Dropbox has filed the terms of its long-awaited IPO, according to which it aims to raise as much as $648 million, by marketing 36 million shares range from $16 to $18 apiece, resulting in valuation between $7 and $7.9 billion.
Dropbox’s proposed market cap would be $6.7 billion, far below the $10 billion private company valuation that made it one of the world’s highest-valued companies 4 years ago; the market cap is also below the valuation range as Dropbox will also sell restricted stock and options, pushing its value on a fully diluted basis higher than its market value.
Still, despite the deep haircut, the cloud storage company – which has pitched itself as unleashing creative energy and inspired work – would be the first big tech company to go public since Snap which went public last spring. First Data Corp went public at a market value of about $14 billion in 2015, making it the biggest such IPO in the past five years.
According to Bloomberg, while the company is inching closer to profitability, Dropbox outlined in its deal prospectus its focus to get more of those users to pay up. Investors are sure to have questions for the file-sharing technology leader as it embarks on its marketing roadshow.
As the FT notes, like Snap, Dropbox will go public with a dual-class share structure that hands more voting rights and control to executives.
The company’s revenue increased more 30% last year to $1.1 billion from $845 million in 2016. In the same period, the company’s net losses shrank to $112 million from $210 million. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and Allen & Co. are leading the offering.
The company plans to list on Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol DBX.
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