Dropbox needs more paying users

Article Excerpt

DROPBOX INC., $29 is a buy, but only for aggressive investors. The company (Nasdaq symbol DBX; Manufacturing Sector; Shares outstanding: 304.7 million; Market cap: $8.8 billion; No dividends paid; Takeover Target Rating: Medium; www.dropbox.com) provides cloud storage for both individuals and firms. It has over 600 million registered users across 180 countries. Most of them use its free, basic service with limited storage. Dropbox launched its much-anticipated initial public offering, or IPO, in March 2018. It raised a total of $756 million from an offering of 36 million shares at $21 a share. With about 10% of the outstanding shares, activist investor Elliott Management is now the company’s second largest shareholder, after CEO Drew Houston. Elliott will probably push Dropbox to boost shareholder value by getting more of its free users to upgrade their service; right now, just 2% of them are paying customers. That gives Dropbox great growth potential. On top of that, there’s also the growth the company should see from…