Box narrowly beats Wall Street estimates for Q4, reports $874 million revenue for fiscal 2022 | ZDNet

Cloud content management firm Box published its fourth quarter financial results on Wednesday, narrowly beating market expectations. 

Non-GAAP net income per share came to $0.24 on revenue of $233.4 million, up 17% year-over-year. Analysts were expecting earnings of 23 cents per share on revenue of $228.6 million. 

The remaining performance obligations came to $1.1 billion, up 19% year-over-year. Billings for the fourth quarter were $337.9 million, a 9% increase year-over-year. 

For the full fiscal year, Box reported a revenue of $874.3 million, a 13% year over year jump. Billings were $941.9 million and non-GAAP net income per share was $0.85.

“We are proud to have delivered a combined revenue growth plus free cash flow margin outcome of 33% in fiscal 2022, ahead of our target and up significantly from 26% a year ago,” said Dylan Smith, Box’s co-founder and CFO. 

“With a sharp focus on delivering profitable growth as we capitalize on our expanded market opportunity, we expect to deliver another year of accelerating revenue growth and expanding operating margins for the full year of fiscal 2023.”

Free cash flow in the fourth quarter was $33.3 million. For Q1, Box expects revenue to be in the range of $233 million to $235 million and non-GAAP diluted net income per share to be in the range of $0.24 to $0.25. For the full fiscal year 2022, revenue is expected to be in the range of $990 million to $996 million. Non-GAAP diluted net income per share is expected to be in the range of $1.10 to $1.14.

“In fiscal 2022, we achieved strong results across all of our financial metrics, executing on our vision for the Box Content Cloud while exceeding our guidance for growth and profitability,” said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box. 

“Businesses today are adopting a digital-first, cloud-delivered focus, reimagining how they work in a world of distributed and hybrid teams. Content is at the center of this shift, and Box is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this opportunity. Our strong execution in FY22 and continued business momentum give us confidence in our ability to drive continued growth while delivering the industry’s leading content cloud platform to our customers.”

The company was recently embroiled in a bitter dispute with activist investors at hedge fund Starboard Value LP. Starboard owns an 8.4% stake in Box.

Box’s Q2 results in August came ahead of the company’s annual shareholder meeting on Sep. 9, when board members re-elected Levie as well as directors Peter Leav and Dana Evan to the company’s 10-member board. Earlier this year, Starboard nominated four directors to Box’s 10-person board, arguing that Box hasn’t aggressively capitalized on the enterprise trends driven by the COVID-19 pandemic.