Cloud storage firm Box has filed for an initial public offering with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, VentureBeat reported.
The company's S-1 documentation revealed that the Box intends to raise $250 million for its public debut. After it gathered $100 million in a funding round late in 2013, analysts have already valued Box up to $3 billion. Google Drive, Microsoft's Skydrive Pro, Citrix ShareFile and Dropbox were among the names of competitors mentioned by Box for its file synching and sharing service. As far as collaboration goes, Box said it competes with EMC, IBM and Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint, the report said.
Revenues for the company have increased in the past few years but it has also posted its share of losses. For the financial year that culminated on January 31, 2014, Box's revenue was $124.2 million but it had a net loss of $168.6 million. The year before that, its revenue was $58.8 million but posted $112.6 million net loss. Most of that money was allocated for research and development. For this financial year, Box held cash amounting to $109 million, the report said.
The filing also revealed that more than 34,000 paying organizations in its roster and its total users number more than 25 million. Rival Dropbox, meanwhile, has 4 million businesses using the service but not all of them are paying customers, with total users reaching 200 million. Dropbox is also set to hold its IPO in the near future, the report said.
Box's growth strategy involves bringing the service to industries like healthcare, financial services and education. Although Box said it is ready for the enterprise, its filing only promises an uptime of 99.9% in its service agreement and not the "five-nines" or 99.999% which is viewed as the standard when it comes to infrastructure for enterprises. Box, however, says it has average upload speeds that are 2.7 times faster than its rivals, the report said.
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