Dropbox IPO application shows shrinking loss and stagnating user base

Dropbox has 500 million users and is losing less and less every year. 11 million of those users pay for extra features and the company also has 300,000 business customers. This is evident from the documents regarding the IPO of the company.

Dropbox filed the necessary paperwork for an IPO, or initial public offering, in January. Until last Friday, however, that document was not available to the public. Although the papers are marked as not yet complete, there is already a lot to read. The company posted net losses of $326 million, 210 million and 112 million dollars in 2015, 2016 and 2017, respectively. The contraction of that loss is due to revenues rising faster than expenditures.

It is also notable that the company states that it has more than 500 million users. That’s a number it came up with two years ago. That would mean that the size of the user group has more or less stagnated since then. Dropbox also reports that 11 million of those 500 million users pay for certain features. On the business side, the company has 300,000 paying Dropbox Teams, up from 150,000 in 2015. As far as these business customers are concerned, Dropbox still knows how to grow.

With the IPO, where the shares are traded under the name ‘DBX’, the company wants to raise 500 million dollars, according to the document as it stands. Furthermore, GeekWire calculates that the migration from AWS to its own servers saved Dropbox $75 million between 2015 and now.