APRN - Blue Apron Buyout + Upcoming Earnings Double Play?

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Ticker:

APRN

Description of why you are requesting DD:

Need YOUR help with further DD on APRN please!

Seeking Alpha recently released an article that claims Blue Apron could see $40 per share with an acquisition by Peleton. Peleton for some reason is the likely candidate to purchase due to their need for increase in subscriptions by new users. Peleton as of recent does not seem to be in the best shape, but Citron states that they could liquidate for $27/share. It seems the last time Blue Apron was looking for a buyer back in Feb 2020.

APRN is a COVID boomer that suffered as things returned to normal. However, their Quarterly stats: average revenue per customer, average order value, & orders per customer have stayed fairly consistent since 2020. 2020 has also marked all time highs for these statistics as well. According to the Seeking Alpha article Citron states that they have 80 million in net cash and after calculations are worth way more than their market cap of $240 million. A second catalyst is also just around the corner.

Earnings is estimated to be released on 02/10/22. Q3 earnings was missed. However, customer base did not shrink. With the passing of the holiday seasons, cold weather, & no supply restrictions (based off of their Q3 earnings report) both the acquisition & upcoming earnings could be a play here.

I hope I did this request properly. If not, please point me in the right direction. I tried to keep it as short as possible while listing all my sources below. Hoping someone with better insight and knowledge may chime in to see how this could possibly be an upcoming play.

Thank you for taking the time to read my request!

Applicable links to news articles or Reddit analysis:

blue-apron-investor-meetings-as-of-november-2021.pdf (260.8 KB)

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3789718-blue-apron-shocker-citron-says-shares-could-quadruple-peloton-may-be-an-acquirer

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Blue apron might sell but the seeking alpha 40 pt and peloton buying them is a joke and is just for click. I did some looking into aprn before and they are a dying company, a buyout is very realistic.

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Thanks for the reply! I figured the $40 pt was click bait, but the $27 liquidation value that Citron gave made it interesting. I don’t know the time frame, but may consider getting a position early before earnings and the buy out. If earnings doesn’t do much, than holding till a buyout or news of buyout would be okay it seems.

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The PT is from Citron, which already makes it dubious.

The deck that supports this PT is also a bit wonky.

Having said that, a 230M valuation on a company with ~500M in sales (albeit negative returns) does create the room for a turnaround story. The earnings call may have clues on which it will be - just further lossmaking (and therefore value destruction) or an actual path to sustainability.

This won’t happen overnight though, so we’ll have time to make a decent call, I think.

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Archiving this now. Thanks for the thread, Diep!