The 2 most high profile IPOs of 2017 are officially losers (SNAP, APRN)

SNAP IPO 11

Two of the year's highest-profile initial public offerings, Snap and Blue Apron, are officially duds.

As of Tuesday morning, shares of both stocks were below their IPO price — meaning that investors who bought in (and held onto the shares) are now facing losses.

Snap sold its shares for $17 in March. It began trading for $24, and rose to its all-time high a day later. It's now below the IPO price of $17. Blue Apron— with an IPO price of $10 — barely kept itself above water on its first day of trading before slipping below 24 hours later. It is now much lower at $7.63.

Snap has been facing a lot of pessimism, even from its own IPO underwriters, about its growth and revenue opportunities. Competitors like Facebook quickly replicate any new feature Snap adds to its app, and the number of users it has is not growing as fast as investors would like. Pressure on the stock could increase as locked up investors — employees and others who agreed not to sell the shares for a period after the IPO — become free to unload their shares.

Blue Apron has been a story of dramatically bad timing. The company initially sought to sell shares for $15 to $17 in its IPO, but had to settle for $10 after news broke that Amazon would be acquiring Whole Foods. The online giant is expected to use Whole Foods as a national chain of food delivery hubs that would compete directly with Blue Apron.

One analyst, Chuck Cerankosky of Northcoast Research, just gave Blue Apron a $2 price target — less than one-third of what it currently fetches.

Both companies have had issues convincing investors of their value. Snap has opened new revenue channels, and released new features in its app but still has been hit by a string of slashed price targets from Wall Street. Analysts are expecting the company's second-quarter earnings, which will be released next month, to be disappointing. A majority of analysts polled by Bloomberg are neutral on Snap and only 32.4% of analysts bullish on the company.

Blue Apron is down 23.65% since it began trading, and Snap is down 33.55%. For comparison, other tech stocks have been tearing higher all year and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 is up 15.94% over the last year.

snap vs. nasdaq vs. aprn