Why Dropbox shares are soaring after it reported earnings

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

This morning we're digging into Dropbox's earnings report (Q4 2019), and why its recent financial performance and plans for 2020 are making the storage and productivity-focused SaaS player shares soar.

While the broader SaaS category has seen huge valuation gains in recent quarters, Dropbox has not. Along with Box, the two file-sharing focused companies were left behind as their broader unicorn cohort's value surged. Why? Slowing growth, mostly. But with Dropbox shares up 13% pre-market to more than $21 this morning - its original IPO price - perhaps things are changing for one of the two firms.

To figure out what happened, we'll start by unearthing what Dropbox managed to pull off in Q4 and compare its projections with market expectations. At the end, we'll translate what we've learned from public SaaS companies for their private, startup brethren. As always, when we look at public companies, we're hunting for market signals that will impact startup fundraising and valuations.