Blue Apron, which delivers ingredients to cook meals in your home and was among the companies whispered to go public this year, has now filed to go public[1].
Amidst an array of enterprise companies that have jumped on the IPO bandwagon following Snap’s successful IPO (aside from its more recent whiff of an earnings report[2]), Blue Apron appears to be the next major consumer IPO. That’s important because it continues the tone that both enterprise and consumer companies see an opportunity to go public, which may signal additional activity as we go further into the year.
There’s one unique twist to this consumer IPO, however: it was actually profitable in the first quarter last year. Blue Apron said it brought in $3 million in a profit in the first quarter last year, though it swung to a wildly larger loss in the first quarter this year. While younger companies are expected to burn a ton of money (especially Snap, the largest consumer IPO in many years), Blue Apron appears to have been able to control its costs for at least a hot second before going into growth mode.
The company is showing a rather incredible amount of growth. Blue Apron said it generated nearly $800 million in revenue in 2016, up from $341 million in 2015. For the first quarter this year, Blue Apron said it generated $245 million in revenue, up from $172 million in the first quarter last year. Despite all this, Blue Apron said it lost $55 million in 2016, though it said it lost $52 million in the first quarter this year.
Getting into the unit economics, Blue Apron said it had 4.3 million orders in the first quarter this year, up from 3.7...
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