Blue Apron Holdings Inc (NYSE:APRN) shares sank nearly 18% to $5.14 in Thursday's trading session, after the meal kit maker lowered its growth and profit outlook for FY17 due to execution challenges. To the company’s credit, second-quarter revenue of $238.1 million came in above consensus estimates of $235.8 million, while adjusted EBITDA loss of $23.9 million, or $0.47 a share, came in a touch better than consensus at $24.3 million.
In reaction, Canaccord's top analyst Michael Graham chopped his price target on the company's stock from $14.00 to $11.00, while keeping his rating at Buy.
Graham commented, "Blue Apron reported its first quarter as a public company with mixed customer metrics but slight beats on revenue and EBITDA vs. consensus. The company lost 93k customers sequentially (vs. our 30k net add estimate) due to a cascade of effects from a delay in scaling volume at its new Linden, NJ fulfillment center. While this significant dislocation to the growth story so soon after the IPO is disappointing and will cause skepticism regarding execution abilities going forward, we view this development as decidedly temporary, and are encouraged by the better customer engagement metrics. We expect stock upside in the short term will be limited until the company provides evidence of better execution, but still expect robust growth over time."
According to TipRanks.com, which measures analysts' and bloggers' success rate based on how their calls perform, analyst Michael Graham has a yearly average return of 13.7% and a 60.5% success rate. Graham has a average return when recommending APRN, and is ranked #134 out of 4628 analysts.
Out of the 8 analysts polled in the past 3 months, 5 rate Blue Apron stock a Buy, while 3 rate the stock a Hold. With a return potential of 95%, the stock's consensus target price stands at $10.00.
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