Dropbox’s Irish unit cuts losses after revenues rise to $627.5m

Subsidiary accounts for 45% of $1.39bn in global revenues last

Bono and The Edge are individual investors in Dropbox.
Bono and The Edge are individual investors in Dropbox.

Pretax losses at the Irish arm of file hosting service Dropbox last year narrowed sharply to $4.9 million (€4.4 million) after a surge in revenues.

Accounts show that revenues at Dropbox  International Unlimited in Dublin increased by 31 per cent to $627.5 million last year.

The $627.5 million in revenues at the Dublin unit accounted for 45 per cent of Dropbox’s global revenues of $1.39billion last year.

The  Irish company last year reduced its pretax losses by 89 per cent from $44.8 million.

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The San Francisco-headquartered company set up an International Operation Centre in Dublin in 2012 in what was the company’s first move outside the US.

The same year, Bono and The Edge were announced as individual investors by Dropbox and appeared in a photo posted online with founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi.

Dropbox is now one of the leading players in the cloud computing space and globally, Dropbox has 600 million users in 180 countries.

Numbers employed at the company’s Dublin base last year increased from 142 to 161.

Staff costs last year totalled $33 million, which included share-based payment expenses of $12.4 million.

The accounts show that research and development last year increased sharply to $169 million.

The Dublin company markets and sells Dropbox file hosting platforms outside of the US.

Gordon Deegan

Gordon Deegan

Gordon Deegan is a contributor to The Irish Times