DROPBOX IPO FILING WARNS : We may never be profitable
- Dropbox on Friday filed to go public.
- The company has never made a profit and warned it may never, according to a filing.
Dropbox officially filed on Friday to go public on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker 'DBX.'
It's the first time the company has had to disclose its financial situation - and the details aren't exactly pretty. The company lost $111.7 million in 2017 on revenues of $1.1 billion, and warned potential investors it may never be profitable.
"We have a history of net losses, we anticipate increasing expenses in the future, and we may not be able to achieve or maintain profitability," the company said in the risks section of its S-1 filing, which is required of any and all companies filing for an initial public offering in the United States.
"It is difficult to predict the size and growth rate of our market, user demand for our platform, user adoption and renewal of our platform, the entry of competitive products and services, or the success of existing competitive products and services," the filing said. "As a result, we may not achieve or maintain profitability in future periods."
Here are some of the other risk factors Dropbox has laid out:
- Our revenue growth rate has declined in recent periods and may continue to slow in the future.
- Our business could be damaged, and we could be subject to liability if there is any unauthorized access to our data or our users' content, including through privacy and data security breaches.
- We generate revenue from sales of subscriptions to our platform, and any decline in demand for our platform or for content collaboration solutions in general could negatively impact our business.
- Our business depends upon the interoperability of our platform across devices, operating systems, and third-party applications that we do not control.
- We may not be able to respond to rapid technological changes, extend our platform, or develop new features.
- We may not successfully manage our growth or plan for future growth.
- Our lack of a significant outbound sales force may limit the potential growth of our business.
- We may expand sales to large organizations, which could lengthen sales cycles and result in greater deployment challenges.
- Any failure to offer high-quality customer support may harm our relationships with our users and our financial results.
You can read the full S-1 filing here.