Box Inc.'s stock price soared in late trading Tuesday after the online document storage company announced an integration of its document storage and management system with Microsoft.
's
Azure OpenAI service.
Box also reported strong results for the January quarter, while providing guidance for the January 2025 fiscal year that was slightly below Wall Street's expectations. Box blamed the failure solely on currency fluctuations.
Box stock rose 12% in after-hours trading Tuesday.
Box said the integration with Azure OpenAI services will allow customers to “benefit from the world's most advanced AI models.”
“While generative AI is still new to enterprises, we're already seeing great excitement from customers who want to apply this technology to the content they already have on Box,” Ben Kus, Box's chief technology officer, said in a statement. It is stated in
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Box's sales for the January quarter were $263 million, up 2% year-over-year and 4% at constant currency, and below the company's guidance range of $262 million to $264 million. He reported that it was right in the middle of the million dollars and along the wall. Street consensus tracked by FactSet.
On an adjusted basis, the company earned 42 cents per share in the quarter, beating its guidance range of 38 cents to 39 cents per share and beating the Wall Street consensus of 38 cents. Based on generally accepted accounting principles, the company earned him 67 cents per share. Billings totaled $379.3 million, an increase of 6%, and after adjusting for currency, an increase of 10%.
Revenue for the January 2024 fiscal year increased 5% to $1.04 billion and billings increased 3% to $1.06 billion. Full-year adjusted earnings were $1.46 per share.
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Box expects sales of $261 million to $263 million for the April quarter. At the midpoint of the range, it matches Wall Street expectations of $262 million. The company expects adjusted earnings for the quarter to be 35 cents to 36 cents a share, below the Street's estimate of 39 cents.
For fiscal 2025, Box expects revenue to be $1.08 billion to $1.085 billion, up 5% at the high end of the range, slightly below consensus of $1.09 billion, and non-GAAP earnings of $1. We forecast earnings of $1.53 to $1.57 per share, slightly below the Street consensus. $1.67.
Box CEO Aaron Levie said in an interview: Barons The company said its softer-than-expected guidance was entirely related to the currency environment. He points out that about a third of the company's business comes from international markets, with Japan being the biggest contributor.
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Levie said Box had “a lot of wins” this quarter with its Box AI artificial software platform. Looking to 2025, “AI will be at the core of our platform…and a key reason to adopt Box,” he added.
Levie said Box will add new features later this year, opening new markets for the company in areas such as contacts, digital assets and digital bill management.
Levie added that the overall effect will be to expand Box's addressable market and ultimately help drive a return to double-digit revenue growth.
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“There is so much content that is virtually unlabeled or unstructured, such as invoices, contracts, bank statements, asset management files, etc.,” he says. “AI can apply structure to data at scale,” enabling new use cases for the Box platform.
Box also announced that it will expand its stock repurchase program by $100 million.
Email Eric J. Savitz at eric.savitz@barrons.com.