(Corrects paragraph four to read "by fiscal year 2021" instead of "by 2021")

By Salvador Rodriguez

SAN FRANCISCO, May 31 (Reuters) - Shares of Box Inc rose more than 4 percent in after-hours trading Wednesday after the cloud storage firm's quarterly earnings edged ahead of Wall Street analyst's expectations.

The Redwood City, California-based company posted revenue of $117.2 million for the period, ahead of a Thomson Reuters i/b/e/s consensus forecast of $114.7 million. Box also posted an adjusted loss of 13 cents per share, better than an expected 14 cents per share loss.

“It was a strong quarter in terms of top line growth,” CEO Aaron Levie said in an interview on Wednesday afternoon. “It was another quarter of positive free cash flow, which is very important for Wall Street.”

Though revenue growth continued to slow slightly, Levie said the company was on track to achieve goals of reaching profitability and generating over $1 billion in annual revenue by fiscal year 2021. For now, though, the company remained focused on growing its customer base, he said.

“We want to make sure that as we’re scaling the company we don’t need to raise outside capital, but grow the business in a completely sustainable way,” Levie said.

The company projected revenues of $121 million to $122 million for the current quarter.

The results showed the company was holding its own against rivals like Microsoft Corp, Google, DropBox Inc and Amazon.com Inc, said Adam Sarhan, CEO of 50 Park Investments. Going forward, the question is whether Box can hang onto its market share.

The company now claims 74,000 paying customers, up 3,000 from the previous quarter. More specifically, the company saw year-to-year growth of 70 percent when it came to its Box Governance product, a service that simplifies use of Box for enterprises that deal with complicated regulations. (Reporting by Salvador Rodriguez; Editing by Andrew Hay)