Box stock skyrockets after second-ever earnings report
These are the most important numbers, versus Wall St. expectations:
- EPS: a loss of $0.28 per share vs. a loss of $0.31 per share
- Revenue: $66 million vs. $63.70 million
Box's revenue grew 45% from the same quarter of last year, while adding 2,000 new customers. Billings also saw a healthy growth of 58% year over year, reaching $69.8 million for the quarter.
But Box still remains hugely unprofitable. It had a net loss of $47.3 million, and a negative operating cash flow of $32.2 million.
In the first quarter, Box's stock price took a huge hit after hours following what looked to be a miss on its earnings. But it turned out analysts had used the wrong number of shares in their estimates, and Box had actually beat by $0.30 a share. Still, investors weren't impressed, sending its shares down by as much as 17% at one point.
Box is an interesting company to keep an eye on. It's one of the fastest growing enterprise software companies, but also has one of the highest burn rates, especially in sales and marketing costs.
For the most recent quarter, Box spent roughly 86% of its revenue on sales and marketing, down from 104% of the same quarter last year.
In 2013, it spent 168% of its revenue on sales and marketing, but it dropped those numbers to around 99% of total revenue in late 2014. In the previous quarter, it brought it down to a more modest 80% of total revenue.
The big question mark is whether this spending will translate to any meaningful, large enterprise contracts. Over the past three months, Box announced a deal with the Department of Justice, a positive sign that the government is trusting Box as a file sharing repository, and also a school-wide deployment at Japan's Waseda University, reflecting its international growth.