Business Insider

Dropbox finally filed for its IPO — and it lost $111 million on revenue of $1.1 billion last year

Drew Houston
Dropbox CEO Drew Houston. REUTERS/Beck Diefenbach
Read in app
  • Dropbox just filed for its initial public offering and will trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol DBX.
  • The S-1 form Dropbox filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that the company lost $111 million on revenue of $1.1 billion last year.
  • This makes Dropbox the first of the many high-valued tech "unicorns" expected to file to go public in 2018.
  • Dropbox was last valued at $10 billion in a 2014 venture-capital round.


The file-sharing company Dropbox filed its S-1 form on Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, meaning one of the most anticipated initial public offerings in tech is well on its way.

Dropbox, founded in 2007, posted revenue of about $1.1 billion last year, up 31% from $844.8 million in 2016. But the company still isn't profitable, according to the filing.

The bright side is that the company's losses have also decreased over the past three years.

Dropbox saw losses of $111.7 million last year — an improvement from a loss of $210.2 million it showed in 2016 and of $325.9 million in 2015. The company also reported $305 million in positive free cash flow last year.

The San Francisco-based Dropbox has been expected to go public since news reports surfaced last year that it had retained Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase to work on the offering, which the S-1 form appears to confirm.

Dropbox, which was last valued at $10 billion in a 2014 venture-capital round, will list on the Nasdaq under the symbol DBX. The initial stock price is likely to be set closer to the date it debuts on the markets, which is still unclear.

The company will sell shares in a three-class structure — the same one Snap used when it went public last year. Class C shareholders won't have any voting power at the company, whereas Class A shareholders will have one vote and Class B shareholders will have 10.

Dropbox competes with Box and Atlassian, two business-software companies valued on the public markets at $3.2 billion and $12.4 billion as of Friday afternoon.

Here's Business Insider talking with Dropbox CEO Drew Houston in June, not long before IPO rumors began to swirl:

READ MORE: Dropbox needs to find a new 'ethos' for an IPO home run — here's how analysts think it could succeed »

Read next

Becky Peterson was formerly a tech features correspondent focused on long-form profiles and investigations into the most interesting people and companies at the intersection of technology and finance.She's broken news on major tech stories including Palantir's work on Project Maven, Peter Thiel's $18 million estate in Miami (which was once featured on MTV's 'The Real World'), Jeffrey Epstein's tour of SpaceX, and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi's insistence that employees take "the D."Previously, she covered enterprise tech and tech investment banking with a focus on M&A, IPO and venture capital deals in San Francisco. She graduated from New York University with a master's degree in media, culture and communication with an emphasis on technology and society. ExpertiseSilicon Valley, Venture Capital, Investment Banking, Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine MaxwellPopular articlesInside the turmoil at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where employees say divorce, Epstein, and vaccines have left some staffers polishing their résumésThe secret life of Ian Osborne, the shadowy 38-year-old cofounder of Chamath Palihapitiya's SPAC who has built the ultimate black book of billionairesSilicon Valley VCs are at war with the 'far left radicals' running CaliforniaInside the life of Ghislaine Maxwell's secret husband, a once-high-flying tech entrepreneur backed by Eric Schmidt who is now a central figure in one of the country's most high-profile legal casesRent the Runway CEO Jennifer Hyman, one of the most successful female founders, is fighting to save her companyJeffrey Epstein set Elon Musk's brother up with a girlfriend in effort to get close to the Tesla founder, sources sayA drunken late-night assault allegation has roiled the secretive world of Mark Zuckerberg's private family office. Personal aides are speaking out about claims that household staff endured sexual harassment and racism from their colleagues.