Blue Apron tumbles below $1 for the first time

Markets Insider

• Blue Apron shares fell below $1 for the first time on Tuesday.
• The company's initial public offering priced at $10 in June 2017.
• Amazon bought Whole Foods just days before Blue Apron's IPO and then soon after announced it was entering the meal-kit space.
• Watch Blue Apron trade live.

Blue Apron shares fell below the $1 mark Tuesday for the first time as a publicly traded company. Shares touched a low of $0.88 - down more than 90% from their $10 initial-public-offering price in June 2017.

The meal-kit maker has had a rough go of things since announcing its plans for a public listing. First Amazon announced plans to buy Whole Foods, causing Blue Apron to slash its IPO range to $10 to $11 a share, down from $15 to $17, as investors fretted over the competition such a deal would bring. Then, less than a month later, Amazon rolled out its meal-kit business.

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But that was only the beginning of Blue Apron's problems. In May of this year, with the stock already trading near $2.75, the banks that took the company public said shares were only worth $3 apiece.

And a few months later, Blue Apron's announced it was having trouble keeping its customers. It said that its total number of customer plunged by 24% in the second quarter versus last year, and that revenue per customer dipped by $1 to $250.

Since then it has been a slow and steady decline, with the stock finally pressing below $1 on Tuesday.