Skip to main content

The context you need, when you need it

When news breaks, you need to understand what actually matters — and what to do about it. At Vox, our mission to help you make sense of the world has never been more vital. But we can’t do it on our own.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

Join now

Blue Apron is the worst-performing major U.S. IPO this year

It’s currently worth less than a third of its IPO value.

Rani Molla
Rani Molla was a senior correspondent at Vox and has been focusing her reporting on the future of work. She has covered business and technology for more than a decade — often in charts — including at Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal.

Blue Apron’s stock price is trading at nearly 70 percent below its offer price, making it the worst-performing major IPO so far this year.

At $3.17 per share at its latest close, Blue Apron is currently worth less than a third of its $10 offer price. That’s a 68 percent decline, which means its valuation is down from $1.89 billion at its IPO to about $600 million.

For this analysis, we looked at FactSet data on companies that went public in 2017 with a market cap at the time of the deal of over $500 million.

Since all these companies went public on different dates, we also compared how each did three months after its IPO. Blue Apron was down 45.5 percent from its offer price three months after its IPO — the biggest decline of any major IPO.

The company has been caught in a vicious cycle of warehousing, customer satisfaction, retention and advertising issues.

Blue Apron declined to comment.

Snap is also a top-10 worst performing IPO this year. Initially, the stock performed well; three months after its IPO it was trading at 26 percent above its offer price. Now, however, its stock is about 25 percent below its $17 offer price.

Snap didn’t immediately respond with comments.

Note that this is percentage change from IPO offer price — available only to institutional investors — meaning regular people may have paid even more when it began public trading.

We excluded from this data set any company that’s gone public in the past three months — including the well-performing Roku and Switch — since there isn’t yet enough data to make a three-month comparison.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

More in Technology

Podcasts
Are humanoid robots all hype?Are humanoid robots all hype?
Podcast
Podcasts

AI is making them better — but they’re not going to be doing your chores anytime soon.

By Avishay Artsy and Sean Rameswaram
Future Perfect
The old tech that could help stop the next airborne pandemicThe old tech that could help stop the next airborne pandemic
Future Perfect

Glycol vapors, explained.

By Shayna Korol
Future Perfect
Elon Musk could lose his case against OpenAI — and still get what he wantsElon Musk could lose his case against OpenAI — and still get what he wants
Future Perfect

It’s not about who wins. It’s about the dirty laundry you air along the way.

By Sara Herschander
Life
Why banning kids from AI isn’t the answerWhy banning kids from AI isn’t the answer
Life

What kids really need in the age of artificial intelligence.

By Anna North
Culture
Anthropic owes authors $1.5B for pirating work — but the claims process is a Kafkaesque messAnthropic owes authors $1.5B for pirating work — but the claims process is a Kafkaesque mess
Culture

“Your AI monster ate all our work. Now you’re trying to pay us off with this piece of garbage that doesn’t work.”

By Constance Grady
Future Perfect
Some deaf children are hearing again because of a new gene therapySome deaf children are hearing again because of a new gene therapy
Future Perfect

A medical field that almost died is quietly fixing one disease at a time.

By Bryan Walsh