Earlier quoted context omitted.
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The founders coded the MVP...
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Box files for $250M IPO on full-year revenue of $124M, net loss of $168M
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Re: Box files for $250M IPO on full-year revenue of $124M, net loss of $168M
#42So, $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…
It doesn't matter. The street will eat it up. Wall Street is begging tech to produce - even if that means no profit. They will line up to invest. Also, (and probably) because Box is a potential buy-out. Which is probably why they are doing an IPO in the first place.
Look.. look at Amazon. That company has never posted a profit. And yet every trader I know is falling over themselves throwing money at them. It's the belief in investing in something"sexy", and "new".
Re: Box files for $250M IPO on full-year revenue of $124M, net loss of $168M
#43I'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.
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I'm curious, is that really as big of a deal as the tech startup makes it out to be? When the team is young, small, and scrappy, I understand that technical skills on the founding team are highly valued, but after growing to nearly 1,000 employees surely the core leadership can hand off the technical day-to-day and platform architecture to a technical SVP.
Re: Box files for $250M IPO on full-year revenue of $124M, net loss of $168M
#44Is 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?
Yes, it's very competitive. It's pretty much Dropbox but with all of the IT controls that Enterprise must* have.
*According to their governance, risk and compliance policies. Dropbox basically fails all of these checks for large companies.
Re: Box files for $250M IPO on full-year revenue of $124M, net loss of $168M
#45So, $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…
It doesn't matter. The street will eat it up. Wall Street is begging tech to produce - even if that means no profit. They will line up to invest. Also, (and probably) because Box is a potential buy-out. Which is probably why they are doing an IPO in the first place. Look.. look at Amazon. That company has never posted a profit. And yet every trader I know is falling over themselves throwing money at them. It's the be…
Did you know that many extremely popular movies did not technically make any profit?
Re: Box files for $250M IPO on full-year revenue of $124M, net loss of $168M
#46$250M feels tiny for a tech IPO (and for an IPO in general). Does anyone have any data around this?
Zulily raised $253M in their November 2013 IPO (off of a $2.6b valuation), for context.
Re: Box files for $250M IPO on full-year revenue of $124M, net loss of $168M
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I'm curious, is that really as big of a deal as the tech startup makes it out to be? When the team is young, small, and scrappy, I understand that technical skills on the founding team are highly valued, but after growing to nearly 1,000 employees surely the core leadership can hand off the technical day-to-day and platform architecture to a technical SVP.
Technical executives have an innate concept of what is and what isn't possible. This allows them to better evaluate proposals for new features, refactoring systems, etc. This is one reason why I believe Microsoft succeeded under Bill Gates. Due to its size, Microsoft still made a lot of money under Steve Ballmer, who is non-technical, but it definitely lost its place as a technology leader. We will see if the new CEO, who is technical, will change that.
Re: Box files for $250M IPO on full-year revenue of $124M, net loss of $168M
#48So, $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…
It doesn't matter. The street will eat it up. Wall Street is begging tech to produce - even if that means no profit. They will line up to invest. Also, (and probably) because Box is a potential buy-out. Which is probably why they are doing an IPO in the first place. Look.. look at Amazon. That company has never posted a profit. And yet every trader I know is falling over themselves throwing money at them. It's the be…
Amazon had a crazy long term focus: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/11/04/why-amazon-... . Their lack of a profit seems to be intentional, in that Jeff Bezos is willing to sacrifice short-term profit for a long-term vision. So the traders are actually making a rational choice here.
Re: Box files for $250M IPO on full-year revenue of $124M, net loss of $168M
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that insanely many people compared to what they deliver? Many more than DropBox (300+?) and JottaCloud (~10) without me being able to see why. Edit: You were before me, so added my comment as a reply to you instead.
They have a much higher-touch enterprise sales process, so my guess is that most of the extra employees vs. DropBox are sales, customer service, relationship management, etc. Even after the sell, big clients tend to want dedicated account managers, dedicated support staff they know by name, etc. (Still, it does seem like a lot.)
So is it a service business or a tech platform?
Re: Box files for $250M IPO on full-year revenue of $124M, net loss of $168M
#50So, $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…
It doesn't matter. The street will eat it up. Wall Street is begging tech to produce - even if that means no profit. They will line up to invest. Also, (and probably) because Box is a potential buy-out. Which is probably why they are doing an IPO in the first place. Look.. look at Amazon. That company has never posted a profit. And yet every trader I know is falling over themselves throwing money at them. It's the be…
"Look.. look at Amazon. That company has never posted a profit. And yet every trader I know is falling over themselves throwing money at them. It's the belief in investing in something"sexy", and "new"."
This is a) a lazy narrative that simplifies the realities of Amazon's business models and b) flat out false.
The last 4 years Amazon has posted EBITDA of $1.497B, $934M, $544M and $506M (2010-2013, respectively). (1)
Over that same time period they've had Net Income of $1.152B, $631M, ($39M), and $274M
So yeah, I'd say unequivocally that $3.481B in EBITDA and $2.018B in Net Income over a four year time span is absolutely "posting a profit."
1) https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AAMZN&fstype=ii&ei=...