Dropbox Smashes Its First Public Earnings Report With Higher Than Expected Revenue, Profit

Today, after the bell, Dropbox reported its first set of earnings as a public company.

The firm reported revenue of $316.3 million, a GAAP net loss of $465.5 million, a GAAP per-share loss of $2.13, and an adjusted loss of $0.08 per share. Those compare to an anticipated revenue result of $309.3 million, and an expected, adjusted profit of $0.04 per share.

Following its quarterly beat, shares of Dropbox are up about 1.5 percent in after-hours trading. The company gained about a point and a half in regular trading. (Note: The stock is super active right now, check back later for a firmer reaction result.)

The company’s cash flow, an ever-critical component of its financial performance as a SaaS company, was +$61.8 million on an operating basis and a slimmer +$51.9 million on a free cashflow basis. Both numbers ticked down from their year-ago results

Moving along, Dropbox reported 11.5 million paying users in the quarter, up from 9.3 million in the year-ago quarter. And, over the same period, per-user revenue rose from $110.79 annually to $114.30.

The company will not provide guidance until its earnings call. For now, however, markets expect revenue of $324.9 in the current quarter, along with an adjusted per-share profit of $0.04 yet again.

Takeaways

The first quarterly report for a newly-public company is hugely important and usually pre-baked. Companies that go public are expected to perform well in their first report, as they should have picked their IPO timing around expected results.

Even with that bar, Dropbox seems to have done well, pending guidance. And that means that the valuable company will keep its public-market premium to its last private valuation. We can thus mostly let go of Dropbox here at Crunchbase News, as it has now fully left the fold of the private and recently private companies.

We’ll update this piece with guidance once we have it.

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