Box IPO 'surpasses normal levels of lunacy' - analyst

TechMarketView's Holway claims Box's offering is not unique

Analyst TechMarketView has poured cold water on file-sharing firm Box after its entrance to the stock market on Friday saw shares soar.

Box shares started the day at $20.20 (£13.44) but rose to $23.23 by the end of its first day of public trading. The boost marks a 65.22 per cent increase from the initial $14.06 price at which the firm valued its stock in March last year.

TechMarketView's chairman Richard Holway was less than impressed.

On a post on the HotViews blog entitled Box – World Gone Mad, he said: "Their $14 IPO price had already put a $1.4bn valuation on a company which has recorded a loss of $129m on revenues of $154m in the last nine months.

"It's not as if Box has a unique offering in the market. DropBox (planning its own IPO) is very widely used. Then there are the huge players like Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Apple who would all rather like you to use their cloud storage too and are quite prepared to offer it as a loss-leader.

"Nothing very technically special about cloud storage either. Indeed, most would consider it a 'commodity' now."

Last week Box's competitors were positive about the prospect of an IPO and said they felt it could provide a boost to the file-sharing market as a whole.