Once tasty Blue Apron is now a penny-stock
Investors are swearing off Blue Apron. The meal-kit delivery service, one of a host of internet startups to go public last year as stocks were pushing ever deeper into record terrain, on Tuesday saw its shares dip below $1 for the first time.
Blue Apron went public last year in an initial public offering priced at 10 bucks a share. Its stock has been slowly unraveling ever since -- the company has lost 90 percent of its market value since the June 2017 IPO.
Despite its cachet among upscale urbanites, investors cooled on Blue Apron after Amazon moved to enter the meal-kit space following its purchase of grocery chain Whole Foods. Other problems have included fulfillment center delays and revenue that has fallen short of Wall Street expectations.
The company, which continues to lose money, in November said it would reduce its workforce by about 4 percent in a bid to turn the corner to profitability in the new year.
The stock closed Tuesday at just 90 cents, down from a 52-week high of $4.50.
The stock's plunge makes Blue Apron's IPO the third-worst this decade on U.S. exchanges, according to Bloomberg. The company is the sole non-energy firm that landed among the bottom five debuts for U.S.-based companies this decade, news service said.
"In the near term, we believe execution challenges, planned investments, a pullback on marketing spend and competitive pressures likely weigh on both top-line growth and bottom-line delivery," Oppenheimer analyst Rupish Parikh said in a recent report.
