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Blue Apron is soaring after its CEO steps down
Blue Apron CEO Brad Dickerson has left the company to pursue other opportunities. He will be replaced by Linda Findley Kozlowski, Etsy's former chief operating officer. Blue Apron shares were up 7.3% Wednesday afternoon. Watch Blue Apron trade live.
Blue Apron shares were up 7.3% to $1.04 a share on Wednesday after the company announced Tuesday evening that CEO Brad Dickerson has left the meal-kit maker to pursue new opportunities. He will be replaced by Linda Findley Kozlowski, who was most recently the chief operating officer at Etsy. Shares had gained more than 17% earlier on Wednesday.
"We are incredibly excited to have an executive of Linda's caliber as Blue Apron's next CEO," Matt Salzberg, the chairman of Blue Apron's board of directors, said.
"Linda’s exceptional leadership and marketing expertise, as well as her understanding of Blue Apron customers as a long-time customer herself, will help her advance the company towards sustainable, profitable growth," he added.
In addition to the departure of Dickerson, cofounder and chief technology officer Ilia Papas will also leave the company to pursue other opportunities.
Blue Apron reaffirmed its prior guidance of "a significant improvement in net loss and achieving profitability on an adjusted EBITDA basis for the first quarter of 2019 and for full year 2019."
The meal-kit maker has had a difficult time as a publicly traded company since its June 2017 initial public offering. First, Amazon announced plans to buy Whole Foods, causing Blue Apron to slash its IPO range to between $10 and $11 a share, down from $15 to $17, as investors worried about the competition such a deal would bring. Then, less than a month later, Amazon rolled out its own meal-kit business.
More recently, the company has had trouble holding onto customers. Last August, Blue Apron said its total number of customers plunged by 24% year-over-year in the second quarter and that revenue per customer was down by $1 to $250. At that time, the stock was trading near $2 a share.
And in December, Blue Apron tumbled to a low of $0.65 before a partnership with Weight Watchers ignited a rally to more than $1.60. After giving up some of those gains, shares hovered near the $1 level for much of the past month before Tuesday evening's news sent them to their best level since the end of February.
Blue Apron was down 5.3% this year through Tuesday's closing bell.
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