Box looks to raise $250 million from IPO next month

Box is seeking to raise $250 million (150 million) in an initial public offering (IPO) despite widening losses.

The move follows on from other recent tech IPOs such as Twitter.Cloud storage rival Dropbox is also expected to follow suit in the coming months.

In Box's pre-IPO filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the cloud storage company's losses increased to $169 million (from $112.5 million last year), despite revenues increasing to $124 million. Its revenues have climbed 111 per cent over the past year from $58.8 million. Losses are largely attributed to the firm's sales and marketing efforts.

The filing, which runs to 150 pages, details how it now has more than 34,000 paying enterprise clients and 21 million registered users. The firm is more focused on the enterprise customers and in the last two years has signed up Eli Lilly, Bechtel and Gap as to its services. Paying customers make up 40 per cent of the Fortune 500 and a fifth of the Global 2000 firms.

The IPO should bolster the company's bottom line and ensure it can keep trading until it starts turning a profit. It has already raised $300 million from private investors.

Last year, Box opened up its international headquarters in Mayfair, London, with 110 staff working sales and technical support. Box claims its user base outside the US has doubled over the last few months.

The tech industry reacted reasonably positively to the news. Alastair Mitchell, chief executive of London cloud collaboration firm Huddle, claimed the news was a "real validation of the market that we're playing in."

"The future of enterprise software has well and truly arrived and companies are no longer afraid to try new, innovative cloud technologies," he said.

He added that firms such as Box have "set out to disrupt the traditional enterprise software market by giving today's office workers the tools they needed to get their jobs done and allow them to work securely from anywhere, at any time via any device."

Unsurprisingly, chief executive of rival firm Egnyte Vineet Jain was a little more dismissive of Box's IPO ambitions.

"This seems to have become a trend lately where companies are being rewarded with huge valuations for simply having a large customer list," he said.

"This has created a major disconnect from the traditionally successful business model which used to be based on creating profitability and sustainability. "

Business models with seven-figure funding rounds and 10-figure valuations becoming the norm may have taken pressure off companies to be successful in the present, but it has placed a heavy burden on them for the future, according to Jain.

"It is my hope that Box can become profitable and succeed in their IPO, strengthening the faith in our space," he added.