There isn't much content in the article worth getting around the WSJ Paywall;
Online-storage company Box Inc. priced its initial public offering at
$14 apiece late Thursday, above expectations, according to a person
familiar with the offering.
The deal raised $175 million by selling 12.5 million shares, according
to the person. The company had been looking to sell 12.5 million shares
in the range of $11 to $13 a share, according to a regulatory filing.
Box’s IPO comes roughly 10 months after it publicly filed for an IPO.
Those plans were postponed amid a drop in demand for technology
stocks, and in the ensuing months it turned to the private market to
raise additional funding.
Box plans to start trading Friday on the New York Stock Exchange
under the ticker “BOX”.
The deal is being led by Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse
and J.P. Morgan.
Facts: Box, online storage co, CEO A. Levy, IPO set for xx/xx/20xx, previously raised $175M in x rounds, looking to raise $175M at PO, shares priced at $14, Underwriter is JPM.
The NYT[1] has some important context missing in the WSJ summary:
> At that price, the company will still be valued at $1.7 billion, but it is well below the $2.4 billion valuation sold to investors in a financing round last summer.
The float looks small though, so there's hope for last round's muppets.
Good post. I don't understand why they focused on share price. Companies routinely do reverse share splits pre-IPO to make the total number of shares what they need to be for the valuation divided by shares to equal $12-18. That point seems to be just a magical desired range for SaaS IPO's. Someone smarter than I may know the reason, but I think they could have hit nearly any share price they wanted to.
Their s-1 stated that they have 48% of all Fortune 500 companies as clients and ~44k paying clients total. No idea the seat count or per company revenue.
The actual system is inferior UI wise (personal opinion) compared to DropBox.
Sync is worse then DropBox [edit: meant, better then] Google Drive (I find Drive worse then DropBox).
As far as reliability, its top notch, but I can't state anything on DropBox/Drive except that Drive has screwed up version control at a prior company.
Second biggest failing:
Its own "collab" format is horrible (think google docs, etc.). Very poorly done.
Its biggest failing:
No tree view. You can't "expand" folders.
That is ludicrous and makes it extremely hard to navigate. We'll have VP's joke about how they gave up on finding stuff, and just email a group to find X / Y doc / presentation, etc.
Its permissions need work, but overall decent.
Summary: as far as Enterprise level software? It does pretty well, and far less buggy then most things that get plugged into AMS (asset management), Content management, Project Management (several) systems.
Box has had a tree view for many years it's just not obvious where it it's located.
If you are viewing folders, look at the bread crumb navigation. The first bread crumb will have drop down arrow which gives you a folder tree view. This tree also has search.
I don't know that they have a submarket cornered per se, but my university seems to be using them exclusively for the online class system (log in / download lecture files, etc).
On my own I've been using them for about 5 years, give or take. I use it over Dropbox a majority of the time. I personally like Box. I think it works well enough and it has a desktop syncing client for regular customers now. Used to be exclusive to business customers IIRC, so that was one of the things people didn't like.
What features does Box have that Dropbox doesnt? I realize that as a nonpaying user, I'm definitely not in the target market, but are there killer apps besides the normal usecases of a synced folder on all of your devices and sharing links to those files?
My university and hospital system recently rolled out Box across the whole institution. I think the major difference is that Box is willing to sign a Business Associate Agreement and ensure compliance with HIPAA standards. My understanding is that Dropbox has been unwilling to negotiate and sign BAAs, so the service can't be used for sensitive information without huge risk. At least at our institution, we can store deidentified research data on Box, and there are options available for storing Protected Health Information as well (though it requires going through our Information Security office)
I think they have mostly equal features, but I don't use Dropbox extensively so I can't say exactly. I actually am a nonpaying user for Box as well.
I have the ability to edit/create documents in Microsoft Office or Google Drive formats right in my Box account. I don't use any killer apps though. But it works well enough for nearly every use case I've had in the time I've used it, with the exception that file upload size limit is small. Might be around 100 megabytes max.
There's also versioning for files, if you need that kind of feature.
I think it's mostly on par from what I've used of DropBox and Google Drive. I'm sure there are some significant differences, however.
Personally the only thing I've really had a problem with using Box is the small file size limit as well. But everything else has been smooth since starting to use it.
It's not consumer like DropBox. And not only is it enterprise but it is frequently behind the scenes. So for example if you wanted to create an app that had storage needs beyond a simple repository like S3.
I have an acquaintance who works there and their clients are all really big companies like Pepsi. And from my impression it's not technical departments that tend to purchase their services which is why you asking yourself "who uses this?". One of the things you seem to buy with Box is a lot of hand holding and simple technical assistance.