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专栏 - 从华尔街到硅谷

拖延一年终上市:BOX公司CEO及CFO谈IPO之路

Dan Primack 2015年01月27日

Dan Primack专注于报道交易和交易撮合者,从美国金融业到风险投资业均有涉及。此前,Dan是汤森路透(Thomson Reuters)的自由编辑,推出了peHUB.com和peHUB Wire邮件服务。作为一名新闻工作者,Dan还曾在美国马萨诸塞州罗克斯伯里经营一份社区报纸。目前他居住在波士顿附近。
Box上周五上市首日股价飙升,首席执行官阿隆•列维致认为投资者对公司有一定误解,他说:“我们不是存储公司,我们是一家软件公司,存储只是我们基础架构中的一部分,而不是我们主打的卖点。”

    云存储公司Box于1月23日正式上市,成功融资1.75亿美金。这家拥有十年历史的公司所经历的IPO之路可谓非常漫长,它于去年三月就申请了IPO,但由于担心投资者会因公司的巨额亏损而对其股票敬而远之,最终还是推迟了上市日期。目前Box的表现可能会让投资者们多少产生了一些心理安慰,截至今年1月31日,Box公司的全年营收翻了一番还多,而且它的股票价格已经比14美元每股的IPO价格高出了近70%。

    上市当日,《财富》在纽交所采访了Box公司的CEO阿隆•列维和CFO狄伦•史密斯。以下是本次采访节选:

    《财富》:从你们首次申请上市至今,已经过去了很长一段时间,为什么选在1月23日上市?

    列维:我们选定的日期不是1月22日就是23日。

    史密斯:我们一直用长远的眼光看待这件事,打算等到自己和市场都准备好了的时候再上市。这个过程并不总是一帆风顺,但能够到今天这个程度,我们还是很高兴……我们的目标是继续执行我们的商业模式,并让市场了解,展示这个模式的杠杆作用。我们并没有特地寻找什么明确的“时间表”。

    你曾在Twitter上称,如果公司股价涨得很高,你会‘把钱留在台面上’。现在这么多钱都留在了台面上,你是否感到后悔?

    列维:我没法评价定价过程的变化,不过我们以前在Twitter上发的有些内容肯定没有意义了……我们的业务模式需要你理解企业IT领域的变革,非常高兴吸引来了愿意致力于重塑企业平台的强势投资者。

    在路演过程中,你有没有听到预期投资者反复提到某个预料之外的问题?

    列维:有些人对我们的企业有误解,部分原因是由于我们在首次申请上市后沉寂了八九个月的时间,有人认为我们的公司是一家做存储的公司,但我们不是。我们是一家软件公司,80%的毛利来自软件销售。我认为这就是别人一开始误解我们的地方,他们不了解存储只是我们基础架构中的一部分,而不是主打卖点。用户可以获得无限的存储空间,然后付费买我们的应用。那些一直紧密关注我们公司的人已经理解了这一点,但有些新接触到我们的人并不理解。

    你在去年七月《财富》举办的科技头脑风暴大会上曾提到,Box在选择IPO的时机上犯了一个错误,前一年你们做了大量烧钱的投资,还没有在营收上体现出成果。现在你能否更好地解释这一点,另外今后一两年你们是否还会做出类似的投资支出?

    列维:在2012年到2013年,我们的确做出了一批新的投资,用于国际扩张和组建现场销售团队等等。这些在销售和营销上的投资需要时间才能发展成熟。而现在这些投资带来的效益已经开始在本财务年度逐步显现。随着时间的推移,我们的销售和市场开支还会继续提高,但它们占公司营收的比例会随着时间逐步下降。

    现在有些员工的优先认股权已经成了流动证券,你是否担心有些员工会因此离开公司?

    列维:Box有一种创业文化,当然有些员工在创业早期阶段的确很出色,也可能这样做。但我们的团队也一直在增长,他们都是对Box的事业非常投入的人,我们把他们称为“自己人”。对于一家增长中的公司来说,这也是一个非常典型的阶段。我们会继续构建公司,不断引入新人。(财富中文网)

    译者:朴成奎

    Cloud storage company Box Inc. BOX 65.93% went public earlier today, raising $175 million. It was the culmination of a very long process for the decade-old company, which originally filed for the IPO last March but delayed pricing due to concerns that investors would be turned off by its massive losses. Box would calm those concerns a bit by more than doubling revenue for the year ending January 31, and already has seen its stock pop nearly 70% higher than the $14 per share IPO price.

    Fortune spoke to Box CEO Aaron Levie and CFO Dylan Smith today from The New York Stock Exchange. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation:

    FORTUNE: It has been a long time since you first filed to go public. Why January 23?

    Levie:It was either this or January 22.

    Smith:We’ve always taken a very long-term view of the business, and had planned to go public both when we were ready and when the market was ready for us. It wasn’t always the most straight-forward path, but we’re thrilled to be where we are today… Our goal was to continue to execute and educate the market on our model and show leverage around our model. There were no specific milestones we were looking for.

    You once tweeted that “if your stock shoots up, you left money on the table.” Do you regret leaving so much money on the table?

    Levie:I can’t comment on the dynamics of the pricing process, but there are certain tweets that that won’t make as much sense anymore… We have a business model that requires you to understand the disruption going on in enterprise IT, and are very happy to have brought on strong investors who are committed to the re-platforming of the enterprise.

    Was there an unexpected question you heard repeatedly from prospective investors during the road show?

    Levie:Some of the misunderstanding of our business, and part of this is due to us being in a quiet period for eight or nine months, was that we are a storage company. We’re not. We are a software company with 80% gross margins that sells per seat. I think there was some initial confusion over that, and not understanding that storage is part of our infrastructure as opposed to something we sell. Users get unlimited storage, and pay us for our apps. That was already understood by people who have followed our company the closest, but not by people who were new to it.

    During your interview at Fortune Brainstorm Tech last July, you mentioned that one mistake Box made with the original filing timing was that, in the prior year, you had made a lot of costly investments that had not yet borne revenue fruit. Can you better explain that, and should investors expect similar expenditures in a year from now, or two?

    Levie:Around calendar 2012-2013 we did make a number of new investments. Things like international expansion and building up a field sales force. It takes time for those sales and marketing investments to kind of mature, and we’re now seeing those efficiencies play out in the business in our current fiscal year. We’ll continue to grow sales and marketing expenses over time, but they will decline as a percentage of revenue over time.

    Do you have any concerns that some employees will leave now that their vested stock options have become liquid securities?

    Levie:We have an entreprenurial culture, and I’m sure some employees are are very good in early-stage endeavors are likely to go do that. But we’ve been growing the team with very committed Boxers, which is what we call ourselves, and this is a very typical phase for a growing company. We’ll continue to build out the company and bring new people in.

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