Enterprise

Dropbox rises after beating estimates on revenue and earnings

Key Points
  • Dropbox beat expectations on revenue and earnings.
  • The company raised its revenue guidance range for all of 2018.
Dropbox CEO: 'We're not going to run out of people who need Dropbox anytime soon'
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Dropbox CEO: 'We're not going to run out of people who need Dropbox anytime soon'

Dropbox shares rose more than 9 percent on Thursday after the maker of collaboration software reported better-than-expected third-quarter earnings.

Here are the key numbers:

  • Earnings: 11 cents per share, excluding certain items, vs. 6 cents per share as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.
  • Revenue: $360.3 million, vs. $352.7 million as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.

Revenue was up 26 percent from a year earlier, according to a statement.

Dropbox, which has more than 500 million registered users, had 12.3 million paying users in the third quarter, just above the 12.2 million estimated by StreetAccount.

"We're not going to run out of people who need Dropbox anytime soon and we have hundreds of millions of people who have used Dropbox. So we're operating at massive scale," Dropbox CEO Drew Houston told Josh Lipton on CNBC's Closing Bell on Thursday.

Deferred revenue of $479.3 million for the quarter came in below the $483.4 million StreetAccount estimate.

But Dropbox raised its revenue guidance for the full year on its conference call with analysts on Thursday. It's now expecting $1.383 billion to $1.386 billion in revenue for 2018, up from the previous guidance of $1.366 billion to $1.372 billion and above the $1.372 billion Refinitiv estimate. Chief Financial Officer Ajay said Dropbox now expects an operating margin of 11.5 percent to 12 percent for the full year, up from 9.5 percent to 10.5 percent. The stock moved higher after Vashee announced the guidance.

Dropbox stock has fallen nearly 22 percent in the past three months.

"We believe high expectations/multiples are warranted for Dropbox," Mark Mahaney, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a report this week. He recommends buying the shares.

-- CNBC's Michelle Fox contributed to this report.