Box, the 10-year-old enterprise software company started by Mercer Island High School grads Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith, is soaring after pricing shares in its initial public offering.
The company, which moved to the San Francisco area shortly after it scored initial startup funding from Mark Cuban, priced shares at $14 and the stock opened at $20.50. The stock — trading on Nasdaq under the ticker BOX — is now trading above $22 per share, up more than 65 percent. It raised about $175 million in the offering.
The Los Altos, Calif.-based company took its time going public, delaying the offering last year. Some have viewed the company as a potential trend-setter for other high-tech companies on the brink of IPOs.
If this performance holds up, we many see other companies follow Box’s lead.
Nearly half of the Fortune 500 use Box’s software, which the company says is designed to help organizations operate more efficiently.
“We believe our platform can become the cloud-based content layer that spans organizations, applications and devices to enable users to get work done more efficiently—when, where and how they want,” the company wrote in its SEC filing.
Box is growing fast, but it is losing money. It posted revenue of $124 million in 2014, up from $58.8 million in 2013. It showed a net loss of $168 million last year. Here’s a look at the company’s results.
Even with its Northwest roots, Box has yet to set up an engineering center in the Seattle area. Box rival Dropbox announced a new engineering center in Seattle last month, looking to expand its workforce beyond its more than 1,000-person headcount. Box employed 1,131 people as of October 2014.
