Box, the enterprise-focused cloud storage and collaboration company, seeks to raise $250 million in its IPO on the NYSE Euronext (NYSE:NYX) next month.
The hotline online storage startup company looks to capitalize on a growing customer list of businesses that rely on the cloud to do more and more.
Cloud storage leader
These days cloud storage service providers seek to increase their user base. Users have a wide variety of choices from the likes of Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive and many more, and it seems Box, too, doesn’t want to miss the change to attract more users.
In January, Box unveiled its plan to offer a whopping 50GB of free storage for new iPhone and iPad users to celebrate the release of its brand new app with some exciting new features. The 50GB free storage space is valid for life, which means you don’t need to pay anything in the future to retain this 50GB space.
Heading to NYSE with BOX symbol
Box’s possible IPO has been rumored over the last year since co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie revealed plans in January 2013. Speculation was rife that the company may opt for a secret filing.
Taking a cue from Twitter, Box is heading to the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “BOX”. As demonstrated by Twitter’s IPO filing in September, a company seeking to go public can file confidentially if it is valued at less than $1 billion, under the Jumpstart Our Business ACT, a.k.a. the JOBS act.
However, Box filed a prospectus on Monday evening to raise as much as $250 million in an IPO. A fund-raising round in December valued Box at $2 billion, but the IPO is expected to give it a much higher valuation.
Box’s IPO could trigger others
According to Douglas Macmillan, Shira Ovide and Telis Demos of The Wall Street Journal, Box’s IPO could trigger IPOs from other fast-growing startups in the online storage sector. Possible names could include Dropbox and Hightail. Recently Dropbox raised $350 million from investors at a valuation of $10 billion and Hightail, founded in 2004 as YouSendIt, too has raised venture capital recently.
Venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson owns 25.5% of Box while US Venture Partners holds 13%. CEO and co-founder Aaron Levie owns only 4.1%. Taking cue from many other public tech companies, Box will employ a dual-class share system with Class B shares exercising 10 times the voting power of Class A shares.
