Blue Apron Inc.’s journey as a public company will end with a sputter as it has agreed to be acquired in a deal that values it at a fraction of what it was worth when it came public six years ago.
Wonder, a food-delivery startup, intends to purchase Blue Apron
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for $13 a share through a tender offer, according to a Friday morning release. The deal assigns an equity value of about $103 million to the meal-kit company; Blue Apron was valued at almost $2 billion when it came public in 2017.
Shares of Blue Apron were up 133% in premarket trading Friday.
“Wonder and Blue Apron deliver high-quality, chef-curated meals, making this a great match to offer more incredible mealtime experiences,” Blue Apron Chief Executive Linda Findley said in a release. “The Blue Apron brand and products that our customers know and love will stay the same, with more opportunity for product expansion in the future.”
She added that the transaction “delivers immediate and certain value for Blue Apron stockholders at a significant premium over recent trading prices.” The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Findley said back in May that the company was “actively pursuing all options available to us.”
The company has seen sharp revenue declines since the beginning of its public journey. Blue Apron raked in nearly $800 million in revenue during 2017, its first year as a public company, but annual revenue fell to $458 million during 2022.
And while the company had upwards of a million customers as of the first quarter of 2017, before it went public, Blue Apron’s customer count had dwindled to 267,000 during the second quarter of 2023.
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