers, while billings represents the amount invoiced for that is due for payment shortly. As such, both metrics are used as a gauge of a company’s future revenue.

Levie told SiliconANGLE in an interview that Box’s growth has been driven by three megatrends: remote work and hybrid work, as well as cybersecurity needs and digital transformation.

He said the company’s evolution, combining all of its tools into a single platform for content, has also been extremely beneficial. Added to that, new tools such as Box Shield and Box Sign have proved popular with customers.

“Box Shield has been a huge factor in our growth,” he said. “We’re definitely benefiting from two years of innovation.”

Levie said the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as it relates to information technology decisions has largely been stabilized, to the advantage of Box.

“Everybody’s assuming there’s going to be flexible work in the future,” he said. “The new normal is that you work from anywhere. We’re just fortunate that content is becoming more and more integral to enabling this new way of working.”

Levie also addressed the current situation in Ukraine, describing it as a horrible atrocity and revealing that the company has already provided financial aid to victims. He also reassured investors that the conflict at least for now isn’t hurting Box’s business.

“At the moment there’s no impact for the business,” he said. “Our direct supply chain hasn’t yet been affected.”

Looking to the first quarter, Box said it sees revenue in a range of $233 million to $235 million. That’s comfortably ahead of Wall Street’s forecast of $230 million.

Box’s shares rose more than 5% in after-hours trading, following a 2.7% rise in regular trading, echoing a strong session for technology stocks today.

With reporting from Robert Hof

Photo: JD Lasica/Flickr