Box soars 13 percent on earnings beat

Cloud storage company Box reported fourth-quarter earnings after the bell on Wednesday, sending the stock up 13 percent in after-hours trading. Better-than-expected results brought the stock slightly above the $14 barometer from last year’s IPO price.

Fourth-quarter revenue was $85 million, a 36 percent increase from the same period last year and above analyst expectations of $82 million. Full-year revenue came in at $303 million, up 40 percent year-over-year.

The company reported an adjusted loss of 26 cents per share, better than the 29-cent loss that Wall Street was forecasting.

CEO Aaron Levie said that customer wins, including AIG, Bain Capital and Home Depot helped the company achieve fourth-quarter gains. The company says it has a paying customer base of 57,000 businesses.

Larger and larger enterprises are coming on board to Box,” Levie tells TechCrunch. “Driven by the growth of our sales and marketing and the growth of our engineering, we’re finally seeing that pay off in our results.”

Competitors are watching Box’s stock performance closely as an indication of investor appetite for the industry. Future IPOs and valuations will be partially contingent on Box’s success. “We always want the numbers to come out strong, despite competing with them,” said Vineet Jain, CEO of Egnyte. “Whether we like it or not, they are a proxy for our space.”

Box closed Wednesday at $12.55, with a market cap of $1.5 billion. Shares have been down 34 percent in the past year.

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