Box SVP of Engineering Sam Schillace, left, with CEO Aaron Levie. Peter Earl McCollough/WIRED
Box finally made its Wall Street debut, a year after first filing for an IPO.
Trading under the ticker symbol BOX, the online-file-sharing company opened at $20.20 on the New York Stock Exchange, about 70 percent higher than its initial public offering price of $14, and at one point, the stock rose as high as $24.73. Box sold 12.5 million shares at its initial $14 IPO price, above the expected price range of $11 to $13.
The good reception from Wall Street is a small triumph for the company, which weathered market turbulence when it first attempted to go public, as well as questions about whether or not it would be profitable, given fierce competition from a host of other players in the online storage space. Those competitors, which include tech giants like Google, Amazon and Microsoft, can afford to offer their services at rock-bottom prices.
So the company has worked to differentiate itself. Led by co-founder Aaron Levie, Box has pushed to transform its basic file-sharing services into a kind of online platform for running all sorts of other apps, both apps from Box and apps from third parties.
Now, with a market capitalization of roughly $1.6 billion, and having raised an additional $175 million, the company has more resources to continue to its expansion—and continue its battle with the Googles and the Microsofts.
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