Deliveroo’s IPO flopped this week. The UK startup may have waited too long to cash in on the IPO frenzy for COVID-19 ‘winners.’

• The timing of Deliveroo’s IPO may be one key reason why investors shunned its landmark offering.
• Appetite for food-delivery companies is fizzling out now that vaccination drives are going strong.
• Deliveroo doesn’t have the scalability of a bigger US tech company like Uber, one market analyst said.
• Sign up here for our daily newsletter, 10 Things Before the Opening Bell.

Shares in British food-delivery startup Deliveroo tumbled as much as 30% on its first day of trading this week, even after the company priced its shares at the lower end of its IPO range.

This marked an unfavorable start for one of Europe’s biggest IPOs in a decade.

It seems like Deliveroo may have waited too long to cash in on the IPO frenzy for firms that managed to make the most of the “COVID-19 economy,” such as US peer DoorDash. The drop is linked in part to bad timing.

“Timing is everything in the IPO market,” Robert Johnson, finance professor at Creighton University’s Heider College of Business, told Insider. “While food delivery is popular in the…