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Cloud storage provider Box has announced its Q317 financial results, with revenue hitting a record $102.8 million (£81.3m), an increase of 31% on the same time last year.
Billings in the third quarter was $112.4m, up 26% from this time last year, while GAAP operating loss was at $37.8m, lower than expected. The company says it is on track to achieve positive free cash flow by the end of Q4, while its guidance has been raised to $397-$398m, up from $394-$396m.
“Our results this quarter were driven by our best-in-class retention rate, strong sales execution, and increased adoption of our newer products,” said Dylan Smith, co-founder and CFO of Box in a statement. “We also demonstrated significant progress in cash flow from operations, driving a year-over-year improvement of more than $10 million, and bringing us closer to achieving positive free cash flow in the current quarter.”
Highlights for the company in the most recent quarter included a new strategic partnership with Google, working with Facebook to help integrations for its Facebook Workplace product, as well as growing its paying customer base to more than 69,000 businesses, including Hertz, Southwest Airlines, and the US Department of the Treasury.
“The need for Box is clear,” Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box told analysts, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha. “Today, business content is spread across separate legacy systems, on-premises storage, disparate collaboration and workflow tools, and sync and share solutions. Every year enterprises spent tens of billions of dollars on content management technology that are no longer innovating, simplifying their competitive environment.”
Taking a question on what Box’s product will broadly look like in a couple of years, Levie noted that some of the company’s customers have 600 million objects stored in the platform. “The kind of capabilities that you’ll continue to see on our platform are things around advancing our governance solutions, advancing our enterprise content management capabilities, advancing our workflow options,” Levie said.