(Reuters) - Blue Apron Holdings Inc, the biggest U.S. meal kit company, has filed for an initial public offering, amid increasing competition as more companies seek to deliver fresh ingredients and recipes to subscribers.
New York City-based Blue Apron has selected Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), Citigroup (NYSE:C) and Barclays (LON:BARC) among underwriters to its IPO.
Reuters reported in March that Blue Apron competitor, Sun Basket, which focuses on organic ingredients, had hired banks for an IPO that could come in the second half of the year.
Blue Apron, named after the uniform that apprentice chefs wear in France, delivers prepackaged ingredients and recipes to subscribers' doorsteps for them to prepare at home, a business model attempting to disrupt traditional grocery shopping.
The company, founded in 2012, is not profitable. It lost $54.9 million last year but revenue more than doubled to $795.4 million, Blue Apron said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Blue Apron posted a net loss of $52.2 million for the first quarter of 2017 on revenue of $244.8 million.
The company said it would list its class A shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "APRN".
Blue Apron has two classes of voting stock, class A and class B, as well as a class C of non-voting stock, the company said.
Blue Apron filed for an IPO of up to $100 million. The amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.