Box aims to package up IPO for 2014
CEO Aaron Levie says Box will "have to go public" as company leaders have no intention to be acquired by a larger competitor, perhaps Google or even Microsoft.
Box is poised to go public as soon as next year, following in the footsteps of other recent and successful Wall Street debuts for enterprise software companies.
The company's co-founder and CEO, Aaron Levie, told Bloomberg in an interview that Box is aiming to declare an initial public offering in 2014. He hinted that 2013 is still a possibility, but he described it as a "long shot."
Levie added that Box will "have to go public" as company leaders have no intention to be acquired by a larger competitor, perhaps Google or even Microsoft.
Expectations for Box could be high given that enterprise tech brands have done fairly well with their IPOs over the last year. The most notable example is arguably Workday, which went public on the New York Stock Exchange in October.
The software-as-a-service provider debuted at $28 per share -- already higher than previous expectations -- to close out the first day at roughly $50 per share. Today, the closing price was still holding steady at $50.95 per share.
On the contrary, debuts by more consumer-targeted brands like Facebook and Zynga were far less pleasant.
Another IPO announcement that many analysts are likely waiting to hear more about would be from one of Box's major competitors in the cloud storage space: Dropbox.
That would be an especially interesting development to watch considering that Dropbox is more consumer-focused, but it does serve a number of businesses as well.
This story originally appeared at ZDNet's Between the Lines under the headline "Box CEO reveals IPO plans for 2014."