Shares of Box, the online file storage company, soared over 65% in their first day of trading Friday following its initial public offering.
Investors snapped up the stock, which originally priced at $14, and sent it up to $23.23 by the close.
At the end of the day, Box had a market capitalization of over $2.7 billion. It raised $176 million in the IPO.
Box’s public debut marks the first big IPO of 2015 and another sign of the huge appetite for tech IPOs. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba (BABA) and peer-to-peering online lending service LendingClub (LC) both had successful IPOs recently.
Box (BOX) is a decade-old company led by 29-year-old CEO Aaron Levie, who spoke with Coins2Day Friday about the IPO. The company filed for the IPO in March, but delayed it because of pricing concerns. Eventually, the company decided to restart the process as tech valuations continued to rise.
“We’ve always taken a very long-term view of the business, and had planned to go public both when we were ready and when the market was ready for us,” Levie said. “It wasn’t always the most straight-forward path, but we’re thrilled to be where we are today.”
Box, which has 32 million users, offers users 10 gigabytes of online storage for free, with additional charges for more space. It’s main competitors include Dropbox, Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT), which also offer online file storage.
For more, check out Coins2Day Live in which senior editor Andrew Nusca and senior editor-at-large Shawn Tully discussed the IPO.
Reuters contributed to this report. This story was updated with additional information.
