Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) appears well on the way to disrupting the meal-kit delivery business that Blue Apron (NYSE: APRN) helped pioneer.
Blue Apron shares plunged 75 cents, or 10.2% on Monday to $6.61, following news that Amazon filed to trademark a prepared food-kit service. About one-third of Blue Apron's value has vanished since the company went public late last month.
The Amazon service plans to focus on "ready for cooking and assembly" meals composed of meat, poultry, fish, seafood, fruit and vegetables, according to the paperwork.
Now, Amazon is causing some serious indigestion for Blue Apron, which was already grappling with fears of competition in the burgeoning business of shipping boxes of fresh, premeasured ingredients with recipes. Smaller rivals include HelloFresh, Plated and Sun Basket, to name a few.
Blue Apron's IPO paperwork seemed to foreshadow a threat from well-heeled rivals like Amazon.
"Increased competition presents an ongoing threat to the success of our business," Blue Apron warned in its S-1 filing on June 28.
Concerns about competition forced Blue Apron to take the rare step of slashing its initial public offering price before going public on June 29. Now Blue Apron stock has now plunged even below that trimmed IPO Price of $10, crashing as low as $6.51 on Monday.
Thanks to the stock plunge on Monday, Blue Apron is now worth about $1.3 billion. That's less than what the company was worth when it operated as a private "unicorn" in 2015.
