Box closes first day’s trading at US$23.23 and US$2.7bn valuation

24 Jan 2015

Cloud storage player Box’s IPO on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday was a roaring success, with shares closing the day at US$23.23, up 66pc, giving the company a market value of US$2.7bn.

Box, the cloud player headed by 29-year-old Aaron Levie, began the day with a market value of US$1.7bn – or US$14 a share.

Box provides corporate customers with storage in the cloud and competes against Dropbox, Google and Microsoft in the online storage market.

The platform is used by more than 11m individuals and 120,000 businesses worldwide.

Levie dropped out of college in 2005 to start the company with his friend Dylan Smith after noticing during a college project that there were gaps in the market for storage options for business.

As of 2014, some 40pc of Box’s paying customers are Fortune 500 companies, including P&G.

Investors in Box include Texan billionaire Mark Cuban, Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, General Atlantic, Meritech Capital Partners, US Venture Partners and Salesforce.com.

New York Stock Exchange image via Shutterstock

 

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com