Blue Apron is now down from its IPO price during trading today, falling around 4 percent to around $9.60 — a bit south of its original price.
Early in the planning process, Blue Apron was shooting for a price range of between $15 and $17, which would have helped it raise even more money and value the company at around $3 billion. Instead, it had to settle for a valuation below $2 billion and a lot of questions about the company’s future on Wall Street.
On the one hand, IPOs are supposed to be fundraising rounds, and Blue Apron’s debut yesterday pretty much confirmed that it was able to raise as much money as possible. But the stock went nowhere on its first day, and now it’s dipped below that initial pricing, effectively meaning the IPO was the equivalent of a down round — and the company has a whole different set of standard to which it’ll be held accountable.
There are a couple of possible reasons why this is happening. It’s easy to point to the shadow of Amazon making a huge $13.7 billion bid for Whole Foods and the massive looming threat that poses. After all, Amazon specializes in logistics and delivery, and it just purchased hundreds of stores that have access to fresh food and ingredients.
It would seem like a small effort to build a kind of product like Blue Apron within the Amazon empire, and that may even be attractive, given that the company shot to $800 million in revenue in a short period of time. Amazon, too, has shown a willingness to bulldoze into areas that may seem semi-unrelated to its core business of selling products online — like buying Twitch and running servers.