Is Blue Apron’s Flameout an Omen for 2019’s Unicorns?
This year’s IPOs could bring as much as $100 billion.
Workers outside the New York Stock Exchange prepare for Blue Apron’s initial public offering on June 29, 2017. The stock has since declined.
Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
It was a big week for Blue Apron shareholders. The meal-kit delivery company named a new chief executive officer, someone who’d bring a vision on how to jump-start sputtering sales, and the stock spiked 17 percent in a matter of minutes.
All of which means essentially nothing in the grand scheme of things; the stock is still down 90 percent since its IPO in 2017. The numbers actually could be worse: had the bankers in charge of the deal—a group led by Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley—stuck to their initial plan and priced the stock at as much as $17, the losses today would be 94 percent. Blue Apron is not only one of the worst-performing IPOs in recent history, but it also seems to underscore the growing disconnect between America’s rich coastal cities and its less prosperous countryside.