Meal kit service Blue Apron announced Monday (May 2) that it had received a $70.5 million capital infusion in the form of investments and refinancing.
According to a company news release, Blue Apron will receive a $40 million private placement investment from RJB Partners LLC, which is an affiliate of long-time investor Joseph N. Sanberg. Meanwhile, company president and CEO Linda Findley will invest $500,000 of her own money in Blue Apron.
The company said it also plans to refinance its debt with $30 million of senior secured notes issued to clients of Allianz Global Investors.
“I am pleased to be investing additional equity into a business that I believe has great potential from a strategic and purpose-driven perspective,” Findley said in the news release. “We also view this planned debt refinancing as a smart, strategic move during a time of rising interest rates.
“Upon closing the new debt, we expect to repay our existing debt, which will move our debt maturity five years out to 2027 and lower our overall debt service obligations, giving us the horizon to focus on executing our plans.”
Findley spoke to PYMNTS in February, around the time the company announced a $5 million private placement investment, along with a 7% year-over-year revenue decline in the fourth quarter of 2021 and a $26.4 million net loss, nearly three times its $10 million Q4 2020 losses.
Read more: Blue Apron CEO: Shortening the Supply Chain Can Boost Meal Kit Profitability
She discussed how the company’s fulfillment centers and its in-house kitchen operations set the company up for greater long-term profitability.
“We have a huge amount of automation,” she said. “We have world-class equipment in the facilities … We actually have the ability without a significant amount of capital infrastructure to lean into scale and growth and complexity for the next couple of years.
“The fact that we have this ability to do the individual portions ourselves creates margin advantage … The cost winds up being overall lower at scale.”
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