After a pause and reboot, Box makes long-awaited Wall Street debut

Months after filing its initial paperwork and then pressing pause on IPO plans, enterprise cloud wunderkind Box is now a publicly-traded company.

The Los Altos, Calif.-headquartered business launched on the New York Stock Exchange under the eponymous ticker symbol "BOX" on Friday morning.

With 12.5 million shares for sale, the stock opened at just over $20 a pop after the opening bell, well above the $14 final price pegged late on Thursday. Within the first few hours of trading, shares were already selling for more than $21.

At the start of the year, Box offered a projected range between $11 and $13 per share, aiming to raise up to $186.9 million. Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and J.P. Morgan were enlisted as the lead underwriters.

Box submitted its S-1 to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last March.

A closer look between the lines prompted some criticism over severe losses matched by high spending rates.

According to the paperwork, revenue climbed 111 percent year-over-year to $124.2 million by the end of January 2014. But Box also sustained losses of $50.3 million, $112.6 million and $168.6 million year-over-year for the 12-month time frames ending December 31, 2011, January 31, 2013 and 2014, respectively.

During The Atlantic's one-day tech summit in December, CEO and co-founder Aaron Levie countered that the S-1 form only displayed "last year's numbers," which he explained reflected a time in which Box had been investing the most ever in its 10-year history. Most of those investments were directed toward product development and acquisitions, he elaborated.

Box's acquisition history consists of online document tool maker Increo Solutions in 2009, iOS app Folders and document embedding service Crocodoc in May 2013, and dLoop in November 2013 for stepping up data analytics and security.

The following day, Box provided financial results through the third quarter of its current fiscal year, ending January 31, 2014.

For the third quarter of 2014 alone, Box reported a little over $57 million in revenue, up from $33.6 million the previous year. Losses were down, albeit slightly, to $45.4 million, from $51.4 million in Q3 2013. Box attributed the revenue growth to "an increase in subscription services."

Box was founded in 2005 by Levie and chief financial officer Dylan Smith.

Simplified from Box.net to Box, the company has since grown to employ nearly 1,000 people, most of whom are based in Silicon Valley. Additional sales offices have popped up in San Francisco and London with international expansion continuing throughout Europe and soon Asia.

Growing its repertoire of services from much more than just cloud-based storage space, Box.com has emerged as a fully-fledged collaboration and productivity platform of apps and services for the enterprise. With more than 275,000 organizations already subscribed, Box asserts that it serves 97 percent of the Fortune 500.

As of December 2014, Box counted more than 32 million registered users across 200 countries and territories. Approximately 44,000 of these organizations are paid Box customers.