Box still 'watching and waiting' for intended IPO, says COO Levin

'We absolutely intend to be public at an appropriate time' says chief operating officer

Enterprise cloud storage and file sharing company Box is "watching and waiting" for an IPO it absolutely intends to go ahead with, COO Dan Levin has told Computing.

Levin would not be drawn on the "when", but wished to reiterate that "unlike Facebook, or some of these consumer businesses who didn't feel being a public company would really add value to the business," Box holds the idea of going public very close to its heart.

"As an enterprise software company we have always felt that the credibility and visibility of being a public company would be valid. We absolutely intend to be a public company at an appropriate time," said Levin.

Levin suggested that "the market's sense of [enterprise cloud platform] businesses changed pretty rapidly" earlier this year, borne out by the effects on the stock value of Workday, ServiceNow, Netsuite and Salesforce.com, meaning Box "didn't feel it was an appropriate time to be bringing our story to market". Box had originally filed for IPO in March 2014, before promptly withdrawing.

As for Box's ongoing IPO plan, Levin told Computing: "Since then, we've been watching and waiting for the combination of market conditions and business conditions to make sense.

"I can't say anything more about that, but we're very pleased with the results of the business. It's continued to grow very rapidly - in our first quarter, we publicly recorded $45m of revenue, 94 per cent year-on-year revenue growth, which is the kind of performance we feel is consistent with our historical performance. We're very pleased with that, but I can't really talk about specifics around the future."

Box's BoxWorks 2014 conference begins in San Francisco tomorrow. Stay tuned to Computing for updates as the week progresses.