by programminggeek on 3/24/14, 9:33 PM
So, $250M actually falls short of the $292M they are burning through every year. The net loss of $168M a year means the $250M buys them almost 18 months of runway.
Their growth looks less impressive when you consider they spent $292M to only grow revenue $65M.
In short, they are spending $5 to make $1. It's possible the customer LTV is actually $6 over a period of years, but they might not be able to borrow enough to make it back in time.
Am I the only one that thinks that a company turning a profit is not like flipping a light switch? If you have a culture of overspending, you aren't going to wake up money and start running a tight ship.
by neworbit on 3/24/14, 9:36 PM
I'm somewhat astounded to hear they have 972 employees. I would have guesstimated somewhere below 200. Even with a huge marketing push, I'm a little at a loss for what they all do.
by kevinpet on 3/24/14, 9:30 PM
The IPO is seeking to raise $250M. The S1 doesn't actually say how many shares they are planning to offer, so you can't say what the valuation would be. I'm guessing somewhere between 5-10 times the $250M.
by gamblor956 on 3/24/14, 9:23 PM
I'm not sure how anyone can look at a growing history of losses due to increasing customer acquisition costs, in an industry with numerous competitors, and want to invest in this.
by simon_ on 3/25/14, 1:31 AM
I just read Ben Horowitz's new book, and he describes taking Loudcloud public as a Hail Mary because private markets were essentially too smart to give them any more money at a horrible time (while the original dotcom bubble was in the middle of bursting).
Clearly Box is in much better shape, but it's not too hard to imagine that maybe they are rolling the dice on an IPO during a super-hot market in response to feedback from private investors that they were going to have to raise a down (or otherwise disappointing) round.
by jedberg on 3/24/14, 9:26 PM
$250M feels tiny for a tech IPO (and for an IPO in general).
Does anyone have any data around this?
by walid on 3/24/14, 10:05 PM
Will this end up devaluing Dropbox in its future IPO?
by orware on 3/24/14, 10:01 PM
Actually a lot of this is surprising for me...I have a buddy that works there right now and while I knew there were bleeding some cash from articles I had read, I was under the impression that they actually were doing better than that financially.
The close to 1000 employees is also fairly surprising, but I would agree that it would mostly be on the sales side.
by acchow on 3/24/14, 9:27 PM
Odd, some numbers are "whited out":
"Based on shares of our capital stock outstanding as of January 31, 2014, upon the completion of this offering, a total of shares of Class A common stock and"
Can't figure out the valuation.
by pearjuice on 3/24/14, 9:48 PM
Pump and dump IPO. Mark my words.
by PeterisP on 3/24/14, 9:51 PM
Is their product actually competitive? I had tried it once long ago, but currently I don't see any particular niche where it'd be superior to dropbox/google drive/onedrive/whatever.
What am I missing here?
by oxyboy on 3/24/14, 9:26 PM
Read this as throwing in the towel with Google announcing cheaper storage plans last week with renewed emphasis on the enterprise mkt?
by ASneakyFox on 3/26/14, 9:08 AM
What is box? What do they do? Why do I care that they are losing money? (Though I seem to already have figured out WHY)
by mindstab on 3/25/14, 6:38 AM
gotta say it, one of the reasons Dropbox is king is good support for all platforms. Box still ignores Linux so it's a no go for me personally, and my work.
by glasz on 3/24/14, 10:04 PM
let's gamble, buddies!