Box cites importance of IBM partnership in latest financial results

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Enterprise cloud storage firm Box has reported record quarterly revenue of $95.7 million (£72.1m) for Q217, as well as billings of $106.5 million.

The figures show a business which is edging closer to profitability. Free cash flow in the second quarter was negative $8m compared with negative $39.8m this time last year, while GAAP operating loss totalled 40% of revenue at $37.9m, compared to $49.8m and 68% of revenue in Q216.

Among the customer wins for Box in the quarter were Electronic Arts, Pfizer and Uber, while CEO and co-founder Aaron Levie cited the importance of the deal with IBM struck last year in building company momentum.

In prepared remarks to analysts, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha, Levie explained: “As businesses use more and more applications to get their work done, we want to ensure that our customers can get access to their most important content from wherever they are.

“We continue to gain traction with IBM,” he added. “IBM played a role in eight six figure deals that were closed in the quarter. Customers are seeing the potential of leveraging…both Box and IBM products together.”

Among these customers were a ‘major financial institution’, as well as a ‘major retailer’, who opted for Box via IBM because they “recognised the long-term advantages of using Box with IBM products.” Levie also noted the ‘significant dividends’ of Box’s partnership with Microsoft.

“We achieved record revenue in the second quarter while delivering cash from operations of negative $5 million, a $17 million improvement from a year ago,” said Dylan Smith, Box co-founder and CFO. “These results demonstrate our ability to capture the natural leverage we have in our business model while continuing to grow at a rapid rate.”

Box has had a particularly busy week, not only issuing its financial results but also the acquisition of data visualisation platform Wagon, as well as announcing another customer win in the form of market intelligence firm Ipreo.

You can read the full Box IR release here.