
Box Moves Ahead With IPO - itcmcgrath
http://www.wsj.com/articles/box-inc-expects-to-raise-up-to-186-9-million-in-ipo-1420805949
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ChuckMcM
So that explains it:

 _" At the high end of the initial IPO stock price range, Box would have a
valuation of about $1.7 billion, including employee stock options and other
outstanding equity.

That was below the $2.4 billion valuation TPG and hedge fund Coatue Management
placed on the company in a round of funding last July. In that financing, Box
agreed it would be required to issue more shares to TPG in the event it sells
IPO shares at a lower price than expected."_

I like Box, I think they have a good model for cloud storage and they seem to
be able to keep operational costs in line. And when they pulled their IPO last
year the only reason I could think of was that during the Roadshow they
realized that their later investors were going to lose money. This too was
something I saw in the 90's where the valuation of a company at the last raise
got "too high" for it to go public (the later investors don't sign off on it
as they lose money).

I hope this means that some folks will think twice about valuations, but you
never know.

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cheriot
To bypass the paywall:

[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fbox-
inc-expects-to-raise-up-to-186-9-million-in-
ipo-1420805949&ei=TimwVPi7Hc6ayASAj4HoBQ&usg=AFQjCNEeCrDLQCKN9OuZQSZ389J74zUZ0w&sig2=9BtrJ1LspAUjOuKYbpp_Qw&bvm=bv.83339334,d.aWw)

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foobarqux
Is there a service that creates these google redirects?

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TrainedMonkey
Generally you just google name of the article.

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foobarqux
Oh, it's a search result, I thought Google had some redirect functionality
that was being misused.

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magic5227
For those willing to watch 30 mins, great summary of Box's strategy:
[http://retailroadshow.com/sys/launch.asp?qv=016800407320261&...](http://retailroadshow.com/sys/launch.asp?qv=016800407320261&k=51888081269)

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jnks
At the $13/share pricing, Box will be paying its previous investors back
penalty shares. Apparently they promised a share price of $20. [1]

1\. [http://pando.com/2014/07/08/boxs-updated-s-1-contains-
onerou...](http://pando.com/2014/07/08/boxs-updated-s-1-contains-onerous-
hidden-penalties-if-the-company-is-late-to-ipo/)

~~~
JonFish85
Also: they're "only" raising $100-$200m? They raised $150m a year ago when
they punted on the IPO then, I believe. Is their burn rate so high that they
need the money? If so, the IPO won't really buy them much time. If their burn
rate is low, is right now really the peak of the market for them? It's already
a "down" time to IPO, so why not wait? Are they worried that the price is
going to cave in more and more? If I were looking at their stock price, that's
what would scare the crap out of me.

~~~
CaveTech
Box's burn rate is the highest in the industry [1]. I would be surprised if
they had to keep raising money or IPO or risk facing an impending bankruptcy.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/box-ipo-
analysis-2014-3](http://www.businessinsider.com/box-ipo-analysis-2014-3)

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JonFish85
Article is paywalled, unfortunately. Have things dramatically improved at Box
over the last year or so, since they delayed the IPO? Or is it just that the
market is better for them? I'm really curious whether they do enough to
validate their existence as a multi-billion dollar business alongside the
several other cloud storage options out there (DropBox, iCloud, Amazon Drive,
Microsoft OneDrive, etc). I'm sure their product is good, but is it IPO good?

I'm not much of an investor, so I won't be investing in their stock directly
either way, but I do have to wonder just as a thought experiment.

~~~
detaro
From the article:

> As it prepares to go public, the Palo Alto, Calif., company will seek to
> show investors it has reined in costs without sacrificing too much growth.

> Box spent 97 cents on sales and marketing for each dollar of revenue it made
> in the three months ended Oct. 31, down from a ratio of $1.38 to every
> dollar of revenue when it first filed for an IPO in March of last year. The
> company’s loss narrowed to $45.4 million in the latest quarter from $51.4
> million a year earlier.

~~~
jgalt212
Box is living proof of the concept "you can always buy marketshare."

The true test will be can they retain market share. Aaron says yes (what else
would he say). His competitors say no (what else would they say).

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twrkit
Last chance to cash in before investors realize that cloud storage is
essentially commoditized.

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Retric
Exxon sells a commodity in a highly competitive market and still one of the
top 2 companies by market cap in the world.

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dragonwriter
> Exxon sells a commodity in a highly competitive market and still one of the
> top 2 companies by market cap in the world.

Exxon sells a commodity in a market where there are a narrow enough set of
nation-state sources that a small cartel of them can substantially impact
world pricing by output decisions, where (both inside and outside the cartel)
production decisions are substantially governed directly by government policy
by nation-states, and where all the firms selling the commodity are either
extracting it by way of agreement with the nation states in which it is being
extracted or are directly controlled by a nation-state.

When you start hearing about production decisions by the Organization of Data
Center Operating Countries, comparing that market to the one Exxon operates in
might make sense.

~~~
Retric
Exxon's value has little to do with the actions of nation states. Rockefeller
was relatively speaking wealthier than Bill Gates ($336 billion in 2007
dollars) before nation states got involved in the oil business.

The world's proven oil reserves are ~1.5 Trillion barrels. At 50$/barrel
that's 75 Trillion $ before refining. You don't need a large slice of 75
Trillion $ to be ridiculously wealthy.

Large commodity markets require efficiency which might not be sexy, but it can
directly translate into profits. Look at the world’s richest people and you
see several people from the Walton family because efficiency really can be
worth far more than all the social websites combined.

PS: Not to mention 12 out of less than 200 countires are in OPEC and they
controwl ~81% of the worlds proven reserves. It's fairly common for a small
number of countries to supply the majoirity of a given comodity. EX: 81% of
the worlds rice is produces by just 9 countries, and just 6 countries controwl
81% of the worlds coal.

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adventured
Rockefeller was never worth $337 billion.

He was worth between $1 and $2 billion in his day, per the best biographies
and historical information on the man.

That's a lot closer to $25 to $50 billion today.

The false hundreds of billions number is usually reached one of two ways: 1)
by pretending Rockefeller still owned his former share of Standard Oil,
represented in the form of the children oil companies today (Exxon et al.); 2)
by taking Rockefeller's wealth as a share of GDP, and then claiming based on
2007's GDP he'd be worth X amount.

Both are absurd.

~~~
Retric
Note: I used relative wealth for a reason, doing a direct $ to $ conversion
misses out of things like the US being on the gold/silver standard well into
the 1900's. "Nixon Shock” Often people use things like how much bread cost
back then forgetting that bulk food has become ridiculously cheap over time. A
better measure is how much it costs to bribe a Politian.

In the end, there are a lot of ways of calculating wealth. However, the ROI
was generally much higher in 1800's than today so simply looking at the value
people were willing to pay back then is a poor way of calculating wealth.
Looking at NPV corrects for most of this based on those calculations you get
~300B.

Also, 1) Ignores dividends so it's actually not nearly as inflated as you
might think. And 2) is useful to figure out influence aka things like how much
land some historical figure could buy. Or how many people they could employ.

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antidaily
Levie owns 4.1% of stock
[http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1372612/0001193125142...](http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1372612/000119312514262075/d642425ds1a.htm#toc642425_16)

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jclarkcom
~$50m, I wonder if he could have done better by selling earlier. Plus as CEO
he probably won't be able to sell the majority of his shares least he signal
lack of confidence.

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pbreit
Current headline is awkward: "Box Restarts IPO Process"

Actual WSJ headline: "Box Moves Ahead With IPO"

"Restart" sounded to me like they were starting over. But I guess it could be
interpreted as starting back up.

IPO is expected by end of month.

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itcmcgrath
That was their original headline I copy-pasted, they updated it to the new,
better headline since.

